Join the Climate Justice Generation
As reported everywhere, and in Heated, “Yesterday afternoon, former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd last summer by kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.”
Our thoughts and prayers are with George Floyd's family. May they have some peace. But, as the MT Racial Equity Project said yesterday:
Thoughts and prayers aren't nearly enough. It is folly to think that a system that oppresses and murders Black and Brown mothers and fathers and daughters and sons routinely, in broad daylight with witnesses, will usher in any kind of a humane and livable future as the climate crisis unfolds.
As Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. of Hip Hop Caucus noted in June 2020, "Communities who are most impacted by police brutality are the same communities that are most vulnerable to climate change. People of color have been dying and suffering because of environmental racism and the pollution from dirty fossil fuel infrastructure in our communities at the same time we have been dying at the hands of racist policing."
Today, Sam Grant, executive director of 350MN, offered more insight into the inextricable link between racial justice and climate justice, and how we need to think about justice for a livable future, in his interview with Emily Atikins (Heated), “The climate case for abolition.”
What we need is for this [Chauvin] case to be a redrawing of boundaries around what we think the justice system needs to look like going forward, and what it means to respond to the Department of Defense's declaration that climate change is the greatest threat multiplier.
We can look at the threat multiplier as a way of increasing division among human beings, and protecting privileges already taken at any cost. Or we can say, because of the level of threat and because of all of the lives that are going to be harmed by the way we respond, let us today and every day forward commit to healing our relations with each other and bringing alive an approach to healing justice that ripples through every relationship and system in the world so we are no longer causing harm to the Earth or to each other.
That's the objective of the climate justice movement, to say that both things are necessary for each other and you can't choose one at the expense of the other, because then both of the aspects of that equation lose the mutual future. So we're just calling on everybody to join the climate justice generation; to link bringing down greenhouse gas emissions with a journey of healing all of our relations. So that no matter what color skin you're in, no matter what zip code you live in, no matter what national border you live in, you are going to be respected and included democratically in finding mutual solutions to our future. That's the best way to respond to the threat of the climate crisis.
This message resonates deeply for our organization, and we are committed to doing our work in a healing, just way. We are a White-led organization at this time, and we often organize White families; some of whom, while supporting racial justice, wonder about how racial justice connects to climate explicitly.
So we want to call our White families into this moment explicitly: Read the interview with Sam Grant; have conversations about the intersection of racial oppression and climate destruction, and share the heartbreaking conversations Black and Brown parents are having with their kids about how accountability for one does not mean the end of a racist system; “join the climate justice generation; to link bringing down greenhouse gas emissions with a journey of healing all of our relations.” Read about the term “Just Transition”, and its history. Read “The Meaning of Home” from Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project. And, support racial justice in Montana by supporting these organizations (and others):
Transforming our world requires we investigate who we are and what our role will be in finding just solutions to build a thriving future for all. It’s not comfortable or easy. But if we’re reflecting and protecting our comfort, we can be sure our privilege is at work. This is what we must investigate, and rise above.
We humbly intend to follow the lead of Black and Brown activists who have been doing this work for a long time because their survival has depended on it.
We stand for a livable future for all families.