It’s about time
It has been less than one week since police officers unjustifiably and unwarrantedly took the lives of Mr. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Mr. Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. And even fewer days amidst subsequent protests and the assassination of eight police officers in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge.
These killings occurred within weeks of one of the largest mass shootings in modern history, taking the lives of forty-nine humans enjoying a night out in Orlando, and on the heels of numerous other police killings of black men and boys.
Each incident entered the public consciousness through the intervention of technology which provided real-time, irrefutable accounts of the action. Often enough the depictions in these videos starkly contrast official accounts provided by state actors.
As a DC EcoWoman and environmental advocate focused on equity, access, and justice, I have contributed to the public discourse on topics including intersectionality, equity, and community. This was a choice to explicitly include the cannon of environmental work in the context of larger social justice frameworks.
On the surface, it can appear that campaigns for clean air, clean water, biodiversity, stewardship and meaningful engagement in the distribution of resources, benefits, or burdens are disintegrated and separate. They are not. In the silos of organization we address them as single issues. We do this to mount focused campaigns, to develop and gauge milestones, and to avoid the feeling that the big picture is too overwhelming.
In this space and others, I do my best to dismantle ideas about the utility of this kind of single track thinking. And in so doing, highlight the tendency of environmental institutions to avoid the social justice community out of a dangerous sense of impropriety, relevance, or lack of invitation.
Resist numbness
Despite the mind-blowing horror of these unceremonious executions and the implications of their frequency and occurrence, there have been moments of sheer human goodness, sacrifice, presence, and accord which have helped me to resist numbness. Each has helped me to withstand the urge to find a blanket, and retreat from my efforts to connect the dots for capital “J” Justice here in the nation’s capital.
A great many of these moments have come courtesy of public statements of solidarity in the wake of tragedy. Statements from the environmental community which had – until now – languished in privilege which provided the luxury to avoid speaking out or declaring a position.
As an environmentalist, I have waited for a long time to meet my colleagues in this intersection and to see the parallels begin to register in a sea change in thinking and action.
Statements of solidarity
I want to share some of the public actions in solidarity with the non-violent movement for Black Lives in order to spread some of the positivity which has emerged around another ugly moment in our collective history.
No time like the present
It is my hope that these public displays provide some solace which can inform the next stage of the grieving process. But more importantly I want it to act as ballast for what must happen next.
As EcoWomen, we have every capacity to act on behalf of our comrades in social justice (and ourselves) to address inequity, stave off violence, and fight for justice. We do it every day, in every medium the earth yields, taking on climate change and our role in it.
As change agents, policy makers and activists, we must turn our collective gaze to organizing state level reforms to punch through the (national) illusion that big problems are insurmountable.We already organize, legislate, advocate and agitate every day for gains which won’t be realized for generations. We continually rework the system to accomplish the greatest good.
As such, I implore you to do the same here and now. Resist numbness (!) with an eye towards alignment with civil and social justice movements.
No one expects that we can halt the American contribution to climate change in one session of Congress. As such, we know that prejudice, privilege and targeted undervaluation of black lives will not be solved overnight, or really ever made right.
Now is the time. Take up your voice, intellect, organizational skill, fast feet, slow cooking skills or plain wrapped freedom and put them into the collective space. Leverage yourself against the weight of all this wrong to realize more hope and less systematically designed hurt.
Get involved, in your neighborhood and community, as you are now. No invitation required. It’s time to see the forest and the trees.
* Disclosure – I am a Director on the Board of Directors of Women’s Voices for the Earth, but was not involved in the writing of the solidarity statement.
Tamara is an environmental advocate focused on civil society and justice issues. She holds degrees from The City College, City University of New York and two advanced degrees from Vermont Law School. Her hobbies include reading boring books about politics and neuroscience, writing diatribes about what she reads, traveling, and yoga.