Demilitarize local law enforcement.

If you’ve participated or watched protests unfold in cities across the country this past year, you may have noticed that law enforcement looked more like members of our military than neighborhood police. And that’s intentional, as, over the past decades, the U.S. has made it easier for law enforcement to access surplus military equipment for everyday use.

Happy Friday, and welcome back! Last week, Andrew's article on the role that militarism plays to reinforce racism and oppression seemed to resonate with readers. Today looks like one of the many ways our military directly influences our local law enforcement.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Send a tweet to President Biden and White House Officials encouraging the end of the 1033 Program.
Email your Congressperson to get the Breathe Act introduced in Congress, which, in part, calls for the end of the 1033 Program.
Check to see what your local agency received from the Department of Defense. Note: This data is from 2014, but I found it to be interesting nonetheless.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Law enforcement can gain access to military equipment in a few ways: they can buy it outright or apply for grants (The Marshall Project). But a more straightforward way is to request supplies directly from the military through a program called the 1033 Program. Through this, recipients can receive the equipment at no cost, minus the shipping/transportation fees, making it an easy way to snag high-budget items. Some of the qualifying equipment is harmless, like exercise equipment and musical instruments (The Marshall Project).

But it also includes high-grade weapons, machinery, and vehicles designed for combat, not community safety. Equipment has been granted to sheriffs, parks and recreation agencies, and even schools: as of 2014, at least 17 school districts have been given hundreds of weapons, including rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers (The Marshall Project). It’s also been distributed to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, subjecting the southern border and its community to unnecessary, excessive police militarization.

Since its start in the 90s, over $7.4 billion worth of property has been transferred through the 1033 Program (Visual Capitalist). And according to the Institute for Transparent Policing, one in three local law enforcement agencies currently have military gear through the 1033 Program, ranging from machine guns to armored vehicles to robots (ITP).

Law enforcement often uses this equipment against its civilians during protests and demonstrations. In 2015, the militarized response to the protests of the death of Michael Brown brought this to the forefront: protestors were attacked with sniper rifles, armored vehicles, and tear gas used by law enforcement (ACLU). In 2015, President Obama signed an executive order restricting the militarization of police. But this was rescinded by the Trump administration in 2017 (EJI). Former President Trump publicly approved the use of military-grade weapons by law enforcement, encouraging them “don’t be too nice” to “these thugs.” Since then, over half a billion dollars of surplus military equipment has been obtained by local law enforcement (USA Today).

The protests from last summer only underlined how fatal militarized responses can be for our community (Axios). And just this past month, military-grade equipment was present at protests around Minnesota, both due to the death of Daunte Wright and the close of the Derek Chauvin trial (Vice). All of this is separate from *actual* military presence in cities across the country. Interested in learning more? Listen to this NPR Fresh Air podcast episode with Radley Balko, author of Rise Of The Warrior Cop.

Studies prove that this excessive use of weaponry doesn’t keep cops safe, nor do they deter violence (Nature). In fact, it makes law enforcement more dangerous. Another study found that, when equipped with military equipment, law enforcement would adopt more militaristic habits, like “using military language, creating elite units like SWAT teams, and becoming more likely to jump into high-risk situations” (Washington Post). Civilians are most likely at risk: the increased militarization of a law enforcement agency directly correlates with more civilians killed each year by police. In addition, civilians are more likely to be harmed during situations where military-grade equipment is utilized (NBC News).

Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.

Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter in The Washington Post

Right now, the Black Lives Matter Global Network is calling for the Biden administration to end 1033 during its first 100 days in office (which ends today, April 30). But action needs to be taken, regardless of whether it’s today or tomorrow. The militarization of law enforcement and other state agencies only reinforces the military-industrial complex and makes policing more harmful to our communities.

Key Takeaways

Through the 1033 Program, law enforcement agencies can receive surplus military-grade equipment from the military for their everyday use
The 1033 Program has distributed $7.4 billion worth of military weapons to police forces around the country
Police militarization is proven to increase civilian fatalities and does not increase the effectiveness of law enforcement

11/2/2020 | Make an election safety plan.

7/26/2020 | Pay attention to the Portland protests.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21

Demand the repatriation of human remains.

Last week, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer outlining some disturbing news: Penn Museum and Princeton University has been holding the remains of two children killed in the MOVE bombing of 1985 hostage for 36 years – without the consent or consideration of their family.

Happy Thursday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today's story still haunts me since I first read it last week. But it's a dialogue we must continue to have – not just for the remains of our ancestors long gone, but establishing a precedent for the sanctity of our remains today and in the future. The desecration of our remains after death mirror the same violence we experience as marginalized communities in life.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Sign the petition to demand the immediate return of the remains of Delisha Africa and Tree Africa to The MOVE Family.
Watch the press conference, held by the family of the victims, hosted on April 26th.
Support the global movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist, and former Black Panther.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

The MOVE bombing occurred in 1985 when the Philadelphia Police Department bombed a residential home belonging to a member of MOVE, a Black radical group. The attack started with an armed standoff, where police officers spent over ten thousand rounds of ammunition. When the residents did not exit the home, police dropped a bomb on the premises. The resulting fire killed six MOVE members and five of their children and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood - fires that were left to spread intentionally by law enforcement (Blackpast).

The sheer lack of respect for the victims of this bombing was evident 36 years ago. Abdul-Aliy Muhammad notes that many of the bodies decomposed in a city morgue for six months after the incident, instead of being returned to family members. And Penn Museum and Princeton University are both guilty of the same carelessness and lack of accountability. The remains that passed between the two institutions are of Tree Africa and Delisha Africa, who were 14 and 13 years old, respectively, when they died. These remains were even featured in a Princeton University’s online course, where a professor can be seen handling and examining a badly burned femur and pelvic bone.

In a public press conference held by the victims’ families, the pain and heartbreak that they’ve experienced is visceral. They discuss not just the state-sanctioned violence they’ve experienced since the bombing in 1985, but the horror of learning about their remains.

“

Those remains are not my sister, Tree Tree. My sister Tree Tree was flesh and blood. I’ll never have her back...They can’t give me back my sisters, my brothers. They can’t repair what they have done. There are no demands that they can meet to rectify this situation. Nothing.

Janine Africa, at the MOVE Family Press Conference

This wasn’t even the first time that Penn has been careless with remains. In 2020, the museum announced that it would remove its Morton Cranial Collection from view (Penn Museum). The collection included hundreds of skulls, many proven to be from enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and Cubans (The Daily Pennsylvanian). The skulls were collected by Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century, University of Pennsylvania-educated man who believed in the pseudoscience of phrenology – that some races are inferior to others based on the size of their brains (Hyperallergic). Phrenology is not just scientifically inaccurate. It offered a “scientific” rationale for the systemic oppression of people from marginalized races and ethnicities (Vassar) and laid the foundation for 20th-century eugenics.

Advocates demand that Penn Museum begin the process of repatriation of all its contents. Although a committee has been created, these steps have yet to be taken as of April 2021 (Penn Museum). But when you read much of the press surrounding the latest allegations, many articles center their apology and intentions rather than the demands of the family harmed.

These issues aren’t unique to Penn, though. Museums worldwide hold human remains, including skulls, skeletons, bone fragments, and even preserved heads – both on display and in storage. The practice is rooted in colonization; throughout the 19th century, European settlers would “collect” body parts of non-European communities, either as keepsakes or for “scientific purposes,” akin to the phrenological purposes noted above. These remains were often taken forcefully, without consent, and disregarding the cultural and spiritual practices of honoring the remains of the dead. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa estimates that the preserved tattooed heads of at least 600 known Māori and Moriori ancestors are located in European museums. Over the past decade, they’ve been able to repatriate at least 500 other remains back – a time-intensive and costly process that the source communities are responsible for (Artnet).

Although museums in the U.S. have human remains of Indigenous communities from around the world, they hold far more remains of Indigenous communities who stewarded the lands now referred to as North America. They also host remains of enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, Harvard University announced that amidst its collection of 22,000 human remains, at least 15 were the remains of enslaved African people. They issued an apology and committed to creating a committee for properly addressing these remains (Harvard). The Smithsonian Institution houses the nation’s most extensive collection of human remains, many of which are located at the National Museum of Natural History. They, too, are expected to make a statement on their role of holding African American remains (NYTimes).

Although repatriation is a clear path to address these wrongdoings, it’s not straightforward for African American remains. Many remains were collected without information about where they came from and who those people were. In addition, it can be challenging to trace lineage to present-day descendants. Beyond that – where do the remains belong? Laid to rest here in the United States or sent back to their country of origin? And who has the power to make that decision if no descendants can be identified? But practices can follow the process of The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Enacted in 1990, the law requires institutions that receive federal funding to consult with the Indigenous communities where the remains are from to repatriate them publicly (NPS). No similar law exists for African American enslaved people – yet.

But there is a clear and direct way to address the harm inflicted on the Africa family. Today, take a moment to complete the action items above. And, more broadly, stay engaged in the unfolding conversations on remains housed in public institutions. Notice how artifacts were gathered and whether or not they’re displayed in partnership with the Indigenous communities they represent. And rally for the repatriation of those remains whenever called for by their families.

Key Takeaways

Penn Museum and Princeton University has been holding the remains of two children killed in the MOVE bombing of 1985 hostage for 36 years – without the consent or consideration of their family.
Across the world, museums hold the remains of marginalized communities, often without the consent or consideration of the communities they come from.
Public institutions deserve to be held responsible for the harm they inflict with storing and/or displaying the remains of people without consent.

9/4/2020 | Tell museums to replace stolen artifacts.

8/25/2020 | Rally against racism in America’s art museums.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21

Explore the origins of cuisine.

As the pandemic surges, diners and celebrities have drummed up support for BIPOC and immigrant restaurateurs. However, to revolutionize the industry we need more than one-off campaigns. Alongside policy to secure humane working conditions for workers, we need to reexamine our approach to “ethnic food”.

Happy Wednesday and welcome back! Sometimes, it's difficult to realize how much we've lost through colonialism until we recognize how much we've accepted as the "norm". I always stumble into that realization through food, which is why I'm grateful that Aarohi joins us today to share more about the history of Indian cuisine.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Currently, India is experiencing unprecedented levels of COVID-19. Here is a list of individuals and organizations that need support: bit.ly/MutualAidIndia
Reflect: What are your expectations regarding Indian food and Indian restaurants?
Support restaurants that challenge your perceptions of the limits of Indian cuisine.
Advocate for the people who labor to put food on your plate, including but not limited to farmers, service workers, and BIPOC and immigrant restaurateurs.

GET EDUCATED

By Aarohi Narain (she/her)

As we wrote in a previous newsletter, it’s crucial to ask: which restaurants do we deem worthy of our dollars and why? And since seeking “authenticity” often disadvantages restaurateurs from immigrant backgrounds, what’s at stake when we appreciate the complex journey of the food on our plate?

Arriving in the United States as a privileged international student, I realized that I carried my own warped ideas about “authenticity” in the context of Indian food. Naive and self-righteous, the fare I encountered at Midwestern Indian restaurants struck me as simulacra– diluted, distorted imitations that bore little resemblance to the flavors and textures of my upbringing in New Delhi. But in coming to this conclusion, I had ignored the larger legacies of which I am a part.

Through a combination of the historical forces of Partition and the contemporary pressures on many immigrants to assimilate, diverse South Asians created the food most diners readily associate with Indian cuisine.

As Krishnendu Ray, Professor of Food Studies, writes in The Ethnic Restaurateur, more than half of nominally Indian restaurants just in New York City are operated by people from Bangladesh. Similarly, it has been estimated that 85-90 percent of Indian restaurants in Britain are run by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and more (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies). Zooming in further, around 8 out of 10 curry house chefs in Britain hail specifically from the northeastern Bangladeshi region of Sylhet (The Guardian).

Sylhet is an unmatched, albeit underexplored, emblem of the Indian subcontinent’s violent and precarious intimacies. It’s also crucial to the story of how Indian food circulates.

A quick turn to history: in 1947 the Partition of India, the largest ever mass migration, ended almost two centuries of British rule. Britain not only extracted $45 trillion from India (Al Jazeera), but also knowingly fomented communal tensions through deploying the policy of divide and rule during its yoke. Eventually, the demand emerged for two separate nations to be carved out along religious lines: Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority secular India (Vox).

A British lawyer who had never been to India drew the new borders. Sylhet, a district that was Bengali-speaking and skewed Muslim in the otherwise Hindu-majority province of Assam, became the subject of a referendum (BBC). Residents opted to join East Pakistan (Scroll). Then following Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, Sylhet joined independent Bangladesh.

It was enterprising migrants primarily from Sylhet who disrupted the otherwise bland culinary order of Britain as its colonies collapsed. At curry houses, they invented the genre of nominally Indian cooking– spice-scaled post-pub curries to enliven the timid British palate– that continues to shape dominant perceptions of Indian food across the globe. Chicken tikka masala, the orange-hued poster child of Indian food once praised as a “true British national dish”, likely sprung from these kitchens (The Guardian).

Early waves of Indian restaurants in the United States espoused the curry house logic: menus typically featured the likes of chicken tikka masala and Anglicized stews, and later incorporated dishes drawn from Mughlai cooking like braises, kebabs, and grilled breads (The Juggernaut). This blended style became so central to the American awareness of Indian food that when many Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the 1970s, they opened nominally Indian restaurants to cater to consumer interest. Instead of presenting food that reflected their heritage, they served versions of Indian food they assumed were already familiar and more approachable to most diners (The New York Times).

It’s only in the past decade or so that a small crop of restaurants has begun resisting the generalizing label of “Indian”. And because within India culinary styles are as deeply regional as they are molded by caste and class, chefs in the diaspora are creating more regionally specific offerings– expansive buffets unfurling as gastronomic maps of an imagined South Asia are giving way to Gujarati home cooking, Bengali street food, and Malabari coastal cuisine alike (NBC).

Still, most mainstream restaurants stick to the old formula: about 90% of Indian restaurants in New York City alone have not meaningfully moved away from it (The Juggernaut). Even as the diasporas mature, the “authentic” that Yelp reviewers demand remains static. Meanwhile, the people behind the food– with their interconnected yet distinct identities– swing wildly between invisibility and hypervisibility, becoming targets of hate crimes and racialized surveillance.

Perhaps, fifty years from now, there will be a course correction for Anglicized and Americanized iterations of Indian food– as we are seeing now for American Chinese food– that will view the culinary improvisations of those early Indian restaurants with more empathy. Instead of relying on fragile nation-states as the units of our analysis, perhaps convergence will become the norm when it comes to understanding what shapes cuisine.

Imagine a cartography of karak chai, spread out across migrant communities in the Gulf. A ghost story centered on dhal puri– split pea flatbread with chutneys sold as street food in the Caribbean– a dish first created by Bhojpuri-speaking indentured laborers that have somehow vanished from where it arose. A tender map tracing the journey between what restaurateurs might choose to savor at home– in moments of celebration– and what they serve to survive.

In the meantime, quitting chicken tikka masala is not the solution. It’s seeing how, as bell hooks writes, “ethnicity” is treated as spice: seasoning that livens up the dull dish of mainstream white culture under capitalism. It’s supporting immigrant restaurateurs even when they present something unfamiliar or a particular food you cherish but prepared differently from what you’re used to. It’s appreciating the complex journeys– the history, politics, and personal investments– of what’s on your plate.

