Last month, Sierra Club issued an expression of solidarity for organizations protesting the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and other victims of injustice that drew many comments, some racist, vicious, and crude. In response to some of the incredibly insensitive comments, Mayté Salazar wrote this poem.
Impunity
We live in a broken world
And we know this.
We live in an unjust world
And we see this.
We live in a world full of hate
And we… we feel the eyes of suspicion as we enter public spaces;
the questioning of our legitimacy when we speak.
We receive constant messages,
explicit and subliminal,
telling us our voice is inherently inferior;
telling us our lives lack inherent value;
telling us we have to fight for crumbs and never even dream of having bread.
All of this anger inside of us…
all of this fear…
this exhaustion…
it drives and breaks us;
it brings us together and pulls us apart.
Somehow individual voices drown out our collective sorrow.
And this… this is something I simply cannot understand.
The irony in statements of solidarity is whether or not the word is truly understood.
The bigger irony, however, is in statements of confusion…
It’s not just that our liberation is tied.
It’s not just that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
For even if you didn’t believe in the former or the latter,
there is something that must bring us together…
And that
is the basic
right
to life.
Environmentalists fight against the corporations desecrating our land
and poisoning our people.
Some even acknowledge the disproportionate impact
pollution has on communities of color.
In a way, then,
Environmentalism is a fight
against impediments to life.
And if you fail to question
a the system
established to bring us justice,
a system established to protect and serve,
then you are blind to the extent of your fight.
For us to fight the corporations that fill our lungs with toxic air;
that poison our drinking water;
and kill our communities…
we have to fight against a system which condones the killing of black and brown bodies.
For those corporations are facing the same impunity
that has allowed for police officers to murder without consequence.
We may try to run away,
but we cannot afford to quit
because silence is equivalent to surrender.
Surrender in this war would mean yielding our right to life.
And that is why we fight.
for what is at stake,
for the right to life,
for those fallen before us.
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If you’re interested, Michael Brune penned this thoughtful and poignant response to the negative reactions.