2018-12-28

Justice on Earth: Chapter 2

The 2018-19 UUA Common Read:
Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment. Available from UUA Bookstore HERE; from Amazon HERE.
This week, chapter 2: Paula Cole Jones, "The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement."

In 2014, UUs from around the country assembled in Detroit for a "collaboratory" to learn and reflect on our denomination's environmental work. Detroit was a good example of the intersection of environmental issues and urban issues. As local environmental activists showed the UUs around the city, they saw a city
"dominated by abandoned homes, crumbling industrial plants, and sparsely traveled streets."
They met people
"fighting for access to municipal water services and the enforcement of clean air stands at recycling plants,"
and saw the work to develop "urban agriculture to meet the city's goal of food sovereignty." They witnessed commitment to the principle, "No one is expendable. Everyone matters."

When waste sites and polluting industries are located in poorer and darker communities, this may appear to be following the path of least resistance. But this explanation
"takes the focus off of the systemic nature of oppression; specifically, who gets to make the decisions."
It leaves out the role of
"racial and ethnic segregation, income inequality, and limited access to resources and policy makers."
The environmental justice movement, still relatively young, corrects this lack. How did this movement emerge?

The post-WWII boom substantially increased both prosperity and industrial waste and pollution. These two factors led to the modern environmental movement, landmarked by the first Earth Day in 1970. The movement was slow, however, to attend to ways entrenched racial inequality affected environmental decisions. Research by African American sociologist Robert Bullard, published in 1983, found that
"African Americans making $50,000 to $60,000 per year are much more likely to live in a polluted environment than poor white families making just $10,000 per year."
In 1982, the environmental justice movement broke through to national recognition in a case from Warren County, North Carolina. The sending of PCB-contaminated oil to a landfill in Warren County's poorest and most heavily African American community was resisted by activists seeking to protect their groundwater.
"More than five hundred people were arrested, including Congressman Walter Fauntroy and pastors Benjamin Chavis and Joseph Lowery."
A citizen class action suit was filed.
"They did not win the case or stop the landfill, but they successfully launched the environmental justice movement."
In 1991, three hundred people of color gathered for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. The Summit adopted seventeen “Principles of Environmental Justice” which continue to frame and guide the movement.

Paula Cole Jones concludes:
“As Unitarian Universalists continue to work on environmentalism and climate change, we must operate with the knowledge of structured racial and economic inequality so that we are truly confronting oppression and doing our part in building the Beloved Community.”
Also read:
  • The Seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the 1991 Summit: HERE.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency’s Eco-Justice 2020 Action Agenda (2016), 66pp.: HERE.
Questions:
  • How well do you know the history of the environmental justice movement? What will you do to become more familiar with this history?
  • What do you know about federal and state government actions that ameliorate or exacerbate environmental injustices?
  • Are environmental decisions in Westchester County fair and equitable?
  • Which communities are at risk? Where do Westchester community officials stand on local environmental justice issues?
  • What local organizations have been formed by and for people of color and working-class communities to address environmental racism and classism?
  • How can CUUC partner with people of color in our community?
  • Who could be invited to speak here about environmental justice?
  • What can you do to build relationships, trust, and partnerships that make a difference?
This week, read chapter 2. Consider and talk about the questions, and any other questions that come up for you. Feel free to click "Comment" below and share your thoughts here. Thank you!

2018-12-21

Justice on Earth: Chapter 1

Rev. Meredith Garmon
Let's talk about the Common Read!
Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.
Available from UUA Bookstore HERE; from Amazon HERE.

This week, chapter 1: Jennifer Nordstrom, "Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice."

The word "intersectional" is big these days among people thinking about social justice. The word calls attention to how interrelated the various justice issues are. Nordstrom opens with mention of a 10-day "direct action and permaculture training camp" she attended in New Mexico to simultaneously learn sustainability and "build resistance to white supremacy and militarism." Growing food and growing cross-cultural relationships of equality and respect at the same time is one manifestation of "intersectionality."

The overlap of issues calls attention to the commonalities, but also the differences:
"For example, women will experience sexism differently depending on their race, class, gender identity, and sexuality. People of color will experience racism differently based on their class, gender, gender identity, and sexuality."
In particular, Justice on Earth looks at Environmental Justice through the lens of intersectionality -- this is, in light of interconnecting systems. Nordstrom shares her experience learning that
"communities of color were exploited and poisoned through the entire nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mining on Indigenous lands to nuclear weapons production on Indigenous land and the contamination of surrounding Indigenous, Chicano, and Latinx communities to nuclear waste storage in communities of color."
Thus, militarism, colonialism, racism, and the environment interrelate.

We are thus lead to see that "the environment" "is not simply natural wilderness in need of saving" -- as UUs are prone to view it. It is also roads, industries, urban trees, other people -- everything around us, and all of it shaped by patterns of power.
"There is not a single experience of the environment divorced from other relationships, or a single experience of humanity divorced from the environment."
For too long UUs have done "justice work in silos" -- an approach that "is not true to our whole lives, or to the wholeness of other people." When we ignore intersectionality, our work "usually caters to the dominant identities within the issue."

Yet, Nordstrom argues, as important as intersectionality is, equally powerful for us is faith. Our faith as UUs "can ground and nurture our work for environmental justice." Our situatedness in the interdependent web is our "call of the deep to the well of" our souls.

Related and Recommended: Kimberle Crenshaw's Keynote address to the Women of the World Festival 2016.(30 mins) HERE.



Questions:
  • What overlapping patterns of power and oppression have you experienced in your own life?
  • How have they manifested in the institutions in which you live and work?
  • How have they affected your experience of you own identity?
  • What do you know of environmental justice organizations active in Westchester?
This week, read chapter 1. Consider and talk about the questions, and any other questions that come up for you. Feel free to click "Comment" below and share your thoughts here. Thank you!

2018-12-01

Peace on Earth -- and Justice

Meredith Garmon

During this holiday season, we will frequently see, hear, and perhaps say the words, "Peace on Earth." Unitarians have been noticing that the words do not match the reality at least since Unitarian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the carol, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" in 1863: "For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men," wrote Longfellow. The challenge to us is to take the words, "Peace on Earth," to heart, reflect on what we've done in the past year to build peace, and what we will commit to do in 2019.

Let us attend, as well, to Justice on Earth, for peace and justice are intricately interconnected. There will be no peace without justice (for human beings systemically denied justice will agitate for it, including turning to violence when there is no other recourse) -- and, too, no justice without peace (for human beings under attack focus on defending themselves, not fairness to others). I take this not as a chicken-and-egg insoluble dilemma, but as indicating the need to gradually build both at the same time. On the "Justice on Earth" side, I recommend a book of that title.

Our Unitarian Universalist Association selects a Common Read every year, which all UUs are urged to read. The Common Read for 2018-19 is: Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, Eds., Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Environment (Skinner House Books, 2018). Here's what UUA says about it:
"At a time when racial justice, environmental justice, and economic justice are seen as issues competing for time, attention, and resources, Justice on Earth explores the ways in which the three are intertwined. Those on the margins are invariably those most affected by climate disaster and environmental toxins. The book asks us to recognize that our faith calls us to long-haul work for justice for our human kin, for the Earth and for all life. It invites us to look at our current challenges through a variety of different perspectives, offers tools to equip us for sustained engagement, and proposes multiple pathways for follow-up action."
The book is available from the UUA bookstore (HERE), or Amazon (HERE). Let's read it, talk about it, engage with these ideas, and learn how we can more skillfully contribute to the building of a world of justice and peace.