Key Takeaways

The food that many diners reflexively associate with Indian cuisine was actually created by diverse South Asians.
A vast number of Indian restaurants in the United States and beyond are run by migrants who trace their ancestry to Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and others.
Partition spurred the largest forced migration in human history– an estimated 20 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were displaced (UNHCR).

11/23/2020 | Fight food insecurity.

7/22/2020 | Don't Americanize other cultures.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/27/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/27/21

Quannah ChasingHorse on Generational Change

Welcome to Day Six of our Earth Week series!

I'm incredibly inspired by how Quannah leads. For today's conversation, we interviewed this 18-year-old land protector on how the climate crisis is impacting Alaska, particularly Indigenous communities protecting their lands.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to the Indigenous Environmental Network, an alliance of grassroots Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth.

In Conversation

What’s your earliest memory of getting involved in climate justice?

Well, I grew up out on the land: hunting, fishing, dog mushing, living my way of life. And I noticed little changes in the weather and environment. My mom would explain to me what was happening. I grew up in the movement; my mom and my aunties are all engaged in local organizations and steering committees.

Every time they would come over. I would always sit at the table and listen to them talk about whatever's going on, learning as I grew. They showed me their power through their advocacy work. Seeing that allowed me to become that as well.

The first action I took was when I was in seventh grade. In our school district here in Fairbanks, Alaska, they were having a public meeting to decide whether to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. I was the only person that showed up and advocated for it. An elder listening to it on the radio heard and came in halfway to back me up.

I was grateful for that. Being a little seventh grader sitting in front of all of these – to me at the time – big, important people were very intimidating. All of them were non-native, and I didn't think they would understand. I remember just walking in there and speaking from my heart. They ended up changing it. I was really proud because if I didn't show up that day, it would have never happened.

That's powerful. One of the things I wanted to ask you is specifically about your work in Alaska. What is the urgency of protecting your lands in Alaska?

Yeah. So I did a lot of work over the last two years with Trump in office, trying to drill in our sacred lands in the Arctic Refuge. I was rallying against that, and emphasizing how it significantly contributes to climate change here in Alaska.

The climate crisis is affecting Alaska at twice the rate of anywhere else. It's kind of crazy that not a lot of people know about that. It feels the focus is on other threats in the mainland U.S. But it’s the same, except worse, here in Alaska. We get fires every summer that burn down villages. Our fish tank almost got burned down this year.

Also, the ground is mostly permafrost, especially on the coast. Because of climate change, many of the villages and communities along the coast are collapsing into the ocean, and the water is rising, which is making these people who lived there for generations leave their ancestral homes. It’s dangerous.

Back when I was ten years old, we would get about 60 fish a day in our net or fish wheel. Now we only get, like, eight, and half of them aren't good to eat because of how toxic the waters have become due to the oil and gas development up North, and the mining. Both are centered in areas where our fish lay eggs. So a lot is happening here. And it's really frustrating because we get it just as bad if not worse, but nobody talks about it.

So that’s why I push for advocacy. I think sometimes I’m a rude awakening because not many people accept the fact that the climate crisis affects our way of life and our future generations. I’m afraid that our future generations won’t get the opportunity to learn hands-on, just from books and pictures. That’s what I fear.

Can you expand on that a little bit?

Yeah. My grandma tried her best to raise my mom and my uncle out on the land. My mom grew up on the trapline – dog mushing and hunting, fishing, living in relationship with the land. And my mom wanted that for us. She wanted us to learn and be exposed to that. So that’s all we know. When we came to the city, we hardly even knew what chips were. We felt so thankful for stuff. And it puts it in perspective for me because I think about what my ancestors went through – even two or three generations ago – and how much they endured. I’m so lucky to be here today.

In the future, I fear that we will still be here, but we won’t get to practice our ways of life if we keep continuing on this path, and the government doesn’t allow Indigenous people to protect our land as we have for millennia. 80% of the world's biodiversity is protected by Indigenous people from all over the world. We need society to recognize that and let Indigenous people be a part of these conversations and sit at the table that makes those decisions. That’s why everyone was so excited about Deb Haaland being appointed as secretary. I remember waking up and hearing that news and feeling so relieved and hopeful. It felt like I could relax a little bit more. We have someone on our side now.

When we talk about future generations, I always say that I want my kids and my grandchildren to be able to hunt and go out on the land and feel as connected and as delighted as I do when I go out on the land. It's a way of coping and healing for me. When you're out there, I realize and recognize that this is where my people are from. This is where we have been for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And we’re still here.

You mentioned the intersection of environmental racism or environmental justice and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic. Can you tell me more about that, and how it influences your work?

Yeah, environmental racism is definitely a big thing. Not a lot of people believe or understand it. But it really bugs me. My aunt was a victim of MMIW. She was killed out on the street. I can't imagine that being my daughter. It was already such a loss to me. That was my auntie, someone that I grew up with, someone that taught me how to bead. It’s sad that she became a victim of that.

But a lot of these camps that were built for building pipelines, or for the oil and gas industry, are located on our sacred lands. This is happening everywhere; the Dakotas, the Amazon, and here in Alaska. They always choose these areas because they don't want the people who profit from the extraction to suffer from its adverse effects. Indigenous people are the least to contribute to these things but feel the impact of it twice more than anyone else. We are the ones that are the frontline. These are our communities that they are in. This is the land that they're stealing. This is who they're stealing from.

This colonization allows for the mistreatment of the people here, too. And it breaks my heart because I'm afraid for my friends and their families. I feel like even in the cities, you can't go outside. I never go anywhere alone, ever.

Yeah. There's so much already being taken from the land, and then that added level of robbing people the right of feeling safe even to be outside. It’s awful. What have you learned most on your journey? Do you use the word activist for yourself?

I don’t *laughs*. Anyone can be an activist for anything, and I love it! Because if you're passionate about something, be an advocate for it, go for it. But for me, it's a little bit deeper. It's literally about my way of life, about my people,and about my future generations. This is who I am, in my identity as an Indigenous person, and how much we've already lost. That's why I say climate warrior, land protector, and storyteller.

I've learned a lot. Growing up, my mom always reminded me to “never forget who you are and where you come from,” and I stand by that. As I become part of this movement more and more, I realize how easy it is to get lost in it. It can be traumatizing because I’m constantly discussing how hurt people are because of this system. And people are often so unaware about the pain we’re experiencing, sometimes the pain they’re causing.

I grew up wanting to be a model, but I never saw an Indigenous model in a magazine or hardly in movies unless they were in a Western movie way back when. It felt bizarre because I saw everyone else except myself. That's when you start forgetting who you are. Society is changing to be more inclusive and diverse. We're starting to see more and more Indigenous people being uplifted. But it’s going to take time.

And through it, you have to be okay with yourself. I’ve learned that you can’t ignore how you’re feeling. I’m starting to open up more about my experience with mental health. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depressive disorder last year, but I've been struggling with it since elementary school and just never talked about it. I never felt like my feelings were valid. And so that's why I always constantly remind myself, “never forget who you are and where you come from,” because it reminds me how lucky I am even to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. What is bringing you joy right now?

I love hot Cheetos and pickles. I don't know. It's kind of a res girl thing.

Together, at the same time? I’ve never tried this!

Separate or together, either way. It's so good. I eat it all the time. It's probably not very healthy *laughs*. I’ve also been resting a lot more than usual, and I think it's because I was burning myself out for a little bit. I'm trying to get into a healthier schedule, so I don't overwork myself. I've been snowboarding, so that’s what’s been making me happy lately.

About Quannah

Quannah ChasingHorse, age 18, is from the Han Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota tribes and lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. She is an Indigenous land protector for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, protecting those sacred lands from oil development and fighting for climate justice. Quannah’s deep connection to the lands and her people’s way of life guides and informs everything she does and stands for. Quannah sits on the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) Climate Justice Task Force, which was created as a result of a climate emergency resolution she and her friends wrote and passed at the AFN Annual Conference in 2019. She is passionate about Indigenous rights, MMIWG, and representation. She is an avid snowboarder, guitar player, and is apprenticing as a traditional Indigenous tattoo artist. Quannah was honored to make the 2020 list of Teen Vogue’s “Top 21 under 21.” She is an IMG Fashion Model and Actress.

Reflection Questions

What do you hope your future generations can experience during their time on the planet?
What do you know about your ancestors, and their relationship to the land? How may their experiences differ from your relationship to the land today?

View all Interviews

4/26/2021 | Anya Dillard on Effective Organizing

4/25/2021 | Jana Jandal Alrifai on Intersectional Change

4/24/2021 | Alexis Saenz and Community Care

4/23/2021 | Daphne Frias and Disability Justice

4/22/2021 | Mohammad Ahmadi on Environmental Activism

Nicole Cardoza 4/27/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/27/21

Learn how film and television portray policing.

Law and Order. CSI. Hawaii-Five-Oh. American Sniper. TV shows and movies about law enforcement and the police permeate the screens of Americans across the country. Media portrayals about police officers, detectives, judges, crime fighters, and more firmly implemented into the cultural lexicon. Just because they are on TV does not mean that these shows exclusively exist for entertainment. Many shows actively depict criminal justice without showcasing the many ways it harms the lives of communities of color. These shows often work to bolster law enforcement in the eyes of white supremacy while simultaneously reducing compassion for the disproportionately Black victims of its system.

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Throughout the past few months, we've analyzed how TV and media influence our perception of current events. Today, Tiffany explores how stories of policing and criminal justice shape our thoughts on safety and crime.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," is almost over. Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Join or donate to Color of Change, a racial justice organization that piloted the landmark research study, Normalizing Injustice, which shows how crime TV shows distort the reality of police systems and race and police brutality.
Watch films such as Fruitvale Station (2013) that portray the realities of police brutality.
The next time you’re watching a show that involves law enforcement, consider: how does the narrative unfolding support or detract from abolition work? What is being reinforced through this narrative? What is being dismantled?

GET EDUCATED

By Tiffany Onyejiaka (she/her)

Hollywood often creates law enforcement and military programming with the direct help of these industries. During the beginning of modern cinema in the 1900s, movies often depicted cops as incompetent fools (Vox). This mirrored general American dissatisfaction with police officers in the early 20th century. Decades of police reform followed earlier policing scandals, and in their wake emerged shows such as 1951’s Dragnet that started the hero cop narrative in pop culture (Vox). A close relationship between the police industry, military industry, and Hollywood has survived long term. The United States Department of Defense has collaborated on Hollywood Military movies for over 100 years (US Dept. of Defense). Shows such as CBS’ Blue Bloods and Netflix’s Mindhunter hire police officers to consult the scripts for their shows (The Hollywood Reporter). These institutions play a direct role in crafting the image of these industrial complexes. This leaves little room for objective depictions of the reality of policing or the military, misrepresenting how police officers mistreat Black people or how the military affects people from the Middle East.

Law enforcement TV shows tend to dramatize the nature of crimes discussed on the shows, often centering on gruesome rape and murder crimes. This does not reflect the reality of crimes in the U.S. The majority of arrests in the U.S. occur for non-violent crimes. Violent crimes have rapidly decreased over the years. According to FBI-reported crime data, the violent crime rate dropped by 40% between 1993 and 2019 (Pew Research). Conversely, since 1993, the rate of American perceiving crime to increase has increased to 78% in 2019 (Pew Research). This perception helps drive Americans to ask for harsher and more stringent policing, even though crime has been steadily decreasing over the past few decades.

Criminal justice programming also depicts most criminals as violent criminals. This distorts the reality that many people are in prison for non-violent and petty crimes. In 2020, 1 in 5 individuals were incarcerated for a drug-related offense. That amounts to about 450,000 people in jail for non-violent drug offenses (Prison Policy Initiative). This could potentially lead to less support for dismantling policing policies and incarceration facilities. Suppose a person thinks every person is in jail because of a violent offense instead of incarcerated for things like smoking marijuana. In that case, they may have less sympathy for human rights violations. This helps obscure the reality that many people get treated brutally by police for minor consequences.

Another insidious aspect of policing shows involves the high representation of Black and Brown actors and actresses as criminals and law enforcement. Representation matters. People of color often tune into shows of people who look like us. Many Black characters on television are depicted as violent criminals. Shows like Orange is The New Black has astonishing diversity but are set in the confines of a jail setting.

When people watch negative portrayals of Black and Brown people in the context of police and military television, they could potentially internalize the racist messaging. A public health study by Rutgers School of Public Health found that negative media portrayals about the criminality of Black men are correlated with higher rates of policing and police brutality (The Philadelphia Tribune). The negative image of Black and Brown folks across TV screens in America can also affect the way Black and Brown viewers, particularly children, view themselves. Despite the diversity of criminals selected, the showrunners are not. Across crime series, 81% of showrunners are white men, 81% of writers are white, and 9% are Black (Color of Change).

We need to have honest conversations about how mainstream media acts as propaganda for policing and military institutions. We also need to promote media that show realistic and nuances presentations of police officers in the States. Cop shows such as Chicago P.D. recently aired episodes dealing with cops dealing with police reform efforts (The Wrap). Denzel Washington recently starred in The Little Things (2021), which offered a look at how police officers and detectives can make serious, sometimes life-threatening errors in the name of solving crime.

For abolition to occur, Americans need to have an honest, objective, and critical view of the state of American policing. If millions of Americans continuously tune into television shows that position cops as heroes who can do no wrong, then this can not happen. Fighting for a fairer justice system will require us to have a serious conversation about the messages from our favorite law enforcement shows.

Key Takeaways

Police institutions and military industries directly work with Hollywood to create TV and movies.
These shows create untrue narratives about the heroics and infallibility of police, which can, in turn, drive police brutality.
Looking critically at media depictions of the police and the media is critical to reform the police and military-industrial complex.

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Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21

Dismantle anti-fatness.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today we're diving into the history of anti-fatness and its role in state-sanctioned violence. Note that we use the terms "anti-fatness" and "anti-fat bias" rather than "fatphobia" throughout this piece, details here.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," is almost over. Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Follow the work of organizations like The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), which a non-profit, all volunteer, fat-rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people.
If you identify as fat, join Fat Rose, which organizes fat radicals to embed fat politics on the left, contributing to building an intersectional fat liberation movement.
Support the #NoBodyIsDisposable movement to resist the triage discrimination fat, and disabled people experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Last week, Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, was shot four times by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio (NYTimes). As we’ve written previously, adultification bias influences how young Black girls are seen as older and more threatening than they are. But it’s also important to understand how anti-fat bias magnifies violence against Black communities and that anti-fat sentiment is just as ingrained in Western culture as other forms of oppression.

Fatphobia is rooted in racism and white supremacy. As the transatlantic slave trade grew in the early 1800s, colonies were introduced to African people of all sizes and body types. Race scientists started to create false correlations between curvier body sizes of African people – particularly African women – and their characteristics, suggesting that they were promiscuous, greedy, and aggressive. These stereotypes placed people that demonstrated them at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and used them to justify the enslavement and discrimination against those villainized for it. These perceived behaviors were also discouraged in Protestantism, a form of Christianity popular during this time that celebrated moderation, not excessive consumption. So both religion and slavery greatly influenced the weaponization of fatness against Black people. Sabrina Strings’ book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, is a comprehensive resource on this issue. Her 12-minute interview with NPR offers a full overview. Anti-fatness in the slave trade institutionalized that oppression in the same way that it institutionalized racism, ableism, and colonialism.

