Re: [Midwest Kat-Cop] Women of Color: Send Your Climate Justice Story to Copenhagen! (Grace Lee Boggs Article)
richard feldman
LIVING FOR CHANGE
Climate-Change Movement builds at Copenhagen
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen. Dec.6-12, 2009
"Climate-change activists at Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents the unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colossal proportions. Not only will these 'market-based solutions' fail to solve the climate crisis, but the failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change - as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.
"But activists at Copenhagen won't simply say no to all this. They will aggressively advance solutions that simultaneously reduce emissions and narrow inequality. Unlike at previous summits, where alternatives seemed like an afterthought, in Copenhagen, the alternatives will take center stage." (Naomi Klein. " Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up," The Nation, Nov. 30, 2009),
Ten years ago the movement against corporate globalization and market-based economics took off when 50.000 Americans, including steelworkers, women, people of color, environmentalists and just plain citizens, closed down the WTO at the "Battle of Seattle"
Since 1999 this movement has been gaining depth and breadth in response to skyrocketing economic inequality, the catastrophic breakdown/meltdown of the world and American economy, and greenhouse emissions on a scale that threatens to extinguish all life on Earth.
Yet the U. S. Congress and President Obama, always more accommodating to right-wing than liberal and left forces, continue to offer market-based solutions like carbon-trading. while the only other alternative seems to be more government regulation.
Meanwhile, however, at the grassroots more democratic and participatory alternatives are being created or explored.
Naomi Klein cites some of these in her Nation article. They include local sustainable agriculture, which is bursting out all over; smaller, decentralized projects like those in Detroit, Milwaukee. Cleveland and many other cities; leaving fossil fuels in the ground as Peruvian peasant communities are doing; "climate-debt reparations" by rich countries to poor ones.
For example the city-state of Bremen, Germany is spending about $1 million a year to help its partners in Pune, India, become more energy efficient by giving them digesters that convert local waste products and plant matter into burnable biogas. This is the form that "Solidarity" is taking in the 21st century, as contrasted with Marx's 19th century "Workers of the World Unite."
At Copenhagen some activists will also engage in non-violent civil disobedience.
The main aim of non-violent civil disobedience is not to influence those in power. It is to arouse the conscience of the people, especially of the American people who have been and still are mainly responsible for the greenhouse gases which are threatening all life on earth, just as they have been responsible for racism since our founding.
The struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is not only a struggle against corporate polluters. It is a struggle for the hearts and minds of the American people who are constantly being distracted from the life and death questions of war and global warming by "reality"shows, football, and the search for bargains. It is a struggle to help the American people recognize that in living more simply so that others can simply live, we can grow our souls instead of a polluting, life threatening economy.
Movement building in this period requires actions that can bring about this kind of radical value shift or transformation.
Fifty years ago a relatively few activists practicing non-violent civil disobedience in the struggle against racism gave birth to the civil rights movement, which in turn inspired all the great humanizing movements of the 1960s.
Last March, writers and activists Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry organized a mass act of civil disobedience against a coal-fired power plant in Washington, D.C. near the White House. 2500 demonstrators joined them from around the country. To preempt the action, a promise was made to convert the plant from coal to natural gas.
But there remain more than 600 coal-burning plants that need to be closed down by acts of civil disobedience, just as 50 years ago there were thousands of segregated lunch counters, swimming pools, libraries and other public places.
Please Distribute Widely
Send your Story to Copenhagen Climate Summit & Beyond
Women of Color for Climate Justice Road Tour
Women of Color United (WOCU) is taking its 15+ state journey—the Women of Color for Climate Justice Road Tour—to the Climate Summit in Copenhagen and we want your voices added to the discussion!
Climate change disproportionately impacts women, particularly women of color, in the global north and women in the global south. It’s imperative that climate policies and planning include the needs of women of color and their communities at this critical time in history. Our Road Tour intends to lift up, as well as mobilize, women of color voices and influence policy makers to push for just climate policy.
“Women make up approximately 70% of those living in poverty, and low-income women, women of color, and immigrants will be most impacted by the severe weather events, heat waves, and increase in disease rates that will characterize Earth’s changing climate” (Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, 2009). Research shows that when disasters happen, there is usually a spike in violence against women; women’s frequent role as caretakers inhibits their ability to relocate quickly to avoid disasters; and socio-economic and political practices often push low-income women, women color and immigrants into toxic communities and/or workplaces.
Would you be willing and able to create a short video about climate change and justice issues and how it’s impacting your life? The video would be posted on the From Katrina to Copenhagen site on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/Katrina2Copenhagen) and would also be shown at multiple events in Copenhagen. The video can be any length (if more than 10 minutes, it will need to be divided into 10 min. increments for YouTube). There will also be a blog entry about the video posted on Women of Color United's website (www.womenofcolorunited.org/wocu-blog ) as well as the NAACP's Climate Justice Initiative Copenhagen Blogspot (https://climatejusticeinitiative.wordpress.com/)
We will put the videos online daily during the Copenhagen Climate Summit from Dec. 7th-18th. With those dates looming, we obviously need your submissions as soon as possible. We know this is ambitious, but we hope you will help get WOC voices heard around the globe!
During your online profile we ask that you speak from the "I"--your experiences your observations and the "we"--the issues and needs of your community. These online profiles are intended to lift up the voices of women of color, who are too often disregarded in policy-making and planning. Please note that there is potential that the press will contact you once the online profiles are made public. A priority for this initiative is to establish mechanisms for women of color in the US to link with women in the global south to find common ground for solidarity and joint activism. We would like to add your voices to this effort!
Please contact Deborah McKinney, dbmck...@gmail.com or 202-487-3953 immediately if you are willing to participate and able to create a short video.
We would love to speak with you if you are already involved in climate/environmental justice work, women’s rights, social justice and are willing to share your unique perspectives on how climate change/global-warming affect issues your neighborhoods and what you are doing about it. Please join us in building awareness around these issues and hopefully…a movement of women of color to assert our right to environment justice!
Women of Color United (http://www.womenofcolorunited.org) is a nationwide coalition of women spanning racial, ethnic, and indigenous groups focused on building the capacity of groups to advocate around the intersection of Violence Against Women and HIV&AIDS globally. WOCU advances policies, systems, and practices, which address the co-factors, drivers, and contexts that result in Violence Against Women, and HIV&AIDS in women of color globally. The Women of Color for Climate Justice Road Tour is being conducted in partnership with the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (www.ejcc.org) the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (www.wedo.org), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (www.naacp.org).
In Sisterhood,
Deborah McKinney
Women of Color United, Co-Founder and Member
Jacqui Patterson
Women of Color United, Co-Founder and Coordinator
NAACP, Climate Justice Initiative Director
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Rich Feldman
www.boggscenter.org
James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership
www.dcoh.org
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Elisa Young
I'm not a woman of color - I'm white, 7th generation Appalachian fighting coal, but we are very much an EJ community in every other since. If our stories could be submitted, I'd be glad to. We are actually working on a video now. Here's one someone did from outside the community last summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhWTMUlbAnw