Racial Equality and Environmental Activism
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963
Activism is generally a good thing. People fighting for civil rights, justice, and the general good of human-kind. It is this activism that moves us forward as a society and as a human race. Every activist out there has an ideal. Something they want to fight for. Black rights, climate change, animal rights, wealth inequality, or indigenous rights, just to name a few.
But few notice that they are all connected.
When I think about how pollution and climate change affect people
I think about people who have the the worst food, the worst health care, and the worst treatment: those who have the least resources to deal with environmental disasters and pollution. What groups do you imagine? There’s probably a pretty good chance you pictured low-income or minority communities.
Minority and Low-Income Communities are More At Risk
Minority communities generally live in lands that are more affected by pollution, toxic chemicals, and factory emissions. In the case of many black communities, when the slaves were freed, they were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries, putting them at a disadvantage from the start, with many trapped in a cycle of continual poverty. Studies have shown that black and Hispanic communities in the U.S. are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce. By contrast, white Americans experience better air quality than the national average.
Discriminatory housing policies known as “redlining” have created neighborhoods that have more pavement, fewer trees and higher average temperatures, and without the ability to afford air conditioning and the electricity to power it, that heat leads many to deadly heat illness.
Climate Change Makes It Worse
Climate change makes all of these problems worse and adds more: storms, wildfires, floods, and heat waves cause health problems and property damage disproportionately to minority communities, since they have less resources to cope or prepare to stave off the worst effects. As climate change continues to get worse, it will cause the most economic harm to the nation’s poorest counties.
For example, when hurricane Katrina hit, about 30 percent of black New Orleans residents didn’t own cars, making it almost impossible for them to evacuate when evacuation warnings came. Many were killed in the floods themselves, and thousands more were plunged into poverty and homelessness, with disease and starvation rampant.
Climate change will create storms that are even worse.
We are all fighting the same systems but with a different label.
This is just one example of environmentalism being tied and intricately connected to minority and low-income rights, but there are similar parallels in other social problems as well. The problems are all connected. When people from the environmental movements help solve black, indigenous, animal, and minority rights problems, we help solve environmental problems. Likewise, by solving environmental problems, you also indirectly support black, indigenous, animal, and minority rights, again, just to name a few. There are many more.
By fighting for indigenous land rights, we fight oil drilling. By fighting for air quality among minority communities, we fight CO2 emissions from industry. By fighting for more equal hiring, we encourage more empowerment of minority communities. By creating more renewable energy, we reduce the pollution in minority-dominated neighborhoods. By stopping climate change, we reduce stress on minority communities.
It’s time to unite.
In a way, our activists are divided thin. Everyone is fighting for what they believe in: climate, plastic pollution, black rights, mexican rights, Asian american rights, animal rights, wealth inequality, or indigenous rights. And this is actually what these industries prefer. Divided we are weak. It’s easiest to fight us when we are in small groups. In the case of climate activism, it has has historically been dominated by white men, but if we could combine the strength of multiple movements and learn to coordinate and work together, we could increase our strength.
Imagine Black Lives Matter combined with the climate movement; the numbers would be huge. And they would be that more much likely to get something done.
Who’s ready?
I don’t know that I’m the best person to start creating these connections; there are much more well known and better connected activists out there, but if there’s anyone out there who is interested in starting some conversations, get a hold of me. I’m open to get something started.
Maybe we can start hosting some inter-activist conversations. Maybe we could band together. Maybe we could drive change.
Just a thought.
