For The Wild - Homebound： Eco-Justice in the Age of Disasters with JACQUI PATTERSON ⧸175

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00:00:30.000 hey for the wild community carter lou here to present this week's homebound episode

00:00:38.760 homebound brings you wisdom from the for the wild archives offering guidance and perspective to

00:00:45.160 anchor us and help us to navigate this current moment today we are re-listening to our conversation

00:00:51.460 with jackie patterson on eco justice in the age of the anthropocene originally aired in 2017

00:00:59.680 Jackie Patterson has worked as a director, researcher, program manager, coordinator,

00:01:06.080 advocate, and activist working on women's rights, violence against women, HIV and AIDS,

00:01:12.800 racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice.

00:01:18.540 We're bringing this episode back from the archives because over the past couple of weeks,

00:01:22.980 we have seen far too many narratives of disposability when it comes to the communities

00:01:27.480 who are already impacted the most when it comes to environmental, social, and economic injustice.

00:01:34.960 Jackie reminds us that we must strategically address the needs of our communities,

00:01:39.540 for when we work to uplift those at the bottom, we all rise. In light of this conversation with

00:01:46.440 Jackie, we are asking ourselves, why is it that so many of us are willing to sacrifice others?

00:01:53.240 Where did we first learn disposability?

00:01:57.480 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with

00:02:13.120 Jacqueline Patterson. Jacqueline is the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice

00:02:20.100 Program. Since 2007, Patterson has served as coordinator and co-founder of Women of Color

00:02:26.440 United. Jackie Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator,

00:02:31.660 advocate, and activist working on women's rights, violence against women, HIV and AIDS,

00:02:37.320 racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a senior

00:02:44.520 women's rights policy analyst for ActionAid, where she integrated a women's rights lens for 0.87

00:02:50.220 the issue of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change, as well as the intersection of

00:02:55.600 Violence Against Women and HIV-AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice President of HIV-AIDS

00:03:02.340 Program for IMA World Health, providing management for technical assistance to medical facilities

00:03:08.000 and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach

00:03:13.400 Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Research Coordinator for

00:03:18.760 John Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica and the West

00:03:25.420 Indies. Wow, and there's even more to your bio, but what an incredible body of work you have,

00:03:34.340 Jacqueline. Thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Sure, it's a pleasure. Thank

00:03:39.520 you for having me. So I just want to start off by saying that we at For the Wild here and this

00:03:47.560 whole team know that any initiative for ecological renewal must be tethered to intersectional

00:03:54.080 justice, or it just becomes another manifestation of that which we seek to dismantle and transform.

00:04:02.600 So I want to kind of set the stage and I want to speak to the under-representation of people 0.95

00:04:09.260 of color in the environmental and climate movements, and I want to acknowledge the

00:04:14.620 interwoven systemic physical spiritual dimensions that continue to silence the voices of those most

00:04:21.140 marginalized in this system and now we're just seeing how these systemic inequalities are being

00:04:29.140 exacerbated as the climate grows more unpredictable as public services and environmental degradation

00:04:36.020 and toxification only worsen as gentrification continues as a new form of colonization and

00:04:43.120 the prison-industrial complex increasingly consumes communities striving to survive.

00:04:50.600 And just thinking about the first shackled journey across the Atlantic and the era of

00:04:56.480 sharecropping, which held as much violence and lack of autonomy as slavery did, to the

00:05:01.140 intentional hyper-segregated design of urban spaces and the disproportionate exposure to

00:05:06.640 toxicity of fence-line communities, and then the relationship between people of color and

00:05:11.900 nature has been severed manipulated and convoluted by colonial forces and I've really been sitting

00:05:20.060 in this train of thought a lot recently and Jacqueline you have worked tirelessly just

00:05:29.180 researching so many different avenues of climate justice environmental justice racial justice I

00:05:39.200 mean, the list goes on. And I'd love if you could start off by explaining to us how your work has

00:05:46.640 been guided by history towards a future of intersectionality and justice.

00:05:56.860 Hmm, thank you. Yeah, so I'm my work really around environmental and climate justice has

00:06:05.680 It stemmed from, as you say, a history of doing work around starting off with a view towards kind of more social services and then with this kind of broad and naive notion of, quote unquote, helping.

00:06:19.600 And then then then came enlightenment in terms of what actual of how our systems of quote unquote helping are actually in some ways keeping people in powerlessness and keeping people oppressed in some ways.

00:06:40.480 and that we really have to think more transformatively.

00:06:43.920 And that really came out of experiences from starting to do work on special education and public health

00:06:51.260 and really recognizing that a lot of the special needs that existed when I was doing this work,

00:06:58.100 particularly in Jamaica, were because of the way the country and our larger kind of geopolitical system

00:07:06.100 means that there is an amassing of wealth for a wealthy few where, you know, we just take things

00:07:12.500 like immunizations and healthy diets and so forth for granted in wealthy contexts while in nations

00:07:20.520 where we're taking natural resources and not really properly compensating people for the

00:07:28.600 sharing of resources, they end up living in relative squalor in many cases and resulting

00:07:36.740 in everything from poor sanitation to, you know, lack of immunizations. And that actually resulted

00:07:43.780 in the special needs that I was addressing through the special education programming.