“If you abolish anti-fatness today, and not anti-Blackness, you don't abolish anti-fatness. They exist, and they come online into a coherent ideology through the exact same mechanisms.”
Da’Shaun Harrison, in dialogue with Virgie Toval for Rebel Eaters Club Podcast

Our healthcare system has reinforced systemic anti-fat bias by discriminating against fat people in policy and practice. One way is through the use of the body mass index, or BMI. A mathematician designed the formula as a quick hack to determine the degree of obesity in teh general population, based on the body proportions of a white man. It doesn’t consider the wide genetic predispositions of different bodies, and it was explicitly not designed to gauge individual fatness. You can read a bunch of other reasons it doesn’t work in this NPR article.

Nevertheless, it’s been adopted as the standard metric of what a healthy body looks like (The Guardian), which harms everyone, particularly people of color. Studies show that the BMI overestimates health risks for Black people and underestimates health risks for Asian people. It also completely ignores the physical, sex-based differences of human bodies (Elemental).

And consequently, a war has been launched against the “obesity epidemic,” which equates fatness to disease, placing individual responsibility on the perceived adverse health effects of being fat that is often a result of a biased, oppressive system. This translates into interpersonal oppression that only exacerbates the harm of the whole. Many physicians will be quick to tell a fat person to “lose weight” instead of investigating the true cause of an ailment (illustrated by Jess Sims in her article for Well+Good). What’s worse: 24% of physicians admitted they were uncomfortable having friends in larger bodies, and 18% said they felt disgusted when treating a patient with a high BMI (Scientific American). This leaves many genuine medical concerns undiagnosed; in fact, fat people are 1.65x more likely to have significant undiagnosed medical conditions than the general population (APA). Consequently, fat people are more likely to avoid medical care when they believe they won’t be treated appropriately, which increases the likelihood that a health condition can go longer untreated.

Anti-fat bias also exacerbates the state-sanctioned violence that Black people experience. Police often try to justify violence against Black victims based on their size. The officer that killed Michael Brown in 2014 referred to him as a “demon” and said restraining him felt like “ a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan” (Slate). After Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by police officers in July 2014, the coroner referenced his weight as a contributing factor to his death. U.S. Congressman Peter King stated that a chokehold was necessary to restrain Garner because of his size, and if he didn’t have “asthma and a heart condition and was so obese,” he “almost definitely” would not have died from it (Huffington Post). Both insinuate that Eric Garner’s death because of his weight, shielding the system of police brutality from accountability. This sentiment certainly influenced the case; federal charges against the officer responsible were ultimately dropped (NYTimes).

“Officers unable to restrain an obese person without killing him are not fit to be serving in a country in which more than one-third of all adults are obese, particularly since these rates are going to be higher in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas that are disproportionately likely to attract police attention.”
Rebecca Kukla and Sarah S. Richardson, “Eric Garner and the Value of Black Obese Bodies” for Huffington Post

Through all this and more, anti-fatness shapes nearly every aspect of our society, including how clothing is sized (Vogue Business), public spaces are designed (Teen Vogue), and health insurance is designed (National Institute of Health). Fat people are discriminated against in the workplace, earning $1.25 less per hour than other employees, which can lead to a loss of $100,000 throughout a career (Yes! Magazine). Even movies and TV shows about fat people are more likely to cast a non-fat actor than a fat one (GEN). In late 2019, TikTok admitted to hiding content created by fat users and other marginalized communities to prevent cyberbullying – a shameful way for a social network to eschew responsibility for toxic behavior (Slate).

Addressing anti-fatness will take more than just changing individual behavior – but that’s a necessary first step. We must stay in inquiry about how we reinforce systemic narratives through body shaming and holding conversations about weight – with each other, but especially within ourselves. And as you continue along on your anti-racism journey, know that dismantling anti-fat bias is part of the work.

Key Takeaways

Anti-fatness outlines the systemic and interpersonal oppression that fat people experience
Anti-fatness has roots in slavery, and exacerbates racial violence
Fat people experience discrimination in the workplace, the healthcare system, the criminal justice system and other aspects of everyday life

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Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21

Anya Dillard on Effective Organizing

Welcome to Day Five of our Earth Week series!

Today we're featuring Sydney's interview with Anya Dillard, a 17-year-old activist, philanthropist, content creator, and the founder of The Next Gen Come Up. I loved reading the energy and passion in their conversation.

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Nicole

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Support Outdoor Afro, an organization that celebrates and inspires black connections and leadership in nature. Just last year, Outdoor Afro organized its first-ever Black expedition team and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Donate to WeGotNext, which amplifies individual stories of adventure and activism from communities that have been underrepresented in outdoor and environmental spaces.

In Conversation

What do you define as environmental justice and how did you get involved in the movement?

Before I became an activist, I was really into STEM and I was an animal nerd, so I grew up believing that I wanted to become a scientist, environmentalist, zoologist, or something of that nature. When I discovered that racism was such a huge issue in our country, I pivoted into humanities and journalism. The first protest I ever organized was the climate strike at my high school; I organized the walkout and it served as an easy bridge to environmental justice because I understood the whole mission behind the climate change awareness movement. At this same time, I was also dedicated to initializing my Black Lives Matter advocacy and still trying to get an understanding of who I was as a Black Lives Matter and women’s empowerment activist. That event had a lot to do with me just trying to find a middle ground. It was so early in my academic journey that I figured I can just jump in and offer my knowledge. With that being said, my STEM focus growing up helped me to understand the importance of climate change advocacy and that there are many racial and social factors that determine how people are affected by climate change.

You mentioned the climate strike that you organized through your school. Would you say that your education played a role in your environmental advocacy? I know that it isn’t very common for schools to talk about topics like environmental racism and environmental justice.

I didn't start learning about environmental sciences in the sense of race until this year. Before, we would just learn about pollution and whatever, but we never got into that social dynamic. That I saw through reading the newspaper every other day or watching television and being self-educated. When I organized the climate strike, it was very spur of the moment. It was the day of the national climate strike where a bunch of people at schools and universities were walking out of their classes, so I was like “oh, my town is really diverse and my high school doesn’t play about social stuff, so they must be doing something". I get to lunch and I’m like…what’s going on? Everyone was like “we’re not doing anything. There’s no walkout”, so I just walked out with a megaphone running around saying “we’re walking out for the climate strike”. I managed to get a couple hundred people to come out, but still… it boggles my mind that a school as politically and socially aware as mine wasn’t prioritizing climate change awareness. It was also crazy because I was the only main organizer that was a Black girl and I was also the only person who got detention for that protest. But, I just showed up and was like, I’ll take the detention and take one for the team.

When I was out there on the field giving a speech to the kids that were coming out, I said “two years ago, my freshman year, we had a massive March for Our Lives protest after the Parkland shooting and every single one of us came and sat on this field in the cold winter for it because we knew that it could directly affect us at any point in time.” With climate change, people have this idea where it’s like, “Oh, well we’re not seeing the immediate impact… We’re living in the suburbs, so it’s not like we have to deal with anything that’s directly a cause of climate change or pollution.” So they’re like, “Oh yeah it’s a problem, but … we’re good so we’re not going to immediately act on it”. This is the same thing with police brutality; a lot of the Black community can become victims of police brutality at any given time on any given day, but climate change does not pose an imminent threat to us in our mind because it’s like… “Ok, well evolution took a long time, erosion takes a long time, pollution and water contamination take a long time, so regardless of whether one of our family members just spontaneously ends up with cancer or we start wheezing one day and our doctor says “Oh yeah you have asthma”, we don’t even directly correlate that with the fact that we could be living in a polluted community. I definitely think that my education did not necessarily gear me toward environmental awareness, but it gave me a better idea of why there needs to be more attention drawn towards it.

So where do you think that education can start? In the classroom, do you believe that there should be courses on environmental issues, or do you think it’s just a matter of dedicating a month around Earth Day to special education about climate change? In other words, what do you see environmentalist education looking like?

There are so many things that I didn't learn in my freshman through junior year of high school that I learned in my senior year and I’m like, why aren’t these classes mandatory? Environmental science is something that I’m taking now. We just finished talking about urbanization and how certain communities of color are commonly built around contaminated waste sites. We also studied how some communities don’t trust the census. Because of that, the government doesn’t allocate enough resources to these communities I feel that education starts with mandating those kinds of discussion courses that rely on sharing information about how certain industries profit off of spilling waste into impoverished communities.

I definitely think there should be more classes that everyone is forced to take. They don’t have to be rigorous classes; they could just be discussion classes where you cover one topic a day but still make sure that young people are aware that these problems aren’t going away. If anything, these problems are worsening.

I like your emphasis on how important it is for the youth to get involved in environmental justice. What do you think would have been beneficial for older generations to do in terms of environmental justice? Do you think that we can make up for some of the mistakes they made, or do you think that some of the damage is irreversible?

I think that a huge part of making up for the mistakes that past generations made is understanding that there is a knowledge gap. That gap in knowledge is something that adults like to fight Gen-Zers on because they’re like “well, y’all are young and you don’t know anything about life, so how can you teach us anything?” That’s a dangerous, ignorant perspective to have, because if you can't learn something from another age group— especially when it comes to maintaining the health of our planet— then you’re not realizing that there are things that we noticed you didn't do that you didn't even notice you weren't doing to make change. There are things that go back ages… even the fact that race trumps class in the whole environmental scenario. You could be a middle-class Black person living in a good neighborhood making a substantial salary and you’re stillmore likely to be affected by a pollutant waste site than a white person who makes significantly less money than you. For us to be able to pick apart these problems and reconstruct solutions, we have to admit “Ok, we didn't do this, but how can we help y’all get it done or fix whatever happened because of the fact that we didn't get whatever done”.

So what do you think are some of the steps youth can take to get involved in environmental justice? What do you advise them to do in terms of education themselves and taking action?

There are so many great climate activists out there who are dedicated to going green or encouraging people to support causes like clean water and other great initiatives. There’s Little Miss Flint (Amariyanna Copeny), Ron Finley, and Leah Thomas; I personally follow them for knowledge and inspiration. I definitely think that young people should stay educated by following people like that, reading the news, and by googling “what’s happening to the environment? What can I do to donate? What causes are there? What initiatives can I start?” Even just making it a family tradition of planting a tree somewhere every year or encouraging your school to have a beautification day where you go out and raise a bunch of money to buy more flora for your campus are simple activities that can motivate you to be more aware of the environment and encourage other people to look at environmental justice and environmental racism as issues that need to be talked about today.

What was your earliest memory of environmental justice? It can either be something you did or something that someone else did that stood out to you.

My oldest memory is one time I went to New York with my dad when I was really little. He used to drive me up to see my grandma every weekend in Manhattan. We were driving and I remember seeing this factory with smoke coming out of big pillars. I said to him, “that looks nasty. It looks like really dirty air.” And he was like “yeah, dirt and soot get in the air after they manufacture certain things and a lot of that gets put back into the sky”. And I said to him, “well, we're going towards it… people live there and there are apartments there.” When I heard dirty air, I was thinking “then why is anyone surrounding this; that isn’t healthy”. He explained that a lot of the time— because of low-income housing costs and how the government chooses to allocate resources— a lot of low-income housing is built around these places that the government doesn’t want to get rid of. Because of that, a lot of people do get sick. I remember him explaining that to me, and I knew it didn't sound right. Obviously, as a child, you don’t understand the concept of racism and that some people just genuinely don't care about other groups of people’s wellbeing. In this day and age, we see that with not just air, but water pollution as well.

Flint, Michigan is a textbook example of environmental injustice and environmental racism. There were hundreds of thousands of people that were drinking lead-poisoned water just because the government wanted to save some money. That’s insane to me. Just like how riverside towns in Louisiana and Detroit are constantly being compromised by big oil companies dumping all this waste in rivers and stuff like that. We see it every day, yet people choose to ignore them because they predominantly affect communities of color. Because people of color don’t have as much political influence, it’s easy for regulators, politicians, and administrators in these towns to ignore how these issues are affecting us— especially when it’s saving money for whoever the beneficiaries are.

How has your idea of advocacy changed over time?

Before I knew what activism was, I thought that advocates were politicians, but I learned that those are two extremely different things. True advocates are people that don't care about semantics. They don't really care about perception or optics. All they care about is bringing people to the table to address whatever the issue at hand is. There's an art to being a politician. To be a politician in spirit is to be a campaign. You campaign and you say what you want people to receive in a positive light. Advocates who become politicians are the best politicians because being both of those things is what separates good leaders from power hungry people in the government. Learning that was one of the cornerstones of me understanding the differences between politics and advocacy and how they can both support one another.

What’s something you’ve learned on your environmental justice journey that you want readers to take away from this conversation?

I would say that racism and climate change have a lot in common. People love to debate both of their existences, people love to say how either does or doesn’t affect one group, when in reality it affects everyone in the long term. It’s interesting to think about it this way because when we think about racism, we think we’ll be good after we fix our law enforcement system and initiate a reparation system. But in reality, there are a lot of trickle-down effects of racism, and at least one of those falls under the umbrella of environmental change.

I encourage young people to always find these intersections between social issues. Because regardless of what social issue you're passionate about, there are about 10 other causes that are affected by it. Understanding what's really wrong in society has a lot to do with acknowledging that no issue or group of people is individual. We have to be diligent about how things that we disregard everyday are affecting people across the aisle, even when those people may not share our same experience.

What does the future of your environmental justice look like? What are your next steps of advocacy?

I really want to pursue the creative side of my talents and become an advocate to raise awareness for humanistic causes. The creative leg of my brain was founded on things like writing and film— especially when it comes to documentation. In the future, I want to produce documentaries that raise awareness about how anti-environmentalist industries affect indigenous communities and how certain things trickle down to Black communities. I especially want to explore how certain southern communities heavily saturated with Black and latino people have a lack of holistic health resources and how it heightens the level of health issues within our communities.

My mom has always said that I don’t have to completely abandon environmental science just because I want to be creative; there are a lot of things I can do to utilize my creativity to raise awareness about the issues I’m passionate about. I want to continue fundraising, having conversations like this with different media forms, and helping to spread knowledge surrounding environmental racism.

About Anya

Anya Dillard is a 17-year-old activist, philanthropist, content creator, and the founder of The Next Gen Come Up − an organization that encourages youth to pursue activism, explore community service, and raise awareness through creativity. Anya is best known for helping to organize the largest Black Lives Matter protest and the first-ever public Juneteenth celebration in her town's history, becoming the head of her schools first-ever all-female (all POC) student council cabinet, and for her features in The Washington Post, Elle, Seventeen, and Glamour for her extensive activism and philanthropist work. Anya has been a keynote speaker on forums hosted by Howard University, The Clinton Foundation, and the Conversationalist to name a few, and she has also served as a youth mentor for middle school and high school students in classrooms across the nation and in London.

Reflection Questions

What does the word "community" mean to you?
How has the fear of "doing the wrong thing" influenced how you support the social justice movements you care about? What may be a more helpful emotion to lead from?

View all Interviews

4/25/2021 | Jana Jandal Alrifai on Intersectional Change

4/24/2021 | Alexis Saenz and Community Care

4/23/2021 | Daphne Frias and Disability Justice

4/22/2021 | Mohammad Ahmadi on Environmental Activism

Nicole Cardoza 4/25/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/25/21

Jana Jandal Alrifai on Intersectional Change

Welcome to Day Four of our Earth Week series!

For today's analysis of environmental justice, I interviewed Jana Jandal Alrifai, an 18-year-old Arab-Canadian youth organizer with Climate Strike Canada and a co-founder of Fridays For Future Windsor-Essex. Her work inspired me for its clarity – that the only way we get through this is together.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Sign the petition advocating for No More Empty Summits, urging the Biden administration to take more action to address climate change. Learn more about the campaign here.

In Conversation

What’s the earliest memory that you have of getting into this work?

