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Voice-over: This is The Takeaway with MHP.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Climate justice is a movement recognizing the negative effects of climate change on people of color and marginalized communities. Climate justice advocates fight for equitable solutions to defend our planet and the people living on it, all people.
The Climate Justice Alliance is a coalition of dozens of local environmental organizations, and in their most recent annual report, the group outlines some of the key ways organizations and climate activists have worked to influence corporations, change laws, and invest in people who are fighting for equity in our skies, our water, our land, and for our bodies.
In the past year, that work included preventing the repowering of a gas plant in New York City, and pushing for legislation in Massachusetts to inhibit fossil fuel projects, and create clean energy employment opportunities.
We spoke with climate justice activist, Elizabeth Yeampierre, who is executive director of Uprose, Brooklyn's oldest Puerto Rican community-based organization. Elizabeth is also co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.
Elizabeth Yeampierre: We know that frontline communities and bodies have deep and long impacts of environmental racism, and we often say that as descendants of colonialism, enslavement, and extraction, that we can easily connect the dots between the root causes of climate change and the impacts on our body and our local environment. Also, the visionary systemic change that's required to move us away from the extractive economy.
We don't think that you can talk about climate change without talking about justice, without talking about racial justice and centering it. Literally, we're talking about takings, extractions, both of our body and of our land, and climate change is the angry child of that long history of abuse.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Yet, for so long, perhaps even on many radio shows, although not this one on Earth Day, people will, in fact, talk about climate justice without mentioning or discussing in any centering way issues of race and racial injustice.
Elizabeth Yeampierre: The truth is that those that are going to be most impacted are the ones least responsible for creating climate change, and that the biggest challenge to addressing climate change, in my view, is privilege. We are literally saying that decision-making that we don't lead a solutions that are not led by the front line are literally an example of racism. We're going to be the majority by 2042. The majority of the children being born right now are children that are Black, Indigenous, children of color, and we are now facing recurrent extreme weather events, and it is our communities that are being desperately impacted.
You saw that with Hurricane Katrina. You saw it with Hurricane Maria, with Superstorm Sandy, Andrew. We can go through a long list of how all of this extreme weather is impacting our communities harder than anyone else.
Melissa Harris-Perry: What can you tell us about the most recent report issued by the Climate Justice Alliance?
Elizabeth Yeampierre: The Climate Justice Alliance is this gathering of frontline leaders from Puerto Rico to Guam, and Brooklyn to the Bay. It's all of the folks in our communities in Detroit, in New Orleans, in Indian country, California, that are really working towards a just transition. What's beautiful about the report is it really captures how we are firmly rooted in reparations, rematriation, and ecological regeneration. It showcases examples of all of our groups all over the country that are doing transformative work. The work is complex, and it's rooted in deep democracy and community, and it is happening all over the country.
The report really showcases what is possible, and how we're holding that space, and how in addition to doing that, moving away from fossil fuel extraction, rejecting false solutions. We're also accountable to the front line. We come from there. We live there, and we're accountable to each other and to our community.
Melissa Harris-Perry: We think about transformation rather than resilience, so not just bouncing back but bouncing forward. What would an April 22nd day look like for you in 50 more years? What would Earth Day have been transformed into?
Elizabeth Yeampierre: Well, we say that Earth Day is a day, and for us, this is life. This is what we're living every day. Our bodies are literally the recipients of all this long history of toxic exposure.
I can tell you that in Brooklyn where I'm based, that there is what's called a significant maritime industrial area, and it is an industrial sector that historically has been responsible for asthma, upper respiratory disease, a lot of the health disparities that our communities have. These industrial zones are the same all over the country, and so from an urban perspective, from a densely urban perspective, these now become the opportunity for building for climate adaptation mitigation, and that world resilience.
There are places where we could see the emergence of renewable energy, food sovereignty, and we learned from COVID that food was going to be an issue. We were able to feed each other, but we never thought about what happens when the food supply is disrupted as a result of recurrent extreme weather events. As food sovereignty becomes a major issue for that, how do we use space so that we could create local livable economies of different scales so that people don't only survive but that they thrive. That looks different in different places, so we know how in an industrial working waterfront community in Brooklyn, what that could look like.
We have mapped the entire neighborhood so that we have a plan for decarbonization, right down to people's backyards, and how they can connect them, so that they can share and barter food, how they can use their rooftops, what different blocks can look like. That's what it looks like in an urban community like ours, but if you're talking about Kentucky, and West Virginia, or you're out in the southwest, those solutions look different, and the people who live there and who are impacted, and who have been historically exposed to all of these environmental abuses, they know what needs to happen and what their priorities are.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Elizabeth Yeampierre is executive director of Uprose. Thank you for joining us today.
Elizabeth Yeampierre: Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honor being in the space with you. Thank you so much.
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