00:07:48.980 So I really recognize that while special education programming is always going to be needed because

00:07:55.080 special needs develop from a number of different sources, there's also systemic ways that we can 1.00

00:08:00.640 address the way our economy and social systems are designed so that the special needs don't

00:08:09.220 even arise in the first place in terms of some that are based on these inequities. So that's

00:08:15.860 just an example. But similarly with HIV, I was doing work around HIV and AIDS and infectious

00:08:22.200 diseases. And similarly with that, particularly as I began to work with women who are disproportionately

00:08:29.440 impacted by HIV in the global South and in the United States, it just again very quickly came

00:08:36.900 to light how sexism, patriarchy, and so forth really led to the situations of women who are

00:08:45.340 HIV positive, whether it was because of gender-based violence or whether it was because women felt

00:08:51.320 forced into transactional sex because of the fact that we know that worldwide women make 70 cents on

00:08:59.500 the man's dollar. And so that state of poverty, the fact that women are often, there's so many 0.90

00:09:06.220 female-headed households, so women feel forced into certain activities because they're needing 1.00

00:09:11.680 to provide for their children. So again, every place that I was where I was doing this work,

00:09:19.780 It just became very evident that, quote unquote, helping means to actually transform a system that's based on this notion of winners and losers and really uplifting and making sure that there is self-determination for folks so that we can change these systems so that people can provide for themselves.

00:09:38.120 I'll pause there. But that's kind of part of the evolution and the way that I saw this intersectionality, whether it's around gender, whether it's around global South nations, and certainly our economy and how it's formed and how it is designed to where it's the people who are in power and making decisions are perpetuating the status quo in terms of the economic conditions of the many suffering from the luxuries of a few, to paraphrase Martin Luther King.

00:10:08.120 people are more and more awakening to the realities of the earth, feeling the overwhelm

00:10:19.280 of where to begin. And I think sometimes we started helping the symptoms rather than the

00:10:27.120 core of what's creating those symptoms, which is the system. So thank you for acknowledging that

00:10:34.520 for us. You know, part of your work, as you've been saying, not only spanned North America,

00:10:42.400 but also the Caribbean and Africa. And I'm wondering, how does the cultural relationship

00:10:49.220 that people of color hold with the environment and the land differ in the Caribbean and Africa

00:10:56.060 in comparison to mainland North America? 1.00

00:11:01.900 Yes.

00:11:03.300 So in some ways, there's these linkages

00:11:09.600 in terms of the traditional ways

00:11:12.860 that people have lived with the land.

00:11:15.200 And then we see how the U.S.

00:11:19.400 and its kind of dominant culture

00:11:22.460 that forces certain shifts.

00:11:24.600 And so we know that from what I have observed from being in the Caribbean and in sub-Saharan Africa, that the folks live a lot closer with the land and really are in harmony with the land in ways that are a lot more evident and observed.

00:11:42.160 So from subsistence farming and the fact that whether you're a professional going to an office or you are living in a rural area, subsistence farming is a lot more prevalent regardless of what station you have in society.

00:12:00.640 And so that connection with the land in terms of its bounty actually feeding one's family begs a certain understanding of the land, respect for the land, and as I said, harmony with the land.

00:12:16.160 And also that a number of cultures, rituals and spirituality is connected with soil, is connected with water, and connected with the notion of the divine feminine in terms of the women as birthing and the earth as birthing.

00:12:36.840 And seeing that real connection is a lot more prominent and prevalent in some of the Global South cultures and nations.

00:12:43.900 And so people of color in the United States who have, you know, more recently or in the distance past migrated or been brought here in the hulls of ships in some ways hold on to those values and cultures.

00:12:59.600 But the practices become eroded by the forces of the United States society, which is in some ways built on a very countering relationship with the earth in terms of extraction, reckless extraction of natural resources.

00:13:18.220 And then in terms of taking people away from their land, the reckless extraction of humanity in terms of the slave trade and so forth, the enslaved trade.

00:13:29.600 And then and then, of course, the way that we even interrupt the natural regenerative cycles, whether it's development by some of these big ag corporations of terminator seeds or it is this notion of of growing food for fuel as opposed to what it's originally supposed to be intended for.

00:13:54.720 So there's so many ways that the disruptive nature of our dominant culture has taken people literally from their land or just the societal mores and norms are separating people from that relationship of harmony with the land.

00:14:24.720 piano plays softly

00:14:54.700 or inclusive culture is the unequal access to land by different groups of people of color.

00:15:03.980 And that in turn affects the ability of communities to live a healthy life and in deep connection

00:15:09.480 to place, to land, to nature. 0.90

00:15:12.940 So while indigenous peoples have an inherent right to land through ancestry, and of course

00:15:17.800 we know that so many of those treaties are broken.

00:15:20.460 And so I'm wondering how this lack of access to land and land ownership affects people of color, but, you know, also black leadership in the environmental movement.

00:15:33.140 yeah whether it is the so i'll even take an explicit example of the recent situation that

00:15:46.160 happened in east chicago indiana where people who were in public housing discovered that over

00:15:55.100 the decades that they lived in this public housing they were being exposed to

00:15:59.300 lead and arsenic in their soil at multiple times the quote-unquote allowable levels of lead and

00:16:08.360 arsenic in our soil and so once this came to light the folks ended up with a 90-day notice to get out

00:16:17.460 of where they where they were living and where some had been living for generations

00:16:22.720 one person we spoke to is 60 something years old the only place she had ever known and had 90 days

00:16:30.400 to move there were so many people who were affected it was um some like 300 households or

00:16:37.040 so in this housing complex that um they were they didn't have enough section 8 housing vouchers to

00:16:45.320 even accommodate the folks in the state and so not only did they have to move away from the only home

00:16:51.440 that they've known, the only community they've ever known, and for multiple folks, the only

00:16:57.140 state they've ever known. And so that kind of complete lack of control over one's destiny,

00:17:07.960 over one's circumstances, the fact that that disruption and the fact that ones had to really

00:17:17.080 focus inwardly to figure out how to cater for the needs of the family, but the people weren't

00:17:23.960 really able to organize in the way that they might have been able to organize if they had

00:17:28.920 had the stability of a place of control over the situation. Because even if they had all been

00:17:34.520 homeowners, then there might have been some organizing they could have done to try to push

00:17:39.980 for remediation, but it was public housing, and therefore they were literally at the mercy of

00:17:46.840 the state, not the state as in the state of Indiana, but like, you know, the government

00:17:51.260 oversight over where they live because of the Section 8 situation. And so that's another

00:17:58.720 example, as you said before, gentrification and ways that communities have historically

00:18:04.300 been displaced by or forced into certain places by redlining. And then now with this modern

00:18:12.960 day gentrification and still suddenly existing redlining people again are being displaced with 0.99

00:18:20.100 changes in property values and changes in resources meaning you know rental properties

00:18:25.700 are more expensive people being priced out of their homes places where because of the connection

00:18:32.720 with sea level rise there's places where the it used to be that the coastal properties were the

00:18:38.920 most desired and they pushed people of color and low-income communities away from those coastal

00:18:46.380 properties because they were most of value. And now that the people of color, low-income folks 1.00

00:18:51.040 are living on higher ground, more inland, that has become more valuable because sea level rise

00:18:56.080 is inundating those coastal dwelling places and people are being further displaced from their

00:19:01.940 original community. So there's just so many examples of displacement and the lack of power

00:19:08.540 to fight back against and the lack of ability to be able to organize around it. But at the same time,

00:19:15.560 people are organizing, finding the ways to organize, even with the East Chicago situation.

00:19:21.860 Some of the people are living in Illinois now, as opposed to Indiana, or living very far away.

00:19:27.380 But yet still, they're keeping their connections and they're fighting for the right to return. They're fighting for a proper level of remediation and also fighting for resources to help them where they are.

00:19:41.260 In other places, folks are fighting against gentrification and fighting against displacement, pushing for ordinances that can quell the development that would be happening to their communities and really helping to control how development happens and enabling them to stay, implementing models like community land trusts and so forth.

00:20:06.460 So people are starting to be able to strategically think of ways to address this constant displacement that communities are facing. And so that's happening. So I don't want to kind of make it sound, you know, really kind of perpetuate this deep victimology, but also really saying that people are fighting back against multiple, you know, mechanisms of oppression that they're being assailed with, besieged with.

00:20:36.460 sorry yeah no there's so much there and when I was asking that question I wasn't even thinking

00:20:43.920 about how the constant displacement disrupts organizational focus and power because you're

00:20:52.780 trying to organize and then you have to move and you're having to figure out where to move and you

00:20:56.700 don't have stability and how much energy that takes away from actually focusing on standing up

00:21:03.180 for remediation rights and uh property i mean all of it i'd recently interviewed clayton thomas

00:21:11.140 muller uh who's an indigenous activist out of ottawa in canada and we had this really

00:21:18.720 beautifully intense conversation about land rights and if we're not talking about access to land

00:21:28.200 and land ownership in this dominant culture we're not really discussing solutions for climate

00:21:34.720 justice because if the most of the land is still in the ownership of the white dominant

00:21:42.500 supremacist culture and we're not allowing the system to dismantle so that people of color and

00:21:49.940 marginalized people can actually have access to land for growing food for connect reconnecting

00:21:55.360 with soil and nature and balancing the power the access to land is so fundamental and I think it

00:22:03.940 kind of gets sidelined or like brushed under the rug a lot especially in the environmental movement

00:22:08.940 of course you know I think we hear a lot more about indigenous rights to land which we should

00:22:15.100 of course that is so important and true that this was the first peoples of this continent it was

00:22:22.880 their land, but for other groups, other people of color, the inequality of land ownership is just

00:22:32.140 something that's been on my mind a lot lately. If there's anybody else that's coming to mind,

00:22:37.480 any other groups, initiatives that are seeking to resolve unequal access to land and land

00:22:43.540 ownership, I'd love to also hear more about those people, those groups, those initiatives, so

00:22:49.000 people in the audience might be able to support and get involved yeah thank you that's a great

00:22:56.300 question um yeah i mean there's just so many everything from groups like uh shelter force

00:23:03.800 i don't know if you're familiar that really curates a lot of the work that happens around

00:23:08.960 housing displacement um some of the techniques that people have around using ordinances and

00:23:15.480 other local policy. So it's kind of a national organizing group. And then there's individual

00:23:23.320 frontline groups, everyone from Uprose in Brooklyn to Got Green in Seattle to, I mean,

00:23:31.360 there's so many. The Climate Justice Alliance has a number of members that are working on

00:23:36.300 these issues, land and displacement and so forth. Actually, also Movement Generation

00:23:42.500 facilitated recently a black land liberation convening and out of that came a network of

00:23:50.820 folks who are focused on on land housing and how to build power and ownership of land as well as

00:23:59.800 to resist the challenges around housing and have everyone having a right to a place called home

00:24:06.700 so those are just a few examples yes thank you for those and i'm sure uh if people want to start

00:24:16.580 uh diving into those groups that you've mentioned they'll probably

00:24:20.740 find more the more research one does so thank you for starting us off um so to transition to

00:24:30.080 another topic because there's so many things that i would love to cover with you um i know

00:24:36.600 that so much of your work lands within women's rights, racial justice, and HIV AIDS, particularly

00:24:42.020 with the Women of Color United, the organization that you co-founded. And I'm wondering if you

00:24:47.620 could tell us about what this work has shown you about how HIV AIDS intersects with climate change. 1.00

00:24:54.340 hmm yeah so on the on the challenging front are the ways that women are disproportionately

00:25:06.100 negatively impacted by climate change everything from the spike in gender-based violence in the

00:25:13.200 aftermath of disasters that's been that has been documented in disaster after disaster

00:25:19.180 whether it's the earthquake in Gujarat to Hurricane Katrina to the BP oil drilling disaster

00:25:26.100 is a well-known well-documented fact that women experience more sexual violence and the insecurity

00:25:33.560 of the aftermath of disasters during and after and that women experience more domestic violence

00:25:39.600 and the aftermath whether it's because of the stress or otherwise after disasters and so

00:25:45.800 this is a cautionary note as we begin to experience more in the way of the frequency

00:25:53.540 and severity of extreme weather events. Secondly, that women, both in the global south and the U.S.,

00:26:05.580 who are more likely to be food insecure, where we have these shifts in agricultural yields resulting

00:26:13.600 from climate change, we are seeing where there's a risk to women becoming even more

00:26:22.080 food insecure, particularly female-headed households. On the driver's side of climate 0.75

00:26:29.300 change, the fact that there are these toxic facilities that are spewing pollution,

00:26:37.760 that some of which includes endocrine disruptors, specifically, of course, interfering with

00:26:45.260 reproductive health of women. And one of the other toxins that comes out of these smoke stacks is

00:26:53.220 mercury, which is known to be tied to birth defects. So just multiple ways that the women 1.00

00:27:01.480 are impacted by those polluting facilities that are also emitting the greenhouse gas emissions 1.00

00:27:07.320 that drive climate change. And then also on the driver's side, some of the operations of oil and

00:27:17.500 gas industries, and particularly as we talk about indigenous women in the man camps, quote unquote,

00:27:24.160 in South Dakota, North Dakota, and elsewhere, there is again documented, known, they even did

00:27:31.120 big thing on CNN on the impacts of these man camps on women, where women, indigenous women

00:27:40.380 and others have disappeared or have suffered from high rates of sexual violence in the

00:27:47.020 context of these man camps where men are coming to work these oil operations.

00:27:51.640 They're away from their families for months on end, and it just literally develops into

00:27:56.620 these places where there's high levels of trafficking, high levels of sexual violence,

00:28:02.760 high levels of drug usage, opiates and opioids and heroin and so forth is proliferate in those

00:28:12.880 places. And it's women who are paying the highest cost. So there are so many ways that women are 1.00

00:28:19.500 disproportionately impacted. But at the end, at the same time, women are most able. And time and

00:28:29.280 time again, it has shown that women have a higher awareness of climate change, have a higher 0.99

00:28:36.080 likelihood of acting on climate change, that if women are controlling resources, they're more 0.99

00:28:43.480 likely to make choices that are more sustainable choices in terms of whether it's products or 0.99

00:28:54.400 practices and so forth. So women have more of a conservation edge and leadership around these 1.00

00:29:00.320 issues. Yet at the same time, women are underrepresented in the leadership and the 1.00

00:29:06.520 decision making that can stem the tide of climate change and address the impacts of climate change.

00:29:12.840 So whether it's the halls of Congress, the public service commissions and the public utilities commissions that govern energy practices, and we know energy practices are a major polluter and tying to those very challenges that I talked about with women, as well as a major driver of climate change.

00:29:31.060 And yet the people who are making decisions about our energy practices are the ones who are least affected by these by these things.

00:29:40.060 And so so you see that kind of pattern there of most impacted, most likely to make good decisions, less likely to be in a decision making position.

00:29:50.840 So I'll wrap up there.

00:30:01.060 The West is gonna perish

00:30:10.980 The West is gonna perish

00:30:12.820 No food, no work, no pay

00:30:15.440 The West is gonna perish

00:30:18.440 The West is gonna perish

00:30:20.300 No food, no work, no pay 1.00

00:30:23.100 Rastanadi was slavery 1.00

00:30:27.360 So we've got to migrate 1.00

00:30:30.320 No peace, no love, no deonia

00:30:34.540 Just war among the youths

00:30:38.200 We have got to leave this place

00:30:42.460 We have to repatriate 0.52

00:30:45.280 The West is gonna perish

00:30:47.960 The West is gonna perish

00:30:49.780 No food, no work, no pay

00:30:52.320 The West is gonna perish

00:30:55.280 The West is gonna perish

00:30:57.140 No food, no work, no pay 0.99

00:30:59.880 Strictly Zion, Ayyadi Fenn

00:31:04.460 Flowing with milk and honey

00:31:07.320 Being close to Jah Almighty, I

00:31:11.780 So we've got to migrate

00:31:14.460 We have got to leave this place

00:31:19.200 We have to repatriate 0.52

00:31:21.980 The West is gonna perish

00:31:24.720 The West is gonna perish

00:31:26.560 The food, no work, no faith

00:31:29.300 yeah i see that time and time again where the people that are most affected don't have a seat

00:31:37.340 at the table they don't have the opportunity to even be heard um let alone have any decision

00:31:45.420 making power and then if furthermore the mainstream media doesn't pick up the other narrative

00:31:52.980 so it's this complete silencing of the voices it's a silencing of power making decision making

00:32:02.880 i was able to speak with candy mossett from the indigenous environmental network

00:32:10.280 a few months ago and she spoke about the man camps in north dakota this is a topic that

00:32:18.960 does not get enough attention at all and then with these women who are experiencing such intense

00:32:26.760 suffering on top of their communities being destroyed on top of not having access or power

00:32:34.140 they they're many times not even heard and justice is not served especially for indigenous women in

00:32:40.360 those areas they couldn't even most of the time take these rapists to court there's no justice

00:32:47.020 so uh i just want to take a moment and um yeah the people that are most affected

00:32:57.980 are not the ones who have the decision-making power and i have a few statistics here um so

00:33:06.360 one of the statistics an african-american family making 50 to 60 000 per year is more likely to

00:33:12.280 live near or next to a toxic facility than a white american family making 10 to 15 000 per year

00:33:19.160 another one over 78 of african americans live within a 30 mile radius of coal-fired power

00:33:25.780 plants i just want to read that again over 78 of african americans live within a 30 mile radius

00:33:32.700 of coal-fired power plants which also emit sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxide mercury arsenic and lead

00:33:39.760 also another one 71 percent of african americans live in counties in violation of epa air quality

00:33:48.100 standards so communities of color to quote you from an article that i read are quote the global

00:33:55.700 south within the north and they are being sacrificed so the rest of the dominant culture 0.99

00:34:04.860 can keep polluting, keep consuming. 0.87

00:34:08.240 It's no coincidence that these sacrifice communities

00:34:11.140 are also the ones who are politically disenfranchised

00:34:15.000 with low property values, who are food insecure

00:34:17.700 and contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions.

00:34:22.180 You know, these are all things that you've touched on.

00:34:24.100 And so I guess I'm wondering,

00:34:27.300 what does a just transition mean for these communities

00:34:33.220 that are up against so much and that are just trying to deal with the toxicity and all the

00:34:41.660 things that we had mentioned before you know what does a dress transition look like and what are the

00:34:47.780 steps to getting there not and of course i know so many have already started like with with yourself

00:34:53.840 with the groups that you've mentioned before but i'd love to give the audience uh some visual aid

00:35:00.940 on what a just transition future, when it's really put into play, could look like?

00:35:08.940 Mm-hmm. That's a good question. So one kind of core principle and practice around a just

00:35:17.700 transition is that it needs to be led by those who are most impacted by where we are now in terms of

00:35:26.300 the very systemic oppression that we've talked about. Because, you know, there's this fallacy

00:35:31.760 of a rising tide lifting all boats. But unless there are people in those boats, I mean, there's

00:35:38.840 some people who aren't on the boats at all, whose birds are not seaworthy in any way. And so it

00:35:44.200 doesn't, you know, that analogy doesn't work for systems in real time. And so really having the

00:35:53.140 folks who are most impacted, defining what a just transition is for them, and then following that

00:35:59.400 vision in terms of implementation. And then, of course, the devil becomes in the detail. So as we

00:36:04.660 talk about a systemic transformation from a society that's built on principles and practices

00:36:12.420 where there are inherently winners and losers, where kind of capitalism means that, you know,

00:36:18.980 there's, there's capitalization, and then there are those who are capitalized upon. And it's

00:36:25.240 usually, you know, of course, through the reckless extraction and usage of natural resources. And

00:36:30.660 then usually, and then we then we've had this extraction of people, and then the, the use and

00:36:39.280 abuse of people through systemic oppression. And so how do we really affirm human rights and earth

00:36:48.040 rights as we move forward? And how do we affect a systemic transformation where the vision of

00:36:56.280 people most impacted will be things like everyone having access to clean air, clean water,

00:37:03.320 uncontaminated land, and the commons in terms of a place called home, access to energy, access to

00:37:10.580 clothing and you know shelter and food and all of those basics and and but if we have a system

00:37:18.500 that's fundamentally based on you know again the luxuries of the few um sacrificing just the very

00:37:25.700 basics for the many then that total systems transformation is such a a large and comprehensive

00:37:33.920 of vision, the question is how do we get there and how do we make sure that we have kind

00:37:40.960 of interim systems in that transition?

00:37:45.140 So a lot of times when we talk about just transition, we're a lot of times talking

00:37:49.260 about what's happening on the end point, which is the realization of that vision I

00:37:53.460 just described, but then the pathways to it, how do we kind of affect, like completely

00:38:01.680 turn over the system but while not having casualties in the process you know um so they

00:38:11.200 say to make an omelet you have to break some eggs and that's kind of the way that people

00:38:14.620 not necessarily dismiss those types of impacts but uh just kind of make them sound like accepted

00:38:20.980 inevitabilities but it is the people who are most marginalized and end up being those broken eggs

00:38:26.220 So we really have to think through, okay, if we're going to transform our energy system from one where we're joint burning energy through oil and gas production and coal-based production and nuclear energy as well, then as we transform to a system that the frontline communities talk about in terms of distributed generation and community ownership and control of resources,

00:38:52.060 what are the interim steps to get there and how do we make sure that people aren't harmed in the

00:39:00.460 meantime? One example of the same is that I am totally on the camp of being against

00:39:09.740 water privatization. But in Baltimore, for example, after they fought off water privatization,

00:39:17.020 right after that, there were 23,000 people on the rolls to get their water shut off.

00:39:21.080 So how do we make sure that we're being just as strong about what we're against and then really knowing what that alternative system looks like and making sure that as we move towards that alternative system that there aren't casualties along the way.

00:39:35.740 um so and we can really do that and talk about that system by system energy systems our water

00:39:41.940 system our our food systems each and every one of those systems needs to to undergo a change

00:39:48.540 because whether we have food where like it's not even based on agriculture or actual original food

00:39:54.380 it's put together in some kind of test tube and it's not only not good for you but it's actively

00:39:59.660 bad for you um in terms of some of the foods that we have access to and particularly that can be as

00:40:05.680 low-income communities have access to. So how do we transform that entire food system? And what

00:40:10.920 are the steps that get us there without having casualties along the way? So literally for each

00:40:15.640 and every system where this total transformation is needed, we have to have, you know, the hearts

00:40:21.020 and minds together to figure out what the process is to move towards that transformation. I know

00:40:26.820 that was kind of long and repetitious, but hopefully that makes some level of sense.

00:40:33.200 No, it totally does. And I think back to a conversation I had with Sharif Waitland, who works down in Louisiana. And we were discussing just transition. And it was really fascinating to understand it from her point of view, which I really agree with.

00:40:53.900 Which is, we have one version of renewable transition that we're sold, which is mostly white-dominated, mostly male-dominated solar and wind, and really the ownership and the investment stays within the small, already elite group.

00:41:15.500 And none of the financial gains or the positive impacts are really shared with other communities. 0.53

00:41:26.580 And so how she was explaining it, the working class people are really amazing with oil rigs.

00:41:34.480 And what's happening is as renewable comes along, those people who have the skills are not always given the jobs.

00:41:43.420 they don't have ownership in the companies so i don't know if i explained that well but

00:41:49.540 it was a really important view and understanding of the transition to renewable and why we talk

00:41:58.060 about a just transition it's not transition to renewable and leave the marginalized people

00:42:04.180 behind as in the same type of system it's how do we uplift communities specifically marginalized

00:42:12.580 communities and like you said um uh how the the very few have the luxury items while the majority

00:42:23.620 of people don't even have the basic needs and you know i have this quote from you and i'll just kind

00:42:29.280 of pull out a few things but you were saying that quote we only have 1.1 percent of the energy jobs

00:42:34.360 and we have less than 0.1 percent of the revenue from the energy sector so we're getting all the

00:42:39.500 negative impacts of the energy economy but none of the gains of the energy economy in terms of

00:42:43.660 economic well-being so again like that's just right there i mean those are the numbers the

00:42:49.540 impact the consequences and no benefits um and then there's you know in this quote on top of that

00:42:56.800 that 41 billion dollars being extracted from our communities it gets sent back in the communities

00:43:03.620 in pollution because of the burning of fossil fuels and at the same time it's also being used

00:43:07.560 when those companies use that money to pay to push back against clean air regulations when

00:43:13.880 they're paying lobbyists to do that and this is you know this quote really puts into perspective

00:43:18.880 how convoluted and complex the system is set up to keep people down and poisoned honestly so

00:43:28.420 yeah because the environmental movement has had this reputation or at least the the leaders have

00:43:38.780 been mostly white upper to middle class people who aren't being affected as much and all of these

00:43:46.600 stories that you've been telling that we've been talking about aren't in the forefront and then

00:43:52.900 we're not really thinking about the thorough solutions it's really detrimental to us it's

00:43:59.000 really detrimental to this movement to be having these partial narratives um yes so uh you know

00:44:08.000 it's just the truth is that segregation and colonization and slavery and all of these things

00:44:13.200 that we've been talking about are still really alive and well they're not put to rest and i think

00:44:19.880 the conditioned psychological barriers separate us even further on top of that and then the impacts

00:44:26.000 of climate change are vastly disproportionate and i think everyone is that at least is aware

00:44:32.560 is feeling this urgency and uh this this one intensive i was in uh this amazing woman this

00:44:43.000 woman of color stood up and said you know i am the polar bear on the ice and there also are

00:44:51.560 actual polar bears on the fading ice and um i'm trying to get to this question i'm trying to get

00:44:59.260 to a question but it's just um i guess maybe how do you see the dissolution of white supremacy

00:45:07.360 being influenced by rapid climate change?

