Broadening the Environmentalist Coalition

In Grist magazine is a discussion of the problems environmentalism has in winning allies and battles. ("Don't Fear the Reapers")

Adrienne Maree Brown has an essay on getting urban African Americans involved in environmentalism. Here's an excerpt

...The people you aren't reaching are not blind, we aren't unmoved. More and more young people are realizing every day that the whole world is paying the price for the way we live, and we are waking up to that reality with shame and with a desire to change it. But we often don't connect that desire, or the work we do in our own lives, with the environmental movement...

Overall, too many young people see the struggles of humans as separate from the struggles for a healthy environment. It isn't because we have bad intentions -- it's because a generation that does not care about the impact of its lifestyle on the environment can be easily manipulated for corporate greed. We are getting played out. And unfortunately, the environmental movement has actually helped enforce that disconnect by seeming to draw divisions between the natural world and its human inhabitants -- and by seeming to worry more about the former than the latter.

That is the context for the next stage of environmentalism. You have an oppressed, depressed, furious mass waiting to be mobilized. And sure, some of us eat at McDonald's and wear leather shoes -- but we feel it is possible to demand better from our government and from ourselves for our environment. We feel it is imperative to connect the different survival struggles we are engaged in if we truly hope to sustain a viable movement for change. You will not die if you try to link hands with us in this struggle, if you try to meet us halfway.

Adrienne Maree Brown

Photo: Sophia Wallace