By Jacqline Wolf Tice, Pennsylvania Chapter Executive Committee At-large Member
Equity is the guarantee of fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement while identifying and eliminating barriers that have prevented the full participation of specific groups (UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity). The ethical and material demands of equity are our responsibility and our legacy in a pluralistic, democratic society that has been built on the backs of immigrant communities, and bent by the rod of racism and fear of differences at the expense of communities labeled Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).
Equity cannot live side by side with oppressive, racist, or separatist ideologies or undercurrents that either inform or reframe its context. Equity must come from the internalization of a right relationship with justice and humanity. As well, it must exorcize bogus intellectual frameworks that exist merely to justify it. Equity as a way of framing life, a dynamic exercise of humanity, is not something you learn, but something you become through recognition, acceptance, and expression of inclusion through the eyes of the heart.
Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
For too long we have pretended we are a tolerant society in which racism is marginal, an obsession of the uncouth (Younge). However, implicit bias and institutionalized racism openly exists within health care systems, academia, financial institutions, housing programs, corporate boardrooms and in the environmental movements we populate. These barriers represent the antithesis of equity. Even as our country elected a Black president twice, by pretending this historic marker signaled enough progress, we failed to respond enough to the incessant ill of supremacist ideologues, legitimized by national elections supporting openly racist candidates who insist equity is just another cause for the “cancel culture.”
Twenty million people participated in the first Earth Day, in 1970. In Philadelphia, cheekily called “Filthydelphia” at that time, Fairmount Park hosted 40,000 people for the overwhelmingly white, middle-class celebration organized by Penn graduates. Many students wore masks that day – not because of an infectious disease, but because of the disease of pollution-fueled environmental contamination in the city. Yes, air pollutants are ubiquitous, but the concentrated siting of corporate polluters in BIPOC communities was and is an issue of institutionalized racism and classism. This first Philadelphia Earth Day was donned with a $10,000 donation ($75,000 in 2022 money) from the behemoth Philadelphia Gas Works (Jaramillo). Environmental philanthropic money has been disproportionately skewed to benefit large environmental groups like Sierra Club, Greenpeace and other predominantly Caucasian-run organizations (Chinn). In general, the environmental movement has been funded by corporate entities led by wealthy, white men protecting wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the environmental justice movement was founded by BIPOC community organizers, many of them women (Fears & Dennis), in rural communities.
The intersectionality of race, class and gender within the environmental space is a hotspot for equity to flourish. The role of the Pennsylvania Chapter Sierra Club Equity Team is aligned with the values and objectives of fair treatment, access, and opportunity to advance the goals of an equitable, just, and inclusive Sierra Club. It is time for the Sierra Club to lift the aspiration of equity to an accountable promise. During this new hiring phase of the PA Chapter, the Equity Team will hold this standard as a test of the Club’s resolve.
For groups, we are encouraging and supporting upcoming Juneteenth activities which highlight the historical remembrance of the 13th Amendment ending slavery and the joyful celebration of African American/Black culture. Groups who plan activities are encouraged to communicate with an Equity Team member for funding protocols.
The Equity Team is planning acknowledgments to recognize and elevate the work of grassroots efforts advancing equity. We also intend to occasionally highlight in this newsletter how we succeed and fail in meeting the stated objectives. It is hard work to bend the arc of the universe toward justice (King), and that is our committed work. Equity is an internal and external process which requires a commitment to see with the heart.
The Equity Team would like to extend an invitation to all within Sierra Club to view and contemplate the Growing for Change equity training for a comprehensive understanding of how privilege, oppression and power sit in both internal, external and institutionalized spaces.
An online resource library is available to all members to educate and explore literature related to equity. Education leads to active participation in recognizing, exposing, and redressing behaviors and systems that cause barriers to equity, which now is our collectively embedded social responsibility.
Sources:
Chinn, H. (30 June 2020). Environmental groups say they’re committing to racial equity. What do they mean? https://whyy.org/articles/environmental-groups-say-theyre-committing-to-racial-equity-what-does-that-mean/
Fears, D. & Dennis, B. (6 Apr 2021). This is environmental racism. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/environmental-justice-race/
Jaramillo, C. (22 Apr 2020). How ‘Filthydelphia’ made Earth Day a thing. https://whyy.org/articles/how-filthydelphia-made-earth-day-a-thing/
King. M.L.K. Jr. (31 Mar 1968). Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution. Smithsonian Institution. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/mlk?page=4&iframe=true
Young, G. (26 Jan 2018). How the far right has perfected the art of deniable racism. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/26/far-right-racism-electoral-successes-europe-us-bigotry
This blog was included as part of the April 2022 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!