April Thomas, april.thomas@sierraclub.org
OAKLAND, CA -- Hop Hopkins, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Sierra Club is out with a powerful piece in Sierra Magazine detailing the inextricable connection between the climate crisis and white supremacy. In the piece, he details the intersectionality between the white colonizermentality, slavery, ongoing structural racism, the modern plundering of our planet, and the murder of George Floyd by Minneappolis police.
As he notes in the piece:
You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism.
We’re in this global environmental mess because we have declared parts of our planet to be disposable. The watersheds where we frack the earth to extract gas are considered disposable. The neighborhoods near where I live in Los Angeles, surrounded by urban oilfields, are considered disposable. The very atmosphere is considered disposable. When we pollute the hell out of a place, that’s a way of saying that the place—and the people and all the other life that calls that place home—are of no value.
In order to treat places and resources as disposable, the people who live there have to get treated like rubbish too.
Read the full piece online here.
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The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3.5 million members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.