I started doing this work around March of last year. It would go to calls and whatnot before then, but I feel like I haven't accomplished anything until September this past year, which is when we hosted a teach-in about just recovery with Climate Strike Canada.

Tell me a little bit about putting that together. What was the process, and what were some of the biggest challenges that you experienced?

Oh, so many challenges. A big one is that we are all such busy people with such limited capacity. You have to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, but you also have other people taking care of themselves. Then, try to match the output that you said that you would give. When I started our local group, I had to be sure that it sustained itself, which meant I had to leave some responsibilities to other people. That’s kind of what makes a community a community, because you all learn to juggle the same things together. So capacity is a challenge, and making sure that we all have capacity, which doesn't often happen.

It doesn't often happen. I love that you say that because I think people tend to sacrifice their well-being for this work.

Yeah. Giving all of yourself actually isn't productive or impactful. In fact, they want you to not do good and not be caring of yourself. It’s an act of resistance to do so.

Absolutely. When I was preparing for this conversation, I came across an article where you talked about the relationship between sustainability and faith. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that.

To me, the idea of sustainability comes from taking care of something that will take care of you. I'm a Muslim, and I'm also Arab. We have this general understanding that things are finite. Life is finite. So you have to make sure that you use it well. Not just in terms of, like, “I'm going to use this one chair until I really can't.” It’s also “I'm going to take care of myself, and I'm going to use my finite time wisely”. That is both self-care and doing something worthwhile with your life. And that could look like anything: not just action, but anything that is worthwhile to you.

How has your idea of advocacy changed over time? How has your idea about showing up as a leader in the space evolved since you started last year?

For a very long time, I believed in being nice, diplomacy, and talking to people. But sometimes, talking just isn't going to cut it because it can go in one ear and right out the other. The belief that there’s a “middle ground” is not accurate and doesn’t accomplish anything. So I’ve moved away from that idea into more tangible actions with concrete demands that go with it.

Love it. What are your plans for Earth Day this year?

Well, my local group is planning a little action for our municipality. Generally, a lot of people associate Earth Day with just individual action like, “I am going to take a walk instead of getting in the car,” which shouldn’t be what we focus on. We should recognize that the Earth is beautiful and that we should keep it that way, but we also need to protect it.

Individual action over time will not solve the crisis in any way, shape, or form. So I want to push the idea that this Earth day, what you will be doing is demanding action from your representatives and lawmakers. Because at the end of the day, we shouldn't just celebrate. We should also fight.

Absolutely. What do you wish more people knew about the scope of the climate crisis?

Recovery and climate justice can’t just be practiced from a sustainability point of view, but by rebuilding the systems that have caused climate change to happen. We don't just need to reverse climate change and the climate crisis. We need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. We have to tackle environmental racism, that everyone is not equally impacted by climate change, and that BIPOC communities often have factories and machinery located in their neighborhoods, affecting their health. Their neighborhoods are more likely to flood. Economically, when things get more expensive, which they will because we are running out of the finite sources we’ve placed our economy upon, they will be the people most affected.

So climate justice is the most essential thing that we can do to help the climate and the climate crisis. This is not just an Earth issue. This is a systemic issue. This is an everything issue. In the global North, where I am located, we use a lot of carbon for our GDP, and we're not people who are affected by it. That’s the Global South. Here, we are pushing for a just transition and a just recovery, which is an idea that originally came from labor unions but has been adapted into a framework that we could use to fix the climate crisis.

And in a similar vein, what do you hope Earth Day looks like for the next generation, you know, for the next group of people that are – you're 18, right?

I am, yeah. *Laughs*.

So 18 years from now.

Well, let's see if that happens. Let's see if there are other 18-year-olds because by the rate things are going right now, I doubt that they will have an Earth – at least a beautiful one like we see today and that people before us have seen. I hope that whatever that day looks like, they’re talking about climate action but also realizing “look what we have saved.” I hope they have the chance to be more appreciative rather than feeling forced to go on the defense.

What advice do you have for people interested in getting involved in climate justice work?

I think there are two things that you need to think about. First: what you can do, what your talent is, what you have the ability to do. Are you an artist? Use your art! Are you a writer? Use your words. Are you a good speaker? Use that. Also, what organizations do you want to be involved in, and at what capacity? Because there are, you know, climate organizations that I wouldn't be a part of because our values don't match up. Not because their values are bad or my values are bad. They're just not the same. So think about how your values fit in with organizations you want to get involved in.

It's totally okay to show up to a strike instead of organizing the strike. It is okay to be a supporter rather than an organizer. But if you really want to get started, just do it. You can search for “climate justice” or “environmental justice” organizations in your city, like “climate justice Toronto”.

If there isn’t one nearby, message one group that you think is great and state that you want to help them. They’re all nice people and they’re willing to help you. I think it just takes the leap of faith. Trust that you have the ability to do what you want to do, and trust that there will be people that will help you.

I think a lot of people are afraid of doing the wrong thing, so they do nothing.

Yeah. To be fair, the world isn't black and white, it's, like, grey *laughs*. There are a lot of different spectrums, and you will never be a hundred percent, right. You will never do something a hundred percent wrong, either. There's always that spot in between. Just keep that constant desire to change and be better. None of us started with infinite knowledge, and none of us will ever die with infinite knowledge. We just have to continue pursuing it. You did something wrong. Great. Go make it better.

Hmm. I love that. Thank you. What have you learned most on this journey?

I really like this idea of community and what it means. For a very long time, I associated the word community with things I'm born into, like my Muslim community, my Arab community, and the people I live around, but community is much more than that. When you say community building and Grassroots community organizers, it means that we will all help each other out because we all have something to gain out of this.

I’ve learned tactical things, too, like how to talk to the media, how to make an image ID, schedule meetings, make agendas, things like that. But it’s brought me more affinity and passion with the human experience and fighting for it to continue to survive. That’s the community. We’re in this together in different ways, but, at the end of the day, we find a way to work together with each other as organizers and as people, you know?

What is bringing you joy right now?

The community and mobilization that I have seen in many areas that are demanding justice, especially climate justice, has been giving me a lot of joy and hope. Looking at how much we have been able to accomplish and the community and friendships we have built while doing so have given me a lot of joy. Resistance is joy and joy is resistance.

About Jana

Jana Jandal Alrifai is an 18-year-old Arab-Canadian youth organizer with Climate Strike Canada and a co-founder of Fridays For Future Windsor-Essex.

Reflection Questions

What does the word "community" mean to you?
How has the fear of "doing the wrong thing" influenced how you support the social justice movements you care about? What may be a more helpful emotion to lead from?

Nicole Cardoza 4/24/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/24/21

Alexis Saenz and Community Care

Welcome to Day Three of our Earth Week series!

It was such a gift to spend time with Alexis and learn more about her work. She reminded me how important it is to live this work – not just see it as a list of action items to check off of a list. She is intentional with how she nurtures the work of youth in her community, and how she centers her elders in everything she does.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Protect Puvungna, a sacred site of the Acjachemen and Tongva people where dirt and debris from a construction site was dumped carelessly.
Learn more about the International Indigenous Youth Council and research to see if there's a chapter near you.

In Conversation

My name is Alexis Saenz. I go by Lex, she/they pronouns. I'm originally from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute territory of Denver, Colorado, and now reside in Tongva territory of Los Angeles. I am a community organizer, activist, professional dancer, actress, artist, filmmaker. I'm also a dance teacher and a Pilates instructor. I'm 29 years old.

I’m really inspired by the work of IIYC in Los Angeles. Can you tell me a bit more about how it started and what you’re working on now?

I started organizing the International Indigenous Youth Council Los Angeles chapter back in 2017. IIYC began during the Standing Rock movement to protect the Cannonball and Missouri rivers in North Dakota. My sibling was one of the founding members and lived there for a few months. The first action for IIYC LA was a Round Dance, a traditional Native American dance for unity. We did that to raise awareness of DAPL. In 2019, for Native American Heritage Month, I did an event, and we ended up getting a lot of youth interested in being a part of the council, which was amazing.

Our mission is to protect land and water, and to help Indigenous youth become leaders of their communities. We are the International Indigenous Youth Council, which means we include Indigenous people from everywhere, from Mexico, from Panama, from Guatemala, all over. And the goal is to eventually have IIYC chapters across Unči Maka, Mother Earth. Initially, we were focused on frontline non-violent direct action. That's how we started at Standing Rock. Civic engagement is definitely a part of our roots.

In 2019, we got a lot of opportunities to speak and talk at marches and all this stuff, but it felt very tokenizing. We wanted to do something ourselves and demonstrate how important it is to include the first stewards of the land.

We started 2020 with a Four Directions Climate Strike with our Tongva relatives because this is their territory, and we are guests on their land. We also wanted to introduce ourselves to the four directions and let Unči Maka, Mother Earth know what we're doing here and how we want to help. We referenced which climate crisis is happening in each direction because it's different, depending on which area you’re in. If you're in West Los Angeles, you're close to the ocean. That’s very different from East Los Angeles, and South Central, and North Hollywood. We did a month of action and strikes every Friday. We presented demands that were specific to each direction. We also invited other BIPOC organizations to join us and speak from those areas.

For the 50th anniversary of Earth Week last year, we collaborated with a bunch of different organizations across Los Angeles to do an entire Earth Week led by Indigenous folks. Each day had some sort of ceremony tied to it. The entire event had to be moved online because of the pandemic. And then the racial reckoning started. We really wanted to be there for our community and our Black relatives, so we teamed up with Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard Los Angeles and Students Deserve, who have been doing amazing work around policies with schools and the police. We also did an artivism event, blending art and activism, creating a community gathering for people to create art and connect with each other. A few months later, we did it again with Black Unity, a 24-hour action camp in front of city hall that got raided. We raised funds for the encampment and the folks that got raided. We also did a few smaller actions, like standing in solidarity with Wetʼsuwetʼen, a tribe up in Canada, by hosting an action at the Canadian consulate here in Los Angeles.

This year we’re focused on our foundation and our programming. We want to do more things for the community because what we've realized from last year, and even what's still happening today, is that we need more spaces to come together as a community and heal. We've been doing traditional talking circles, which in Indigenous beliefs is a way to foster healthy ways of communication and healing together. We do those once a month for different groups. We do a femme circle, a masculine circle, and a two-spirit, non-binary circle. We’re hoping to do more in the future – maybe a mixed-race circle, because lots of us are mixed, including me.

We're supporting the LA community fridge group by doing drop-offs and deliveries to different community fridges for our houseless relatives. We also launched our California Native Plant Program with our Chumash relative Nicholas Hummingbird to help people reconnect to the earth. One of my favorite Indigenous wellness advocates, Thosh Collins, always says that “the health of the people reflects the health of the earth and vice versa.” So if we're not healthy ourselves, the earth isn't healthy. We have to cultivate that reciprocal relationship.

I feel like the youngest generations are carrying a lot of the stress and anxiety of today. How else do you see healing become a part of how you organize?

We really want youth to understand that rest is resistance and that taking care of ourselves is taking care of each other. Because we are all related, everything is a relationship. Our relationship with ourselves is reflected in everything else. We want to remind youth that it starts with ourselves, and hopefully, they can work on their individual healing, which in turn heals the planet.

You can't be a leader if you're not leading by example. That's what we really try to practice. We’re practicing transparency and honesty, and conflict resolution in our spaces so everyone feels safe and included. All that work starts with us, and we want to make sure our youth have that understanding. Some of them do because they grew up in this way, but some are now reconnecting to their roots. We also invite our Black relatives, other POC relatives, and our white allies, even if it's not their cultural way or practice, to join in, too.

How has your idea of advocacy or activism changed over time?

I don't look at myself as a leader, even though people look at me that way. I've been taught that you don't decide that you’re a leader. Your community decides you’re a leader. What I've come to realize is that there's always work to be done, and we’re going to mess up at some point on this journey. I used to be so hard on myself, like, “Oh my God, I can't believe I said this.” But the biggest thing that I've learned that I hope folks take away is to hold ourselves accountable and give ourselves grace. That way, we can move forward.

I have so many more things that I need to work on and things that I need to continue to unlearn and relearn. Even when I think I've unlearned it, there's something that comes up that I need to unlearn again. And that's okay. Having that mindset of knowing that there's always space and room to grow is key because everything is constantly evolving and changing. We have to have the flexibility to move and change with it.

The biggest thing that I've learned is intention versus impact. I remember a few years ago, I was like, “it's all about intention.” As things have evolved for me, I'm like, “Oh, no, it is all about impact – and how you hold yourself accountable and move forward.”

What do you hope to leave behind for future generations?

I hope to leave an Earth that is healthy and can help future generations in whatever they want to do. We need to go back to that healing, reciprocal relationship with ourselves, the Earth, and the people around us. Everything we need is provided by Mother Earth. We don’t need to create new things and look outside of her for resources.

What do you recommend to other people interested in approaching climate justice in their community?

Look into making connections with Indigenous folks in your territories. Those are the first caretakers of this land. They should be at the forefront of the climate justice movement. Permission should be asked for, and there are certain protocols for different tribes. Do your research and understand whose land you’re on, and build a relationship with those people. Show up for them, because a lot of times they are forgotten about.

There are so many horrible things happening throughout California and throughout the entire Turtle Island, the so-called United States. People don't even know that lands are being taken from Indigenous folks to this day, sacred sites being dug up, all kinds of things. Help protect and save these sacred sites because it's all that some of our Indigenous relatives have left. It’s really hard for those tribes to continue without these sacred places that they grew up in.

I think that an insidious form of white supremacy is disconnecting ourselves from our elders.

Yeah. That's been lost for sure. People will ask us to speak at actions, and I always ask whether they’ve even talked to an Indigenous elder to see if they could hold that action on their territory. A lot of people do these grand initiatives without even consulting them. We make sure to center elders and youth. It doesn’t mean anyone in between doesn’t have the right to speak their minds. But we believe in the seven generations behind us and the seven generations in front of us, and we move in that way. We were once youth, and one day we’ll be elders.

There are four phases of life: infant, youth, young adult, and then an elder. Respecting those phases and where you are within them is really important. Elders and youth are more connected to the Creator. The elders have lived a long life, and they're growing closer to the Creator. And the youth, they just came from the Creator. Somewhere along the way, we get a little bit lost. Looking at those two phases of our life is going to help us remember. Before we are born, we know who our Creator is, where we come from, who we are, and what our medicine is. Once we're born into this life, we forget all of that. Our entire process of life is remembering what we’ve forgotten. That’s why it’s so critical to work with youth and the elders to guide us as we’re remembering.

That's powerful. Last question for you, what is bringing you joy right now?

What's bringing me joy right now is taking pauses and seeking silence, giving space for myself. I think that when we're a part of these movements, we forget just to pause. I have to remind myself to do that. And when I finally sit and pause, I'm just so grateful. It helps me center myself to figure out where do I move from here? Where do I go from here? What do I want to do? I don't get those moments a lot, but when I do get a moment, that's what brings me joy.

About Alexis

Alexis Saenz is a mixed raced womxn originally from the Cheyenne, Ute, Arapaho and Sioux Territories, known as Denver, Colorado and resides in Tongva, Chumash and Tataviam Territories, known as so called Los Angeles, CA. Saenz is Latinx, Indigenous and European, although she is not sure of her direct tribal nations, her great grandpa was from Juarez, Mexico and Grandma from New Mexico. Lex has been adopted into the Indigenous communities in the Diné and Oglala Lakota Sioux nations. She also organizes with the International Indigenous Youth Council LA Chapter as the chapter representative and volunteers for the EmBrase Foundation. Saenz, graduated from California Institute of the Arts with her Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Dance and Choreography. Alexis is Project Manager for March On Foundation. When she's not fighting for the Environmental, Racial and Social Justice movements, you can catch her teaching dance and pilates and pursuing a career in the entertainment industry as a dancer, filmmaker and actress. Alexis is very passionate about helping her community and people around the globe and hopes to continue this work to make the world a better place for us all. @lexxsaenz on Instagram.

