When thinking of what avenues I would like to create social change in, I often consider climate injustice, economic injustice and mobility injustice as the three biggest areas to pursue. These potential issues, when overlapped, tend to impact the same group of people the most regardless of community norms and geographic location: low-income people, people of color and people with disabilities. I’ve also recognized that I have felt the negative impacts of all three of these areas prior to coming to Harvard. I grew up in a low-income area of NYC; I live in a food dessert, in a public transportation desert and below multiple JFK air-paths — a situation that already promotes climate injustice and as a consequence negative health impacts, inhibits the movement of people from work and unable to afford and get to fresh fruits and vegetables. As a consequence, I am determined to make impacts in these three issues.

Climate Injustice

• Law: We need to institute higher taxes on organizations with high CO2 emissions and/or that don’t participate in proper recycling and waste disposal habits. in addition, we need to implement stricter waste disposal laws. Given that the top two industries that create green house emissions are transportation and electricity. We should put into law that all companies need to remove fossil fuels from their procedures within the next 4 years. Change zoning laws within major urban pockets to make the cities environmentally friendly. Reduce food waste in supermarket and restaurants by mandating excess food be donated prior  to spoiling or tossing.
• Market: Subsidize and/or make free technology items that utilizes clean energy source would be a good start.
• Norms: The norms battle would have to be to get people to understand that climate change is real. I would start by highlighting that the “debate” on climate change is not coming from the scientific community documentaries, articles and social media campaigns. I would spend more time highlighting areas already seeing the effects through social media.
• Code: Create a website or extension that monitors what individual green house gas emissions look like as well as highlight what individual company emissions look like. This is to help people, especially those in developed nations that emit the most amount of waste and green house gas but also highlight for people which companies are the worst perpetrators to put public pressure on them.

Mobility Injustice

• Law: Laws would need to change to create a stronger infrastructure around America for accessibility purposes. Sidewalks should be a regulated width, smooth concrete (or a more sustainable material) and with ample cross walks. Increase the budget of infrastructure to maintain roads, bridges, tunnels and highways. Create a nation-wide high-speed train system to allow for cross-country travel with less emissions and at a cheaper cost.
• Market: I am not sure how the market could exactly fit into this section aside from using sales from another place to subsidize these infrastructure sales. I would decreases pricing on assitive technology and public transportation in cities.
• Norms: I think we need to highlight how many places are actually inaccessible such that people can work to understand the need of accessible spaces and inspired to create more. I would want to move conversations around technology from innovation to maintenance because maintenance is equally as important and something I think the U.S. forgets about. Creating a campaign to highlights its importance, thank those who do it could incentives communities to put more money into maintaining infrastructure.
• Code: I’ve actually seen some really cool website and apps to help in this realm. One uses crow-sourcing to highlight where bus stops actually are on a street for the visually impaired. Another uses Google images and crowd sourcing to highlight what curbs don’t have accessible ramps. I think databases for accessibility purposes are great to show what spaces are accessible for different needs. I think a database for local governments to know what needs the most attention would be great but I don’t think they would do anything with that information.

Economic Injustice

• Law: I firmly believe there should be no billionaires, more social programs to reallocate resources and we should remove system where one’s value is based on the economic value of the communities surrounding it. To start, school funding should not be tied to property value. All schools should get the same funding and we should probably mix schools such that attendance isn’t dependent on a zip code. There should be heavier taxes on the extremely wealthy people and business that should be directly put into social programs. We should have universal healthcare. Minimum wage should be increased to a livable wage for all. College should be free. Everyone should receive a basic income. Large conglomerate business should be broken up to provide more competition and potential variation of prices as well as a stronger possibility for small businesses to thrive. I recognize I am stating a lot of ideals but I think these all should be put into law.
• Market: I stated this earlier and I feel like law and market would have to work together here but we should break up large conglomerate businesses to allow smaller businesses to thrive. I am not sure how you would use the market in this area to help with this issue but I think it could.
• Norms: I think we need to push the boundaries of what is considered “really liberal” ideas around social programming considering America’s liberal are many European countries’ conservative. I think there should be a continued effort from boycotts, protest and social media to make these ideas heard including the idea that billionaires shouldn’t exist and schools deserve equal funding regardless on community value. We should push the norms of the country to believe that everyone deserves to live a healthy and fruitful life and as consequence deserve things like shelter and food. On a completely different note, I think people should actually talk to each other about wages and benefit packages. We should normalize these conversations so we can eliminate unfair pay discrepancies.
• Code: When I think of using code for economic injustice, I tend to want it to have a more interpersonal impact. I really believe in financial literacy for everyone. I think code can do a great job of teaching financial literacy and money management to create healthy spending habits.