Environmental Racism Panel: Spring 2021

Join Divest BU (SFJSF), CASARI, Action BU, and Uprooted & Rising BU on Wednesday April 7th, from 6:00-7:30 pm for a panel on Environmental Racism. Largely driven by anthropogenic fossil fuels emissions, the climate crisis degrades the global environment, disproportionately affecting those most vulnerable and least responsible for its effects. It is imperative that the conversation around the climate crisis includes environmental racism and white supremacy as they are one and the same.

The term environmental racism describes the form of systemic racism whereby BIPOC communities are “disproportionately burdened with health hazards through policies and practices that force them to live in proximity to sources of toxic waste such as sewage works, mines, landfills, power stations, major roads and emitters of airborne particulate matter.” African American civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis coined the term “environmental racism” in 1982, describing it as “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership of the ecology movements” (World Economic Forum, 2020).

We will discuss issues such as food sovereignty, energy democracy, gentrification, and indigenous rights with particular emphasis on how they affect the Boston community. These topics and more are all essential to combatting the current climate crisis, which disproportionately harms BIPOC communities. As the core of the climate crisis is extractive capitalism, which will always be a manifestation of white supremacy, a sustainable and just world requires anti-racist action.

Zoom link will be sent out on the day of the event!

Q&A questions can be sent beforehand to divestbu@gmail.com.

Speakers:

Omisha Chaitanya (Uprooted and Rising - Berklee College)

Kerry Labrador (Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy Activist)

Perri Meldon (Boston DSA’s Take Back the Grid)

Kerrina Williams (Divest Ed - Digital Disruption Organizer)

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/what-is-environmental-racism-pollution-covid-systemic/