Reflection Questions

What are your self-care practices? How do they help you be a better activist?
Who are the elders in your community that are advocating for environmental justice? How can you help amplify their voices?
Why is it so important to learn from our elders, and the youth? How may their perspectives differ from yours?

Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21

Learn how militarism supports racism.

The US is the top military spender on the planet. What’s more, it spends more on its military than the next ten countries–China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil–combined. The gargantuan military budget sponsors 800 American overseas military bases spread across more than 70 countries (Politico). In 2016, U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed to an astounding 138 countries. Given that there are only 195 countries on Earth, this means more than 70% were visited by American commandos (Forbes).

Happy Friday, and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Last week, the Biden administration announced it will withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021 (Washington Post), which offers long-awaited reprieve for the troops and families who have dealt with decades of deployments. It would be remiss to discuss anti-racism from the lens of the United States without acknowledging how militarism fuels that racism both here and abroad. Today, Andrew shares his thoughts on warmongering and racial violence.

Our youth-led series on environmental justice launched last night! Don't miss out – subscribe to receive the week-long series in your inbox: thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Read about how American racism and militarism support each other.
Learn how radical Asian American newspaper Gidra analyzed “looking like the enemy” during the Vietnam War.
Follow anti-war organizations Dissenters (@wearedissenters), the United National Antiwar Coalition (@UNAC1), CODEPINK (@codepink), and Veterans for Peace (@VFPNational).

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

Each year, the majority of the federal government’s discretionary budget goes to paying for the same single thing. It isn’t health care or housing. It isn’t education or transportation. No, each year hundreds of billions of dollars go to the US military (National Priorities Project).

In my lifetime alone, this sprawling, expensive military apparatus invaded Haiti, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq (twice). It intervened in Kosovo, Somalia, Bosnia, and Syria (Infoplease). There’s no reason to think this will change anytime soon. President Biden is already signalling a “tougher” foreign policy, calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a “thug” and refusing to lift sanctions on Iran (MarketWatch). Half of Americans expect to go to war with Iran in coming years (Reuters) though less than one in four can point to it on a map (Newsweek).

We should oppose US military interventions on anti-racist grounds because they lead to the mass death and deprivation of people of color abroad. The War on Terror has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians directly (Watson Institute), to say nothing of those who died from environmental degradation and starvation in the wake of American attacks. The aftermath of the US invasion of Libya has seen the introduction of literal slave markets in the country (Time). No consistent anti-racist can endorse outcomes like these.

There’s an additional reason why opposing racism means opposing militarism. When America’s leaders beat the war drum, they put people of color in the United States at risk as well.

The day after September 11th, 2001, President Bush announced that the attacks were “more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.” The United States, he said, was engaged in a “monumental struggle of good versus evil” against an “enemy [who] hides in the shadows and has no regard for human life” (BBC). Three days later, a man with stated intentions to “go out and shoot some towel heads” murdered a Sikh gas station owner, erroneously believed him to be Muslim (PRI). The murderer told police he did it out of patriotic duty. That year, 2001, anti-Muslim hate crimes jumped by 1718% (PRI).

In the early 1980s, Vietnamese refugees along the Gulf Coast came under attack by the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Burning crosses appeared in the front yards of Vietnamese families as their homes and shrimping boats went up in flames (NPR). Some of the Klan’s members were veterans who saw their campaign of racial terrorism as a continuation of the Vietnam War in which they had fought. “I promise them a lot better fight here than they got from the Viet Cong,” said the Klan’s leader (Timeline). For these white paramilitaries, their enemy hadn’t just been the North Vietnamese army but rather Vietnamese people in general.

And the current wave of anti-Asian attacks follows years of escalating rhetoric against China. According to one Forbes article, China is poised to “take over the world” (Forbes). China “ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before,” according to President Trump, and pushed the World Health Organization to “mislead the world” over the “Wuhan virus” (CNN). One 2020 Trump campaign email read, “America is under attack -– not just by an invisible virus, but by the Chinese” (NY Times).

To justify, fund, and conscript soldiers for war requires framing an entire people as the enemy. Politicians sometimes clarify that it is only the political leadership or a certain group within a nation that’s worthy of elimination. But this is fine print in the campaign of racially-tinted dehumanization necessary to convince a nation to endorse mass slaughter. As Dale Minami puts it, “Those images remain. The antipathy remains and survives. And to dehumanize these people of color and bring that back to your own country, the United States, leads to a justification for just terrible treatment of Asian people” (NPR).

President Biden called for increasing the defense budget from $740 to $753 billion this year (The Hill), with the $13 billion addition supposedly only a “modest” increase. Biden’s first military act as president was sanctioning an airstrike in Syria that the administration described as a “deliberate” move designed to “de-escalate the overall situation.” A Notre Dame Law School professor, in contrast, called the attack a clear violation of international law (The Guardian).

“Deliberate” executions from the sky and Special Forces roaming across a majority of countries in the world aren’t anything unusual. Biden’s airstrike barely made the nightly news in the United States. But if US foreign policy should take an even more contentious turn in the near future, we would do well to remember the catastrophic effects of American war for people around the world and in our very own communities, too. Dehumanization, othering, and racial violence–at home as well as abroad–all go hand in hand.

We need to stand against warmongering.

Key Takeaways

The US military operates in most countries around the world. Its budget dwarfs that of any other nation.
American wars have devastating civilian consequences, largely falling on people of color in poor countries.
Building support for these wars involves demonizing and dehumanizing the targets of US intervention.
This dehumanization creates the climate for racial attacks against people of color in the United States.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21

Daphne Frias and Disability Justice

Welcome to Day Two of our Earth Week series!

I absolutely loved chatting with Daphne, and was so inspired by her leadership. In today's discussion, you'll learn more about how necessary it is to center disabled voices in the climate justice movement, the harm of ableist environmental justice initiatives, and the power in trusting your voice.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Open Doors NYC, a network of artists, activists and advocates motivated by community building, gun violence prevention and disability rights.
Read more about the intersection of disability and environmental justice.

In Conversation

What was like the earliest time in your life that you remember getting involved in this work, your first memory, your first step in?

My first memory is from when I was in high school. I was becoming increasingly more ill and my disability was progressing. Each winter I would get pneumonia and eventually I was diagnosed with reactive airway disease. So, the pollution and the air quality around me impacted my health. During that time, I was part of a pre-professional program for young people interested in working in the healthcare field. That was the first time that I learned about public health. That program was centered in Washington Heights, New York City, which is a predominantly Hispanic, Black, and Brown community that has one of the highest levels of asthma amongst young people per capita. I actually did a research project about why this community has some of the highest rates of childhood asthma. And that's when I realized, wait, this is a climate crisis.

How did you gain the confidence of stepping into this and becoming a speaker and an organizer? What was that process like for you?

The beginning years of my work definitely stemmed from a lot of anger where I was like, “why doesn’t anyone care about the issues that are impacting us?” So I sent that anger into action. I was like, “I'm not going to wait anymore for someone to listen. I'm not going to beg our elected officials to listen. I'm going to make them listen to us”. So I started organizing within my community. It was hard, because many people in my community have that immigrant mentality, which is like, “you don't want to get noticed, you should just be grateful for what you have. Even though there are things that are impacting you, you don't really do anything about it.” So I had to convince my community that their voices matter and that it's okay to speak up and be heard.

And I knew that I had the ability to change that dynamic. During elementary and middle school, I went to school with my peers. But for high school, I went to a predominantly white institution with a lot of access to resources. And I noticed that for the students there, speaking up was a very natural thing. They didn't even think twice about it. When something was wrong, they went to the principal and administration and did something about it. I realized, “if they’re doing that, I can do that too. And I can do that in my community. “

So in the summer of 2019, I ran to be part of the county committee of Assembly District 70, Election District 80 in West Harlem. We're the community advocates that bridge the gap between citizens and representatives. I won my election. I won my election through the power of community. I was the first disabled Latina person to ever hold this position. It showed me that community is unstoppable.

That’s incredible. Congratulations! Tell me more about the intersection of disability and environmental justice. How did we get to a place where environmental justice is so rooted in ableism?

In essence, I think it’s because society tries to teach us that the voices of disabled people don’t matter. I also think that ignoring the voices of disabled people makes it easy to create solutions for the climate crisis that society can say benefits everyone and makes people feel like heroes. But in reality, they ignore a large part of the population.

We face a two-fold challenge in creating equitable voices of disabled people in the climate movement. First, we have to let people know that we exist. Once we get past that hurdle, then we can express that we’re also facing some of the biggest impacts of the climate crisis. This complexity makes it incredibly difficult for our voices to be heard. There’s so much that gets missed: like how natural disasters disproportionately affect us, and how we’re forgotten about in evacuation planning.

The climate crisis also exacerbates disability. We have communities that face issues like heat intolerance and communities that face weakened respiratory systems like myself. The changes in the seasons and air quality can aggravate disabilities and even cause more, growing the disability community.

Also, there's a habit of villainizing disability within the climate movement when we look at things like the movement to ban plastic straws.

*Groan*

First of all, if you think that the fate of our earth rests on using straws or not, you're missing the whole thing. You're missing everything. Secondly, to villainize people with disabilities is to completely erase the accommodations and the needs that we require to survive. The things that we're asking for aren’t luxuries. They’re essential for our survival.

Also, when we talk about villainizing people with disabilities for how much plastic we use. Well, we didn't create the healthcare system. When people require feeding tubes and ports, we need those things to be sterile. And unfortunately, that means that those things are going to be single-use items. We don't control that. We’re literally just trying to survive. So villainizing those things is incredibly ableist and it misses the entire point of environmental justice.

Exactly: if we’re trying to save the planet and its people but villainize part of the population in the process, we’re doing the opposite of environmental justice work.

Yeah. It fosters otherness. But by othering people, we create a polarization because, at the end of the day, we are all one human race, living on one planet. We all have to work together to make sure that this one home we have survives.

The systems that be, and the systems of oppression that have led us to experience ableism are the same systems of oppression that created the climate crisis. So if you're trying to look at those issues in silos, you're doing something wrong because those issues are correlated. Disability justice is all justice, and all justice is disability justice.

I imagine this work can be draining. How do you resource yourself as you hold this space?

It's definitely hard because some of the conversations require me to bear the truth of my experience in order to get people to listen to me. That can be very emotionally tolling and exhausting. But I think it's incredibly important for expanding equity and justice within the disabled community. Also, the way I hold space is simply by demanding that space. I will be at these tables where these pivotal, global conversations are happening. I'm constantly seeing campaigns and things that don't include disabled voices. And I'm not afraid to call those people out. I think that we live in this weird society where we see things that are wrong, but we don't say anything because that's the status quo, and we're afraid of the backlash. But look, what does any of that backlash matter when, like, you don't have a planet? It literally makes no sense.

Thank you for that. What do you hope Earth Day looks like in 20 years?

I hope that in 20 years, Earth Day is a sort of birthday celebration for how clean and prosperous our Earth is, instead of how the Earth is dying. In 20 years if we don't do something, there will probably only be one-half of the Earth left, so I hope it’s a celebration of life. I hope that everyone has learned how to create a more symbiotic relationship with the earth instead of only taking from it.

Can you tell me a bit more about the organization you want us to support and why you chose it?

Yes! The organization is called Open Doors NYC. It’s an amazing nursing home nonprofit based on Roosevelt Island. Many of its inhabitants are people with disabilities, but specifically survivors of gun violence. They use spoken word to talk about their experience and to dismantle the notion that just because you're disabled doesn't mean that your voice isn’t powerful. They're working on a film right now to talk about their experience of what it was like to be in a nursing home during the pandemic.

One of their members created the online hashtag #nursinghomelivesmater, which became a huge movement. And I think it encompasses so much of what I said, subverting the norms of systems of oppression and saying, “nope, we're here, we're loud, we're proud, and our stories matter.” They need as much support and help as possible.

Many people are going to be looking at this world and looking for ways to change it. What would be your advice?

First, you're never too young to get started. The status quo tells us many things about young people – that you have to wait to be a certain age to do X, Y, Z. That's completely irrelevant and completely false. You're ready when your spirit and your soul say that you're ready.

The best way to get started is by asking a question: what makes you tick? What makes you upset about the systems that be? What makes you upset about your community? Are there things you see in your community and your ecosystem that you can say to yourself “this could be better” or “it doesn't have to be this way”.

I promise that even if other people aren't speaking about it, they're feeling the same things that you're feeling. They're just waiting on one person to ask them how they feel – and that one person can be you. You can start a revolution. Words are the building blocks for revolutions. Words can make anything happen. I believe in the power of conversation and community to empower you to do that. And I believe in you. I don't have to know you to know that you have power. So I believe in you. I believe in your cause. And I believe in the power of your voice to get things done and make the change.

Please let me know when you decide to write a book! Last question: what is bringing you joy right now?

This weekend is my first weekend off in eight weeks! I'm carving out a self-care weekend, and I'm super excited about it. I’m going to brunch with my family! I'm also really excited because I've been working on my branding, and it looks so pretty. I'm so excited to share with the world. The people on the team I have been working with are some of the most amazing people, and that brings me immense joy.

About Daphne

Daphne Frias is a 23-year-old youth activist. She is unapologetically Latina. Having Cerebral Palsy, and using a wheelchair she is fiercely proud to be a loud champion for the disabled community. She got her start shortly after the Parkland shooting by busing 100+ students from her college campus to the nearest March For Our Lives (MFOL) event. In August of 2019, she was appointed as the NY State Director for March For Our Lives. Learn more on her website and follow her on Instagram @frias_daphne.

Reflection Questions

What current environmental justice initiatives are happening in your community right now? How many of them are ableist?
How can you ensure your work is inclusive to people with and without disabilities?

Nicole Cardoza 4/22/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/22/21

Mohammad Ahmadi on Environmental Activism

Welcome to Day One of our Earth Week series!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mohammad Ahmadi, a 17-year-old climate justice activist based in Chicago, IL. He is the co-founder and Communications Coordinator of Earth Uprising International, and co-founder and team member of Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Earth Uprising, a nonprofit organization providing resources and opportunities to support the youth climate movement.
Join Earth Uprising as an organizer by filling out this form.
Identify three youth-organized environmental justices initiative in your city.

In Conversation

What is your earliest memory of getting involved in environmental justice?

I've been passionate about the environment, specifically since I was a kid. But my primary motivation was from when I visited Iran in 2014 and 2015. I saw lots of pollution, and I saw dust storms, droughts, desertification, and deforestation. I started to realize how the climate crisis will impact Iran and many other countries.

After that, I saw an opportunity on Instagram to become an ambassador for Illinois Youth Climate Strike. After that, I realized that the climate crisis isn't just an environmental issue but intersects with all other issues: migration, human rights, agriculture, and everything. Climate justice and racial justice are interlinked. Before that, I just thought that the crisis was about saving the polar bears and recycling, which is important, but there’s a much larger problem.

That's powerful. I think a lot of us when we were younger – maybe not your generation, but mine certainly – got that one-sided view of environmental justice. Every Earth Week, we would hear stuff about cutting the plastic around the six-packs of soda to save the sea turtles and, like, raking leaves.