00:45:15.900 Yeah.

00:45:18.540 I would say a couple of things with that.

00:45:23.000 Particularly for better or worse,

00:45:24.980 with this current political context that we're in,

00:45:31.400 there's a growing understanding of the pervasiveness

00:45:34.980 of white supremacy in modern day society, like a recognition that, that we have not

00:45:43.220 overcome to the extent that many had allowed themselves to believe. So one thing is that I

00:45:51.940 am seeing a greater level of, of acknowledgement and of organizing around white supremacy with that,

00:46:02.460 with that deeper understanding so there's that on the promising side uh the challenge is

00:46:12.760 that it is so pervasive and systemic and written into in some in invisible ink but no less

00:46:24.300 influential into each and every one of our systems and so many of our policies and so forth

00:46:31.080 it's just so insidious and pervasive that that it's going to take so much more than people just

00:46:39.080 kind of waking up to the fact that racism still exists so um and i don't think that enough people

00:46:46.760 are there in terms of recognizing the need for a total systems transformation because our

00:46:54.040 our systems are rooted in white supremacy, you know, that it's going to be a pretty

00:47:01.360 heavy lift, just to say it mildly, to get there. So I guess that's all to say that

00:47:09.360 that I think that there's a dawning recognition and a dawning sense of cohesiveness,

00:47:15.720 even amongst the different nodes of social justice organizing, where we've had some silos

00:47:22.480 or a lot of silos around, you know, whether I'm organizing around health or gender justice or

00:47:29.620 climate change or racial justice, recognizing that the white supremacy is a common enemy for

00:47:36.660 us all and it affects each and every one of our silos, so to speak. And so you see like more of a

00:47:45.160 collective organizing around what that means with regard to intersectionality being rooted in how

00:47:53.200 we organize. But folks are still learning that. And there's still a lot of fault lines in getting

00:48:01.660 to what that means in terms of working together and working across the differences in a way that

00:48:08.320 builds power. Yeah. So hopefully that makes sense. That's all to say in sum that we see more people

00:48:16.780 kind of waking up and recognizing that racism still exists and beginning to see the pervasiveness

00:48:23.720 of white supremacy, just regular folks. We see people who are in the organizing, in the social

00:48:29.580 justice organizing who are recognizing that we're not going to get too far unless we work on white

00:48:38.580 supremacy and that there is a need for intersectional approaches. And it's going to

00:48:45.500 take a bit for us to get there in terms of going beyond the recognition to actually

00:48:50.980 making the changes that we need to make. But again, there are some bright lights that you're

00:48:58.580 seeing in there, everything from, you know, watching Dr. Phil and seeing a white nationalist

00:49:05.240 coming together with a Black Lives Matter person and a white nationalist recognizing the error of

00:49:11.920 his way to seeing, you know, just seeing people who are making connections across differences

00:49:18.200 and people who are experiencing major self-transformation in the process. So that

00:49:26.000 always gives hope we just need to have that happen at scale and we need to figure out how to make

00:49:33.220 that happen at scale so yeah oh my gosh i'm gonna have to youtube that dr phil episode

00:49:40.620 yeah i hope it was dr phil it was one of those shows you know

00:49:56.000 Thank you.

00:50:26.000 You know, like we've been discussing, we can't just capture carbon out of the atmosphere

00:50:32.960 and keep going in the way we're going and think that that's the solution or sign the

00:50:38.120 Paris Accord or put on some solar panels and think we've done it.

00:50:43.800 When you were talking about all the siloed groups, them coming together with commonalities 0.88

00:50:52.640 is so important and how that is absolutely challenging especially when resources you know

00:51:02.060 financial resources are are tight because things that are actually beneficial for earth and people

00:51:08.400 aren't funded well and then um and then of course there's so much wounding and horizontal hostility

00:51:18.320 that comes up and I've been thinking about this a lot with the groups that are in this movement

00:51:23.560 towards a regenerative culture how in a way sometimes they're even pitted against each other

00:51:29.280 while the other side let's say like the capitalist extractive industry side seems to be so organized

00:51:40.020 and so on top of how to keep their machine running i am always thinking about how to

00:51:51.420 learn from their organizational prowess everybody in this regenerative movement can support each

00:51:59.640 other more teach each other i really feel like this is this moment where we can just be real

00:52:06.700 and honest, but ultimately love one another because we need everyone. We need each other

00:52:12.460 right now to dismantle and rebuild. And like I said, I have so many questions and thoughts for

00:52:21.340 you. I know we're coming to the end of our talk and I definitely wanted to ask you about mass

00:52:29.000 incarceration and climate justice and a number of other things. But perhaps I could just open up

00:52:38.400 the floor. Any other topics that you feel you want to mention or, you know, whatever topic is

00:52:43.420 most pertinent and passionate for you right now, I'd really love to hear about as our

00:52:47.540 time is coming to an end. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so this whole matter of mass incarceration

00:52:56.500 has so many intersections with climate change both on the problem side and on the solution side

00:53:05.180 and on the problem side we have the challenge of the tie between what's coming out of these

00:53:13.840 smokestacks and some of the challenges faced by children whether it's kids who are having a hard

00:53:21.260 time going to school, having a hard time paying attention in school because, you know, when you

00:53:27.300 know lead and manganese and other cognitive functioning disruptors are part of what comes

00:53:35.780 out of those smokestacks. We know the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide come out of those

00:53:40.580 smokestacks on mass and that kids who have asthma are more likely to have asthma attacks when they're

00:53:48.360 exposed to those particular toxins and we also know that if you're living next to a toxic facility 0.67

00:53:54.300 which as we said at least 78 percent of african americans are their property values on on average

00:54:01.000 are 15 percent lower so and therefore our schools are under financed because property values are

00:54:08.000 what finances our school so you have kids having a hard time paying attention in school having a

00:54:13.420 hard time going to school on poor air quality days or just because they're not feeling well

00:54:18.140 with asthma, and then you have under-resourced schools, then we know the studies show that if

00:54:24.160 you're not on grade level by the third grade, you're more likely to enter into the school-to-prison

00:54:28.520 pipeline. So right away, we see these connections. We also see that some of these toxins are actually

00:54:36.220 tied to violent behavior and behavioral issues, where we saw the spike in the exposure to lead

00:54:45.580 in communities like Flint actually came at the same time as a spike in murder rates in places

00:54:53.180 like Flint. And so in countries in Europe in particular, they've found with studies a direct

00:55:01.100 correlation between exposure to a number of these kind of metals in our air from lead to manganese

00:55:07.880 to others and violent behavior in communities. So we see all of that linked together.

00:55:14.120 Then on the other side, in terms of climate change impacts, we saw that after Hurricane Katrina, that the deputies literally abandoned prisoners in their prison cells and left, just evacuated and left people locked up.

00:55:32.180 And so sewage-tainted waters were rising and getting into these cells.

00:55:36.480 People didn't have food to drink, food to eat or water to drink.

00:55:40.860 They had to dig through the walls for ventilation and literally just treated as if they weren't human and weren't worthy of rescue and weren't worthy of safety and of food and water and that they were just, you know, expendable.

00:55:55.280 And so that lack of humanity of people who are in prison, whether they were guilty of what they were charged for or whether they were a victim and or a survivor of their environment that led to certain behaviors or whether they didn't commit any crimes at all because we know that racial profiling has led to incarceration of folks who didn't necessarily even do the crimes that they're being accused of.

00:56:22.420 whatever category people fall into, no one deserves to be disregarded as if they aren't

00:56:28.960 even human and unworthy of concern. And then at the same time, we see where prison labor

00:56:36.640 is actually used in the cleanup and the aftermath of disasters. And so we've seen that the BP oil

00:56:43.640 drilling disaster and other disasters. And we've seen that we saw that even in fighting the

00:56:49.340 wildfires out in california and so people are are engaged in these hazardous activities being

00:56:56.340 exposed to toxins or exposed to to things as dangerous as fire and um and all of these

00:57:03.320 circumstances are are on the increase with the increase in the severity of extreme weather events

00:57:09.100 so there are so many um linkages with our prison industrial complex and the climate change

00:57:18.200 circumstance, not to mention the privatization of prisons, just like the privatization of water,

00:57:24.400 the privatization of schools, all in similar categories of privatization of whether it's

00:57:30.200 using water as a basic resource to gain wealth for others while other people are having their

00:57:35.920 water shut off, privatizing schools as opposed to investing in public schools, where again,

00:57:42.080 people are having uneven school experiences, which again, as I said before, is tied to the

00:57:47.680 prison industrial complex itself. And then when we have privatization of prisons in that same

00:57:54.980 pattern where people who, as they're building wealth, are advantaged by having as many people

00:58:02.160 imprisoned as possible, which only exacerbates an existing system that over-incarcerates

00:58:09.200 generally and particularly people of color so so much there but yeah I could really go on

00:58:18.420 oh my goodness thank you Jackie for going where you did go there's you know you had kind of

00:58:30.860 mentioned not in these words but we can analyze and think and feel and talk about these

00:58:38.140 issues but we have to do things all of us actually step up and take action and there's so many ways

00:58:47.300 to do that in all of our communities all over the world and i think that in this country

00:58:53.680 we still have certain rights to stand up uh although that can be argued um but yeah it's

00:59:04.720 it's I think imperative that we all hold our line of integrity and our beliefs of what we know is

00:59:14.400 right and support each other through this and I am so appreciative of you and your work and

00:59:22.980 how thoroughly you have being able to share about that complexity to people like me and the people

00:59:30.700 who are listening if we're activists if we're conscious people uh really understanding the

00:59:36.820 fullness of the story and feeling it acknowledging it and then doing something about it from that

00:59:42.600 place um yeah so thank you so much for your time i know you are a really busy person with so many

00:59:51.180 important things to do so i appreciate all the time you spent with us today absolutely

00:59:56.340 yeah and thank you for helping to build a movement

00:59:59.720 and getting the word out there

01:00:01.240 and stoking these conversations

01:00:03.900 I think we appreciate it

01:00:22.220 thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast

01:00:25.220 I'm Ayanna Young

01:00:26.740 I want to thank our producers

01:00:29.420 March Young and Reach Out

01:00:31.620 our research director

01:00:33.440 Madison Magulski

01:00:34.660 and media director Molly Lebo

For The Wild - April 24, 2020

Homebound： Eco-Justice in the Age of Disasters with JACQUI PATTERSON ⧸175

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