Right. This is a human issue; we’re fighting for human life. Hundreds of millions of people are going to become climate refugees. And the most affected areas – the islands, developing countries, low-income communities – are going to be impacted the hardest. This is a fight for them.

How does this influence your activism now?

With Earth Uprising, I first got involved locally in the summer of 2019. Now, after being a part of the Illinois Youth Climate Strike, I started Earth Uprising Chicago. The first thing we did was organize strikes in front of the Chicago City Hall. We had different themes targeting different groups (the media, fossil fuel, etc). Our focus was to try to get Chicago to declare a climate emergency. We dropped off letters, hosted digital campaigns, partnered with other groups. And we were successful; in February 2020, the Chicago city council declared a climate emergency.

We thought that was important because, although the declaration is symbolic, it shows that you recognize that this is an emergency and that action is needed. Then, we met with politicians, and we talked about the national climate emergency declaration. That's a lot of my local work with Earth Uprising. Internationally, I'm on the Earth Uprising team as Communications Coordinator, where our main job is to support our local organizers.

We have chapters all around the world - I think in about 20 countries. All of our chapters are focused on promoting climate education, bringing climate education into schools, and getting youth involved. We believe that when you're educated about the climate crisis and its intersections with all these different issues, it will motivate you to take action. That’s how it happened for me. I was passionate about the environment first, but once I learned about the humanity at stake, I was motivated to get even more involved.

For the first presidential debates, we wanted to see a climate question, so we partnered with Move On and many other environmental groups to petition for it. Our petition got over 130,000 signatures – 200,000 total across all groups, and there was a climate question at the first presidential debate. So that was a success in our eyes.

Right now, we’re doing a partnership with Ecosia, the search engine, and we're giving micro-grants to youth organizers who are starting climate projects in the U.S.

Very cool. You mentioned your work with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter. Where do you see racial justice and environmental justice intersecting?

My work with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter started last June after the death of George Floyd. I had gone to a protest in Chicago and, when I returned, felt the need to create something in my town. My town is 90% white and conservative, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. We started to plan our first local protest and got a ton of pushback from people worried that we’d spark looting and violence. Over 500 people showed up, and it sparked a conversation about racism in our community.

We partnered with local Black Lives Matter groups and organized a strike against environmental racism on September 25th, the global day of climate action. We had several demands, including comprehensive and intersectional climate education for our school districts and climate emergency declarations by our town, Hinsdale, and other local townships. State-wide, we demanded the Illinois Clean Energy Jobs Act be passed, and nationally we demanded the passing of the Green New Deal and the Climate Equity Act.

What does Earth Day look like for your work this year?

This year we’re hosting our summit called Youth Speaks 2021. We're partnering with Earth Day Network and two other groups: Education International and Hip Hop caucus. We're doing three days of climate action on April 20th, 21st, and 22nd, which is Earth Day. The first day is the summit: we have eight sessions on freedom of protest migration, environmental justice, and education, etc. We were going to have youth from all around the world discussing those issues. We are also going to release a set of demands for the Biden administration to address.

So what have you learned most on this journey? Like what did you know stepping into this, as it seems like a very public role? There’s a lot of leadership involved. Maybe even a lot of management is involved. What have you learned that you didn't know before through this work?

It takes a lot of effort to educate people and get them involved. In my area, it's been extremely, extremely difficult to get more people involved. It takes a lot of effort and strategic collaboration to make it possible. You need to work together. You can’t just be one organization trying to do everything on your own. We’re constantly collaborating with other activists and organizations. We try to use each other’s strengths to amplify our messages and educate people together.

Yeah. What world are you hoping to leave behind for the generations that follow?

Well, I'm hoping to leave behind a world that is not ravaged by the climate crisis. So we avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius or two degrees of warming each year. I’m just trying to leave behind a more educated population. The youth is the next generation, so if we can educate them, they will demand change from the government faster when they’re older – whether it’s climate justice, racial justice, or anything else.

What is bringing you joy right now?

I think seeing all these activists using their skills and passions to make a change. And when you see that, it motivates me even more, to continue taking action. It also brings me joy when I see success, whether it's a small achievement or a big achievement. That’s inspiring.

Yes! I know this work can be really draining on individuals. So how do you practice self-care?

It is, especially for youth activists. We’re also balancing school and other activities. So it's very difficult. Both the mental stress and strain and just doing the work takes a lot of time. I try to balance things pretty well. There’s always so much more work to do, though. I wish I had more time to spend on local activism, especially with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter.

One way of self-care is to cut back on something so you have time to focus on specific things. If I have ten different commitments, I can't spend time on each of them. If I spend time on one thing, that's probably more beneficial.

Taking breaks is important, too. We have to have good mental health; it’s necessary to keep our movements going. If we’re all burn out, then who’s going to do the work?

Reflection Questions

What does activism look like for you? How can you take a stand in your community?
Who are some of the inspiring leaders in your community? How can you help their work sustain?
How has your relationship to the Earth inspired your environmental justice work?

Nicole Cardoza 4/21/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/21/21

Unpack the Derek Chauvin trial.

For the past month, Derek Chauvin has been on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Finally, the verdict is out. Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. To convict Chauvin, the prosecution needed to show each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution did not need to prove that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd to convict him of the charges.

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. After a tense month, the Derek Chauvin trial has finally come to an end. For the first time in Minnesota state history, a white police officer has been held accountable for killing a Black man. It shouldn’t have had to take a video recorded by a 17-year-old girl, a summer of national protests, and months of intense pressure by the family and organizers for this trial to occur. Remember that true justice would mean George Floyd is still alive. Brutality like this cannot be reformed. Today, The George Floyd Memorial Foundation joins us to review the details of the trial and its impact. The details below indicate how so many other charges against law enforcement in the past have been dismissed or discredited.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," starts tomorrow! Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Support The George Floyd Memorial Foundation’s current initiatives by donating to the organization or purchasing a Justice for George “Be the Change” T-Shirt.
Follow @justiceforgeorge on Instagram for updates on the upcoming trial for other officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd.
Learn about The George Floyd Memorial Foundation’s current initiatives, including providing scholarships to diverse youth and internship opportunities to college-aged Black men.

GET EDUCATED

By The George Floyd Family Foundation

For the past month, Derek Chauvin has been on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Finally, the verdict is out.

Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. To convict Chauvin, the prosecution needed to show each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution did not need to prove that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd to convict him of the charges.

Throughout the trial, groundbreaking developments came to light, such as confirmation that Chauvin pinned Floyd down for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, not the well-known 8 minutes and 46 seconds, and confirmation that George Floyd did not attempt to flee the scene before the incident.

Cause of Death Confirmed: The official autopsy for George Floyd declares his death a HOMICIDE, caused by cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression. Drug use and heart disease were "contributing conditions" but "not direct causes" (The New York Times 1). Dr. Martin Tobin, a medical expert testifying in the trial, confirmed, "A healthy person subjected to what Mr. Floyd was subjected to would have died” (The New York Times 2).

While the prosecution provided significant evidence proving that George Floyd died from homicide, the defense continued to spread misinformation, blaming George and his health conditions for his death, blatantly ignoring and undermining evidence and witness/expert testimony.

In light of the defense’s strategy to confuse and mislead the jury and the public, let’s review Fact vs. Fiction regarding the trial of Derek Chauvin:

FICTION: George Floyd died from a drug overdose.

FACT: Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist who took the stand, confirmed that George Floyd could not have died from a drug overdose, telling the jury, “Mr. Floyd appeared to be breathing at a normal rate before he became unconscious… Had he been overdosing on fentanyl, his rate of breathing would have slowed” (The New York Times 2).

FICTION: If George Floyd was able to speak, he must have had enough oxygen.
FACT: Dr. Tobin clarified to the jury that while George Floyd could speak, that does not mean that he had enough oxygen. “During the arrest, a police officer told Mr. Floyd that he seemed to have enough oxygen because he was able to tell officers that he couldn’t breathe. Dr. Tobin said that a person might be taking in enough oxygen to speak, but not enough to survive. They can be alive and talking one moment, and dead just seconds later, he said” (The New York Times 2).

FICTION: George Floyd suffered from “excited delirium.”

FACT: Dr. Bill Smock, an expert witness of the prosecution and Louisville Metro Police Department surgeon, confirmed that George Floyd did not die of excited delirium, “a term used to describe someone who has become aggressive or distressed from a mental illness or drug use (The New York Times 2). Dr. Smock explained to the jury, “The term has been disproportionately applied to Black people and has been used by law enforcement to justify police brutality.”

During the trial, numerous members of law enforcement testified against the actions of Derek Chauvin, confirming his actions were “uncalled for” and not in line with policy or training. Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo even testified that Chauvin violated policy. Use-of-force expert Sgt. Jody Stiger testified that Chauvin used “deadly force” when “no force should have been used” (The New York Times 3). The willingness for active members of law enforcement to come forward and speak out against a fellow officer led some, including Minneapolis Civil Rights Attorney and former NAACP Chapter President Nekima Levy Armstrong, to believe that the “Blue Wall of Silence,” also known as the “‘no snitching’ code for cops,” collapsed during the trial (NowThis News). Others believe this to be an isolated distancing from one cop rather than a systemic shift in norms amongst law enforcement.

In Closing Arguments, the prosecution reminded the jury that George Floyd is “not on trial here,” after weeks of the defense attempting to put George and his past on trial for the scrutiny of the jury and the world (The Hill). In this, we are reminded that George Floyd, his health, and his past are, in fact, not of concern here. What is on trial is Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply deadly force to George Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

The Verdict: Derek Chauvin has officially been found guilty for the murder of George Floyd and has been convicted of all three of the charges. Chauvin’s bond has been revoked and he will remain in custody until sentencing in eight weeks. He faces up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder, and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter.

While nothing can erase the pain that the Floyd family has incurred as a result of this tragedy, this conviction represents a major milestone in holding this system accountable.

Key Takeaways

Derek Chauvin was found guilty for the murder of George Floyd and was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
Derek Chauvin is in custody and will face sentencing in eight weeks.
As confirmed in the official autopsy report, George Floyd died due to cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression from HOMICIDE. Compounding factors include heart disease and drug use, meaning that neither heart disease NOR drug use caused his death.
The three other ex-officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd will go on trial in August 2021.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21

Go beyond allyship.

The uprisings of last summer against police murder and anti-Blackness led to quite a few folks loudly proclaiming themselves allies. You can buy a digital print-at-home poster declaring “I am an ally” over a clenched Black fist (Etsy) or a shirt with a similar fist and the word “ally” in capital letters underneath (Etsy). You can write an article expounding on all of your social positionalities and personal privileges, announce that you take yourself seriously as an ally, and close the piece with the sentence “let’s promise to listen” (HuffPost).

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Many people feel spurred into action because of the series of violent events from the past two weeks. Today, Andrew shares more about the importance of solidarity, not allyship, as we collectively commit to reimagine the world we live in.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," starts Thursday, April 22. Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Read “Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex.”
Educate yourself about how the category of whiteness was through the practice of colonialism and slavery.
Learn about the limits of allyship in fighting racism and settler-colonialism.
Support Black-led groups organizing for Black liberation.
Deepen your commitment to learn about and contribute to struggles for liberation.

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

In her piece on white feminism, Nicole wrote of the need for “white women [to] decenter their own narrative and elevate others instead” (Anti-Racism Daily). Some of the language around allyship does the opposite: instead of highlighting the voices and needs of those most impacted by racism, sexism, or queerphobia, it singles out white, male, or straight and cis allies for praise and adulation. Self-centered allyship in the struggle for racial justice can veer dangerously close to white saviorism (MSN). They can divert radical movements into “a self-help book for white people” as more attention is paid to processing white guilt than stopping Black death (Wear Your Voice).

Another problem with centering allyship is that self-declared allies get to decide what allyship entails and whether to engage in it. Support for Black Lives Matter crested before the shooting of Jacob Blake last August as people and brands rushed to announce their status as allies publicly. After that, white support for the movement “grew soft, like a rotting spot on a piece of fruit” (New York Times). For a moment, allyship was in fashion. When the moment passed, many of those allies slunk back to the sidelines.

To center and celebrate allies as exceptionally interesting and virtuous often goes hand-in-hand with the belief that the alternative to allyship is neutrality. We might think that white supporters of Black Lives Matter are especially noble because their other white peers are instead neutral bystanders.

Indigenous Action forcefully critiqued this understanding in their influential zine “Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex” (Indigenous Action). Being an ally to indigenous people, they wrote, has become “currency,” “an identity, disembodied from any real mutual understanding of support,” a term “rendered ineffective and meaningless.”

To move beyond allyship means recognizing that the starting point isn’t neutrality. Citizens actively, materially benefit from anti-immigrant policies. Non-Black people benefit from anti-Blackness. The starting point for settlers is benefitting from settler-colonialism. As the zine puts it, non-indigenous people need to begin “to articulate your relationship to Indigenous Peoples whose lands you are occupying.”

If the starting position is not neutrality but complicity, we’re called to do more than declare ourselves allies, change our Twitter bios, or buy social justice ally wall art. Whereas allies center themselves, “accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don’t just have our backs; they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism.” This isn’t just a semantic difference. It’s a different way to think about and practice solidarity: through centering those most directly affected and joining in the struggle, through direct action and confrontation, to dismantle systems that oppress them even as they benefit us.

An accomplice is, of course, someone who aids another in committing a crime as defined by the criminal justice system. As Code Pink puts it, “liberation requires being accomplices in resisting the legitimized forces of social control” (Code Pink). There are many roles that people can take to support social movements, from being at the front lines in the street to doing jail support or media work or a thousand other things. But self-identified allies should remember that dozens of people have already been arrested in Minneapolis following the police murder of Daunte Wright (ABC). Those people, many of them people of color, put their bodies, their freedom, and their lives on the line. Some may face legal repercussions for years to come because of these arrests. The way to honor that struggle isn’t by taking the easy way but deepening our commitments to listen, o learn, and to fight to uproot a system that kills and oppresses some while enriching and protecting others. In the words of Angela Davis, “When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime” (American Public Media).

It’s time to go beyond allyship.

Key Takeaways

We should shift attention from the struggle against oppression to the virtues or guilt of allies.
Those who choose not to be allies aren’t neutral bystanders but rather beneficiaries of systems of oppression.
Benefitting from oppression calls us to engage deeply with communities in struggle and realize that we are personally implicated in the destruction of unjust systems.
To be an accomplice is to listen, learn, and take personal risks in the fight to dismantle systems of social control and racial injustice.

10/4/2020 | Don't blame the pipeline.

7/9/2020 | Acknowledge the harm of microaggressions.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21

Reimagine Earth Week.

This Thursday, April 22, is the 51st anniversary of Earth Day, one of the most significant secular movements observed worldwide. Modeled after the anti-war and civil rights movements that preceded it, the first Earth Day, held on April 19, 1970, was a massive demonstration where millions of people took to the streets to rally for environmental justice. The event supported the advancement of a series of legislation in the years to come: an amended Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (Time).

Hi folks! Real talk – I wrote this because I honestly couldn’t wait to share my excitement about our upcoming Earth Week series. Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed working alongside Sydney, the series’ managing editor, to learn about youth leaders tackling the impact of climate change in their communities. Unlike me in my younger days, each of them is informed and intent on making a difference. I’m honored we’ll be able to celebrate and amplify their work.

In the meantime, today’s email highlights the results of our Earth Week survey (many thanks to the grownups who shared this with youth in their lives). This information helped shape the series. Like our 28 Days of Black History series, this week-long initiative will run alongside the Anti-Racism Daily, and you’ll have to sign up separately to receive it. The series starts Thursday, April 22. You can sign up here: thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

If you’re an educator, take the pledge to #TeachClimateJustice at your school (via Zinn Education Project).
Explore environmental justice books for kids and grownups on our Bookshop page.
Follow these steps to address the misinformation you find online.
Join a local chapter of a youth-driven organization addressing climate change, including Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Fifty-one years later, the environmental threats we face are no less severe, and Earth Day has lost its teeth (Teen Vogue). But a new generation is leading the charge in addressing them through advocacy and activism. We surveyed over 1,000 of our readers under 18 about Earth Day, this climate crisis, and where we go from here.

"
I wish I knew how wide[spread] it was. You always learn about turtles and the beaches with plastic but never the island forming in the Pacific or the rivers full of it bc of the factories on their edges.”

Anonymous response to “What do you wish you knew about climate change when you were younger?” from our Earth Week Survey.

A clear and consistent point of feedback was the lack of education on environmental justice provided in school. Part of this was intentional: corporations seeded misinformation about climate change to schools. A prominent example of this happened in 2017, when the Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy organization, mailed climate science curriculum with false information to thousands of teachers across the country (Inside Climate News). The content argued that most scientists disagree that humans contributed to global warming or that climate change is such a big deal (which is false). It encourages teachers to educate their students on this “vibrant debate” and tell “all sides” of the story. Read perspectives from science teachers.

But influencing school curriculum is just part of how corporations intentionally skewed the dialogue around climate change to protect their bottom line. The fossil fuel industry would create fake grassroots organizations that would “stand in solidarity” with their organizations. They created misinformation campaigns to vilify other organizations to protect their own. And, they wielded public, philanthropic campaigns to double down on the benefits of their work (Grist). The NAACP notes how these campaigns would specifically aim to discredit the concerns of poor communities and communities of color, chastising them for not taking more personal responsibility or dismissing their demands as impossible (NAACP). An investigation revealed that ExxonMobil gave nearly $31 million between 1998 and 2014 to 69 groups that spread climate misinformation. Similarly, the Koch brothers have given over $100 million to 84 groups since 1997 (Inside Climate News).

Other corporations weren’t as deliberate but also contributed to misconstruing environmental activism. Recognizing that consumers were increasingly eco-conscious but wary of the costs to meet those demands, corporations invested in greenwashing, campaigns that hinted at eco-friendly initiatives that are often anything but. In this way, corporations signaled that consumers could make earth-friendly choices by shopping with them, using phrases like “upcycled,” “sustainable,” “natural,” and “ethical.” This Innisfree “Hello, I’m Paper Bottle” controversy is a blatant example. As of November 2020, roughly 63% percent of U.S. adults said they believed “purchasing sustainable brands or products makes a difference for our environment” (Ipsos).

Social media has made it easier for misinformation to take root, which only complicates the issue. Earlier this year, Facebook committed to addressing inaccurate information on climate change, including and information labels to posts about climate change that direct people to a climate change information hub and updating that hub with facts from trusted institutions (Market Watch). Last week, the organization announced that it now uses 100% renewable energy and reached net-zero emissions. Skeptics quickly noted that this announcement sounds hollow if they don’t live up to their word (Market Watch).

Screen Shot 2021-04-18 at 8.26.46 PM.png

40% of our survey respondents learned about the urgency of climate change on social media, more than any other source (and compared to 24% in school). Ensuring that information is accurate and trusted is critical for empowering the next generation with the right tools to take action.

All of this contributes to why many of us may believe that personal responsibility was a critical component of environmental justice. This isn’t inherently dangerous; it’s essential to raise awareness and make kids feel empowered to change the world early. But it’s a half-truth, one that shields corporations and government from accountability. More damaging, it draws an unhealthy correlation that individual actions improve the conditions for individual people. It also ignores the intersection of environmental justice and systemic oppression,

“
I wish I knew that the climate crisis is not just about the environment but is connected to all our systems of oppression.

In response to “What do you wish you knew about climate change when you were younger?” from our Earth Week Survey.

Saving the Earth isn’t a single-focus issue. Progress lies at the intersection of nearly every human rights issue. Incarceration, immigration, disability justice, global security, landback initiatives – we can’t address any of these until we are willing to analyze how climate change encourages and exacerbates each. In addition, we must understand that the brunt of the adverse impact of climate change will be felt by those most marginalized – not necessarily those that forget to recycle – creating a never-ending cycle of cause and effect. The voices most impacted are often left out of the conversation, developing policies and practices that don’t center those most harmed.

Screen Shot 2021-04-18 at 8.26.57 PM.png

92% of youth under the age of 18 are not learning about environmental racism in school.

But today, some of the most inspiring environmental justice initiatives of the past few years have been led by youth, most notably, the climate strikes of 2019 (Verge). You’ll hear more about these initiatives later this week. Despite this, an overwhelming 56.8% of our youth respondents feel hopeless or very hopeless about the future of this planet. This Earth Week, consider: how can you raise your voice to support more accurate and inclusive environmental justice initiatives? Where can you move in to lead or move back to follow? And most importantly, how do you plan on joining the fight?

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/16/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/16/21

Unpack superheroes and the American Dream.

Last week, actor Ray Fisher shared the racism and inappropriate conduct he experienced while working onset for several superhero movies (The Hollywood Reporter). One of his allegations references discrimination that he heard happened on the set Krypton, a Syfy series that focuses on Seg-El, Superman’s grandfather. Actor Regé-Jean Page, the star of Netflix phenomenon Bridgerton, had auditioned for the role. But the producer rescinded, stating that Superman could not have a Black grandfather.

Happy Friday, yall. I spent too much time on this email, mainly because it felt more manageable than processing the slew of police brutality news from this week. When I saw the news referenced below, it reminded me how society gravitates to escapism in times of social and economic turmoil. And even these fantasy worlds are often limited to the scope of the white gaze. There’s something particularly damning about robbing people – kids – of color of their right to be heroes when their livelihood is constantly at risk.

Are you under the age of 18? We want to hear from you. Take a moment to complete our anonymous survey on climate change.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Support Chicago:

Read about the shooting of Adam Toledo via Block Club Chicago (no video in story)
Donate to organizations supporting on-the-ground: Chicago Freedom School, GoodKidsMadCity-Englewood
Sign the petition to demand defunding the Chicago Police Department
Review why we don't share videos of violence by the police.

Superheroes:

Consider: how does your notion of superheroes shape your perception of truth and justice? Who is narrating those stories? What virtues do they center?

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

This particular bit of the story circulated widely on social media, perhaps because of the new fandom Page has accumulated since Bridgerton. It only emphasized a long-standing frustration with the superhero canon, that its characters are overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. Characters of color, like The Avengers’ Nick Fury, Man of Steel’s Perry White, and Captain America: Winter Soldier’s Sam Wilson, are all secondary characters, never the lead (Harvard Political Review). And many of the few non-white superheroes have been played by white actors, only exacerbating the erasure (Quartz).

But the controversy was also accelerated by the absurdity of it. People were quick to note that both Superman and his grandfather aren’t actually white men, but a fictional alien species where race and genetics don’t have to work within the lens of human evolution. There’s no reason why Superman or his grandfather, or any Kryptonian, have to be depicted as Caucasian.

However, in today’s day and age, Superman doesn’t just look like a white man. He represents whiteness – and the carefully constructed ideals and values that come with it. Superman was an essential symbol of the American dream, and as he grew as a cultural icon, helped to protect it.

Ironically, Superman wasn’t initially built in this image. The character was created by two Jewish teens from Cleveland, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. Both children of Jewish immigrants, the duo created a superhero that wasn’t afraid of his differences and unafraid to stand against injustice. Superman particularly stood against antisemitism, even confronting Hitler on the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people of Europe (Ohio History).

“

Superman! Champion of the oppressed. The physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need.

Jerry Siegel, Action Comics issue #1 (Ohio History)

Superman became an influential figure during World War II. Comics during that time didn’t place him directly on the battlefield, but he was still fighting against supervillains that bore a significant resemblance to Nazis. The creators worked closely with the U.S. government to handle these topics and ensured they were aligned with their goals and objectives in the war. These comics became essential forms of wartime propaganda; one in four magazines shipped to troops overseas was a comic. Superman wasn’t alone. Captain America, Batman, and Robin all appeared in solidarity with the U.S. war efforts (liveaboutdotcom).

But Superman’s narrative didn’t back down from home-grown threats, either. In the summer of 1946, the radio serial Adventures of Superman played a 16-part series called “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” which depicted Superman taking down a racist, bigoted group of terrorists based on the real-life Ku Klux Klan. The series used real intel collected by activist Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the KKK. He provided real Klan rituals and secret code words to the show producers, who exposed them live on-air through the narrative. The show significantly damaged the group’s reputation and led to a steep decline in membership (Inverse). “Superman Smashes the Klan,” by Chinese American cartoonist Gene Luen Yang, revisits this narrative from a modern-day perspective (DC Comics).

But in the 1950s, Superman’s focus went from fighting against external threats to fighting for America. This was accelerated by the paranoia of the Cold War era and the rise of anti-war sentiment after the end of World War II. It was also prompted by his introduction to a new channel, television, in 1952, which meant that he needed a more family-friendly appeal. His mainstream identity evolved to become more accessible, friendly, and gentle (he stopped killing his villains, and sometimes they even knocked themselves out, so he didn’t have to be violent). His tagline changed to “...a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!” (McGill Tribune).

Instead of focusing on systemic issues like he had before, Superman was now focused on protecting his city from one isolated “bad guy” at a time. Many of these were caricatures of villains to minimize causing fear in young viewers. Some perpetuated stereotypes of communities of color (Gizmodo). But the prominent narratives looked at isolated acts of threat instead of systemic or coordinated attacks.

It also doubled-down on the main narrative of Superman, reinforcing the story of the American dream: A young, orphaned boy from a small town who makes it to the big city and achieves greatness. An “immigrant” from another planet who was able to assimilate to a foreign society and take on the responsibility of protecting it. And, above all, a “man” who loves his wife, his family, and his community. In essence, the embodiment of the American dream: that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in society. Superheroes included. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the American dream, of course. But we know that the U.S. doesn’t allow that dream to become a reality for everyone (The Atlantic) and leverages that dream to perpetuate racism and systemic oppression (Time).

Perhaps that’s partially why interest in the hero waned in the late 80s. By then, Superman had a long-standing cartoon series Super Friends for years and was depicted in three feature-length movies by Christopher Reeves as a romantic, thoughtful leader (Rolling Stone). Meanwhile, a new narrative of superheroes was emerging, led by Alan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. These stories, in contrast, were dark and gritty, both set in alternative realities that were far grimmer than the bright, idealized world Superman protected. The heroes these stories centered were far more complex and flawed than Superman’s simplistic narrative. In 1992, DC Comics decided to kill off Superman, which felt equal parts narrative and publicity stunt (Polygon). He was, of course, resurrected shortly after.

Since the early 2000s, few Superman stories have reached critical acclaim. The show Smallville, which hones in on Superman’s upbringing, was a commercial success. But major motion pictures depicting Superman have faltered, especially in comparison to blockbuster superhero films like The Avengers, Black Panther, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – stories reshaping the definition of what superheroes look like in today’s age. I really enjoyed this interview on the role of Black superheroes in today’s time.

What does it mean to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way” in today’s time? What role, if any, does Superman play in the future we’re envisioning? Is it possible for Superman to rise to this challenge, and is what he represents the future we need? I don’t have the answers to these questions. However, I am excited to see that author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose work analyzes the fallacies of the American Dream, is writing a reboot of Superman for 2023.

But we also need to answer the questions and make these decisions for ourselves. We don’t need to be super to be the heroes our community deserves. And we can choose what kinds of heroes we emulate in our lives, protect in our communities, and allow us to shape our identities. After all, unlike the comics, no one is coming to save us.

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Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21

Decommodify housing.

Just because we’re all affected by the pandemic doesn’t mean that we’ve all been affected equally. Women accounted for all 140,000 jobs cut last December. Black and Latina women in particular lost jobs, since employment for white women actually rose that month (CNN). The data is clear: Black and Latina women were the worst-impacted by layoffs, white men the least (Bloomberg).

Happy Thursday and welcome back! Although the economy is improving as more people become vaccinated, more than 8 million American households are still behind on their rent (NPR). Housing is a human right, but access isn't distributed evenly. Today, Andrew outlines more about the housing crisis and efforts to keep people housed.

Are you under the age of 18? We want to hear from you. Take a moment to complete our anonymous survey on climate change.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Learn about racism in housing and how housing impacts the racial wealth gap.
Follow and support your local tenants union or community land trust.
Read about how tenant organizing is keeping renters in their homes.
Look into a community effort that stopped the eviction of a Black and indigenous family in Portland, OR.
Those fortunate enough to own property can donate it to a local land trust to ensure it remains affordable housing in perpetuity.

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

This inequality comes as the COVID recession takes a serious toll on renters and homeowners alike. In January, almost one in five tenants was behind on rent, with an average outstanding debt of $5,600 (CNBC). In 2020, 2 million households fell at least three months behind on their mortgage payments (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau). The nation’s renters are estimated to owe some $5 billion more than all the rental assistance in the American Rescue Plan and December stimulus combined (CNN).

This is important because housing inequality has long been a key way that American racial inequality reproduces itself. Before the 1968 Housing Rights Act, some white neighborhoods used racial covenants to legally exclude tenants or homeowners of color (Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project). The historic refusal of banks to extend credit to “redlined” minority neighborhoods is estimated to have cost Black families $212,000 in wealth (CBS).

These inequalities aren’t a thing of the past. The average white family in America has ten times the wealth of the average Black family. It’s a gap that’s larger today than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century (Brookings). The single largest contributing factor to household wealth? The value of housing (US Census).

Even before COVID, Black homeownership was declining in cities across the country (Urban Institute) and predominantly Black, brown, and immigrant communities were being gentrified out of competitive housing markets (Teen Vogue). Now, these communities with less wealth and housing equity face higher risks from recession lay-offs. As current eviction moratoriums expire, the expected wave of foreclosures and evictions could exacerbate existing racial and gender inequalities to a catastrophic degree.

There’s a chicken-and-the-egg problem here: if all housing is sold or rented to the higher buyer, those with less wealth could always have their home taken away. At the same time, this housing insecurity itself inhibits the creation of familial wealth, since homeownership (or housing stability) is one of the biggest ways families build wealth for the future.

Fortunately, community organizations across the country are working out a solution: decommodifying housing. To stop thinking of housing as a commodity means to stop thinking of houses or apartments primarily as things to be bought and sold and instead as, above all, homes.

One way to ensure homes are used for housing people ahead of generating profit is by supporting tenants unions. Renters facing unjust evictions or unacceptable living conditions can band together to push landlords to do the right thing. When disrepair at the Villas del Paseo apartment complex in Houston led to black mold, cockroaches, and weeks without running water, tenants organized and withheld rent payments to force their property management company to fix the problems (Texas Observer). Organizing collectively builds the power of those most likely to be exploited by landlords: low-income people of color (Tenants Together).

Another approach is decommodifying housing is by removing the land for housing from the private market altogether through community land trusts, or CLTs. Community land trusts are nonprofits that collectively own the land underneath residents’ homes. These residents can buy, sell, and build equity in their properties, but the CLT retains the title to the land (Center for Community Land Trust Innovation).

Because the land underneath dwellings remains in the land trust even as buildings are bought or sold, housing prices are insulated from real estate speculation, even in expensive housing markets. And all of the residents who live on CLT land are represented in the nonprofit’s board of directors, ensuring the land is stewarded democratically. In this way, CLTs ensure that community-controlled affordable housing can remain affordable in perpetuity (Oakland Community Land Trust).

Community land trusts now exist across the country (Schumacher Center). But they were first started in Georgia by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committees to ensure Black tenant farmers wouldn’t be displaced from their land for participation in the civil rights movement (NPR). This history should remind us of the deep connection between racial and housing justice movements, a connection necessitated by long-standing racial inequities in access to secure housing.

As COVID has deepened many of these same inequalities, it’s time to take action to decommodify housing.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21

Abolish qualified immunity.

The death has been referred to as an “accidental discharge.” But there is nothing accidental about the death of an unarmed Black man by law enforcement. Our system is designed to maximize interactions between Black and brown people and police officers, which all but ensures that harm will happen. This is enforced through the practice of over-policing, initiatives that have justified increased levels of policing for the sake of the greater good, but often with adverse consequences (Scientific American).

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Our previous two newsletters both depict the atrocities of our criminal justice system, emphasizing that abolition is the only way forward. Qualified immunity is part of that narrative, too, and garnering more attention this month. Today I thought it would be wise to revisit its history and context in current events.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Encourage your local Congresspeople to sponsor the BREATHE Act, which includes the support of ending qualified immunity in alignment with the Ending Qualified Immunity Act.
Send a letter to your Senators to support the “Ending Qualified Immunity Act”.
Research to see what the latest efforts are to ending qualified immunity in your state.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

The latest series of body camera videos released in conjunction to police brutality have reignited conversations about the role of qualified immunity in holding law enforcement accountable.

Some members of law enforcement act like the law don’t apply to them. And because of qualified immunity, they're kind of right. Qualified immunity means that government officials are shielded from charges that violate constitutional and civil rights – unless the victims can prove that these rights were “clearly established law.” This means that in order to charge the perpetrator, the victim must first find an exact same example of the case that's already been ruled illegal or unconstitutional to establish its legitimacy (USA Today).

Still confused? Here's a TikTok video that demonstrates it more simply. Bless TikTok creators.

Here's a real-life example. In February 2020, the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a prison guard in Texas who pepper-sprayed an inmate in his locked cell “for no reason” did not violate clearly established law because similar cited cases involved guards who had hit and tased inmates "for no reason,” rather than pepper-spraying them (USA Today). The full report notes that if the victim was punched or hit by a baton "for no reason" the assault would violate clearly established law (PDF).

Another example is the story of Malaika Brooks, a Black woman who was seven months pregnant and pulled over for speeding while dropping her 11-year-old off at school. She refused to sign the speeding ticket (mistakenly thinking it was an acknowledgment of guilt). She was then tased three times, dragged into the street, pressed facedown into the ground, and cuffed (NYTimes). Although the judges saw that her constitutional rights were violated, they dismissed the case, arguing that "no precedent had 'clearly established' that tasing a woman in Ms. Brooks’s circumstances was unconstitutional at the time" (NYTimes).

This creates a paradoxical situation: how can we starting holding law enforcement accountable if their specific violations haven't been held accountable in the past? Justices are allowed to interpret "clearly established law" as specifically as they choose. And what's worse – the more egregious the violation, the more likely it doesn't fit neatly into a previous case. It's no surprise that, according to George F. Will, the Supreme Court, applying its “clearly established law” doctrine, has denied immunity only twice in its past 30 cases (Washington Post). There are dozens and dozens of examples just like the ones above, preventing citizens from holding police accountable for harm.

"
Important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered. Courts then rely on that judicial silence to conclude there’s no equivalent case on the books. No precedent = no clearly established law = no liability. An Escherian Stairwell. Heads defendants win, tails plaintiffs lose.

Judge Don Willett, U.S. Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in The New Republic

So, how did we get here? Qualified immunity is buried in Section 1983 (named for its number in U.S. code, not the year), a provision from the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. After the Civil War, the federal government was focused on re-integrating the South. But they faced violent resistance from the Klan, who waged a war of domestic terrorism by "killing Black Americans and white Republicans, burning down their homes and churches, and intimidating local communities into accepting white-supremacist rule" (The New Republic).

The government had to act, so it passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, granting it more power to intervene against violations of the 14th Amendment (house.gov). Within it, Section 1983 gave private citizens the ability to sue state and local officials who were violating federal constitutional rights – building more personal accountability into the work (The New Republic). Although the Supreme Court removed power granted by the Ku Klux Klan Act after the Reconstruction Act, Section 1983 remained, dormant until 1961.

This was when James Monroe, a Black man, and his family were pulled from their beds late one night and assaulted by thirteen police officers with no warrant (sound familiar)? Monroe was then held for interrogation without being charged a crime, or access to a lawyer, for 10 hours. In the case Monroe v. Pape, the Supreme Court ruled that they had the right to hold the police officers accountable, using the terms of Section 1983 as reference. This grounded the provision as a part of holding law enforcement accountable in today's rhetoric (The New Republic).

But a shift in terminology has made this more challenging to execute. In 1982, the Supreme Court revised Section 1983 to ensure that government officials were entitled to “qualified immunity” from such lawsuits unless their actions violated a “clearly established law” (The New Republic).

“

Qualified immunity shields police from accountability, impedes true justice, and undermines the constitutional rights of every person in this country. There can be no justice without healing and accountability, and there can be no true accountability with qualified immunity. It’s past time to end qualified immunity, and that’s exactly what this bill does.

Ayanna Pressley, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 7th Congressional District, on her website.

A wide range of organizations advocate for ending qualified immunity, including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Movement for Black Lives and the Institute for Justice. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which recently passed in the House, includes ending qualified immunity for law enforcement (although many Black-led organizations oppose most of the other aspects of this legislation). To bolster it, the bill entitled “Ending Qualified Immunity Act” was re-introduced to the House of Representatives, which would end qualified immunity not just for law enforcement, but all government officials (Congresswoman Pressley). And Some states are also ending laws that act similarly to qualified immunity on the state level (The New Republic). Ending qualified immunity is a necessary step towards abolition.

RELATED ISSUES

12/15/2020 | Repeal stand your ground laws.

9/3/2020 | Support mental health response services.

8/26/2020 | Be an active bystander.

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Nicole Cardoza 4/13/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/13/21

Stop over-policing.

Happy Tuesday, yall. I’m tired of writing emails like these. I want our safety – our survival – to never be up for debate. I don’t know how many more times this needs to happen until we take abolition more seriously. Today's action items center on supporting the family of Daunte Wright and its community, but consider how you can proactively make similar investments for those impacted by the criminal justice system where you live.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Donate to the verified GoFundMe for the family of Daunte Wright. You can support his son and girlfriend with diapers and other in-kind supplies on this list.
Donate either in-kind or financial support to the Brooklyn Center community, which expects major businesses to be boarded up in advance of protests in the coming days.
Follow the work of Black Visions as they reimagine safety in MN.
Review the community-based alternatives to calling the police in your city to help offset the impact of over-policing.

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By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

On Sunday afternoon, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis (NPR). The shooting sparked tensions in the area as the community anticipates the outcome of the Derek Chauvin trial (NYTimes). At a press conference Monday morning, Brooklyn Center police chief Tim Gannon expressed that the police officer fired her gun instead of her Taser. This is a dubious claim, and it’s been used as an excuse before. You can learn more about those cases, and the difference between a Taser and a gun, here.

It’s also important to note that Tasers, too, can be deadly. In 2019, Reuters identified at least 1,081 U.S. deaths following the use of Tasers by law enforcement since they became commonly used in the early 2000s. Many of these are exacerbated by other uses of force like hand strikes or restraint holds. During their investigation, they found that police officers often aren’t trained to use Tasers properly, which increases the propensity for harm (Reuters).

A controversial example of this is “stop and frisk” initiatives, which allow police to stop and detain someone if they have “reasonable belief” that the person is, has been, or is about to be involved in a crime (NYTimes). After taking office in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg dramatically extended this program across NYC. Data indicated that crime decreased because of it, but that was later noted as an indirect correlation after the program was reduced. During that time, Black and Latino people were nine times as likely as white people to be stopped by the police but were no more likely to warrant an arrest (NYTimes). Another study found that only 6% of stops from 2009 to 2012 had resulted in an arrest, and 0.1% in a conviction for a violent crime. The majority of those stops caused undue stress and anxiety in the community. The practice was deemed unconstitutional in 2012 (The Guardian).

Predominantly Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over-policed when it comes to surveillance and social control, and under-policed when it comes to emergency services.

Daanika Gordon, an assistant professor of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences, for Tufts

A report by the Prison Policy Initiative found that Black residents were more likely to be stopped by police than white or Hispanic residents, both in traffic stops and street stops. And over 1 in 6 of Black respondents stated that they had similar interactions with police multiple times over the course of the year. During these interactions, police were twice as likely to use force against Black or Hispanic residents than white residents (Prison Policy).

And there are countless examples of these stops resulting in death. Philando Castile was murdered in 2016 at a routine traffic stop – and had been stopped at least 46 times before in his lifetime (Reason). Army Lt. Caron Nazario, who identifies as Black and Latino, was recently stopped, pepper-sprayed, and handcuffed during a routine traffic stop. The officers involved illegally pulled their weapons, threatened to murder him, and illegally searched the vehicle (NPR). The death of Sandra Bland was also caused by an unjust traffic stop back in 2015 (Vox).

Over-policing also causes harm by weakening trust – not just between police and civilians, but between each other, too. Over-policing creates a biased perception that certain community members are more likely to harm than others, which is racially bias and skewed. And when people lose faith in the system, they’re less likely to cooperate with it, which in turn, makes policing more ineffective as time goes on (Vox). There’s some beneficial work that can come out of this, like mutual aid and safety networks organized by the community as a more nurturing alternative. But it can also spark violent outrage and retaliation, which serves no one.

We must advocate to divest from policing in our communities. We can also do our part to invest in other community-based services and practice using them instead of calling in law enforcement. It might seem small, but that one less interaction could save someone's life.

RELATED ISSUES

12/15/2020 | Repeal stand your ground laws.

9/3/2020 | Support mental health response services.

8/26/2020 | Be an active bystander.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/12/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/12/21

End solitary confinement.

Last week, the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term) Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in NY (Bronx Times). This law establishes a series of limitations for the use of solitary confinement, particularly to protect vulnerable individuals from its adverse health effects (NY Senate). It also prevents the denial of essential services to those experiencing solitary confinement, requires due process for solitary confinement sentencing, and mandates the use of rehabilitative programming for those that experience it. This is a small but necessary step forward in reshaping the role of incarceration in our society.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. The passing of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act in New York last week is symbolic, especially considering the stories of Kalief Browder, Layleen Polanco, and so many others that have lost their lives after experiencing solitary confinement in NY state prisons. Today's email explains more about the harmful practices of solitary confinement and encourages us to learn more about the practice in our states.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Listen to first-hand accounts of those directly and indirectly impacted by solitary confinement, including Ian Manuel, Darlene McDay, Dyjuan Tatro, and Akeem Browder.
Research the status of solitary confinement in your state and act accordingly. Review the tools provided by the ACLU to help inform your advocacy efforts.
Support the work of Black & Pink, a national prison abolitionist organization dedicating to supporting the safety and liberation of the LGBTQIA2S+ and people living with HIV/AIDS impacted by the criminal justice system. You can make a donation or become a pen pal with someone incarcerated.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Solitary confinement is the most extreme form of isolation in a detention setting, and can include physical and social isolation in a cell for 22 to 24 hours per day. During this time, those in solitary confinement receive very little human interaction (and always behind a barrier), have no or little natural light, are stripped of any reading materials or entertainment, and are severely limited from communication to the outside world (ACLU).

There’s a misconception that this form of punishment is reserved for violent offenders. In reality, most of the individuals held in solitary confinement have a cognitive disability or mental health condition. Many others impacted are those unfairly penalized for a low-level infraction (ACLU). In four of the five facilities that participated in a study with the Vera Institute for Justice, low-level, nonviolent offenses were the most common infractions to result in solitary confinement (Vera).

A 2018 study found that men of color were much more likely to be placed in solitary confinement than white men. Although women, compared to men, are less likely to experience solitary confinement overall, they’re more likely to be sent there because of a low-level infraction (Vera). Prisoners between the ages of 18 and 36 were more likely to be segregated than were older individuals (ASCA). And incarcerated individuals that identify as LGBTQ+ are more likely to experience solitary confinement. A national survey of LGBTQ+ people that have been held in state or federal prisons found that 85% of respondents spent some time in solitary confinement during their time behind bars – some because it was “safer” than the abuse they experienced in general lockup (Solitary Watch). At least 80,000 people are held in “restricted housing” each day (Prisons Within Prisons: The Use of Segregation in the United States). A more recent study found that nearly 2,000 prisoners have been held in isolation for more than six years (NYAPRS).

Solitary confinement is detrimental to the health of those that experience it. Psychologically, the social deprivation caused by solitary confinement can rewire the brain, creating long-lasting neurological damage. Individuals who experience prolonged social lack can experience “social pain,” which the brain processes in the same way as physical pain. Young people, who are still in the formative stages of their physical and mental development, are particularly vulnerable to this. Individuals who experience solitary confinement can suffer from hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, and exacerbated pre-existing health conditions. It’s also directly linked to premature death. In New York State, the rate of suicide was 5x higher for those that experienced solitary confinement than the average prison population (Vera).

It also harms those that experience it indirectly. Family members of those held in solitary confinement experience added levels of duress when they couldn’t be in contact with their loved ones, which has lasting implications (Vera). Staff members often experience higher stress and anxiety levels when working in restrictive housing units (Vera).

And not only is it cruel, research indicates that it’s ineffective to change behavior. Studies show that the practice does not significantly reduce misconduct, violence, or recidivism. In fact, in some cases, it might increase the likelihood for people to re-offend, especially if they transition directly from solitary confinement to release (Supermax incarceration and recidivism). It’s also costly, calling for 2-3x the costs of housing an incarcerated individual in the general population (Solitary Watch). Facilities could instead leverage these resources for safer and effective forms of care.

There are alternative options that center the wellbeing of those incarcerated while maximizing safety for all parties involved. Alternative practices have included severely limiting the time of solitary confinement, divesting some of the time/energy in solitary confinement towards mental health care, and fostering social interaction in a more healthy and generative way. They also rally to end the use of solitary confinement entirely for young people, pregnant women, and those with severe mental health conditions. You can read specific tactics taken by five facilities in a partnership with Vera, and review the Restrictive Housing Assessment Tool they created to guide other facilities to adopt similar practices.

Solitary confinement is a public health issue that needs to be addressed. No one person’s wellbeing should be at the expense of the illusion of safety.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Last week, the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term) Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in NY (Bronx Times). This law establishes a series of limitations for the use of solitary confinement, particularly to protect vulnerable individuals from its adverse health effects (NY Senate).
Solitary confinement is detrimental to the health of those that experience it and their loved ones, and the staff that participates in it. It's also not proven to reduce levels of misconduct, violence, or
recidivism.
There are alternative options that center the wellbeing of those incarcerated while maximizing safety for all parties involved.

RELATED ISSUES

1/29/2021 | Abolish prison labor.

1/12/2021 | Abolish the death penalty.

1/6/2021 | End felony disenfranchisement.

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