Statement on Race, Climate, and Justice

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***: June 6, 2020

Contact: Arielle Swernoff | (646) 450-5461 | arielle@nyrenews.org 

Web: @NYRenews | www.nyrenews.org

Statement on Race, Climate, and Justice

Albany, NY — NY Renews, the 200+ member coalition of environmental justice, climate, labor, faith, and multi-issue community organizations, released the following statement on the Black Lives Matter uprising and continued violence and white supremacy against Black people. This statement was drafted by NY Renews staff members Geovaira Hernández and Raya Salter.

“NY Renews stands in solidarity with Black people and communities that are being terrorized by police violence. We demand justice for George Floyd, a beloved Black man who was brutally murdered and publicly lynched by the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25. We demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a beloved Black woman who was murdered in her home by the Louisville Metro Police Department on March 13. We demand justice for Tony McDade, a beloved Black trans man shot and killed by the Tallahassee Police Department on May 27. We say the name of Ahmaud Arbery, a beloved Black man who was murdered by white supremacists while jogging on February 23, and whose murderers evaded arrest for months at the recommendation of the Brunswick Georgia District Attorney's Office. We mourn them, and countless others who have unjustly been taken from us, their families, and their communities.

As a climate justice coalition of over 200 organizations across NY State, we stand in solidarity with our Black members, organizations and communities. We know that there can be no climate justice without racial justice, and we must work together to dismantle the white supremacy, militarism and systemic racism that continues to harm Black and Brown communities. The flood of resources that have long poured into highly militarized local police departments across the country must be diverted and redistributed towards social, economic, health, environmental, and educational development for Black, Brown, and poor communities.These are prerequisites to achieving true environmental justice.

We are now witnessing the direct result of this militarization. Police, using flashbang grenades and other weapons of war, are assaulting our people, who have taken to the streets in protest of white supremacy and police brutality. While the NYPD attacks peaceful protestors in New York City at will, while Buffalo Police brutally attack our allies who stand against oppression, while the Trump administration threatens to deploy the United States military into our cities and communities, it is our duty to understand that the liberation of any individual community is tied to our collective liberation.

The anti-Black militarism, terrorism, mass incarceration and police brutality we are experiencing today represents the ongoing enforcement of white supremacy, slavery and colonization in our lives. This land now called the United States was originally stolen through acts of genocide against Indigenous peoples to serve as the engine for industrialization and resource extraction in the name of empire. Those acts and systems were and remain the direct cause of the climate crisis, which disproportionately harms frontline communities.  

This legacy continues to create devastating economic, health and environmental inequalities for Black, Brown and poor people. Climate crisis burns our world as Black and Brown people and communities continue to be policed and murdered. The fight against resource extraction and climate crisis is also the fight against white supremacy, colonialism and resulting systemic inequalities. 

Inequality means that Black and Brown communities are not resourced to meet ongoing and escalating health and environmental needs. These include, but are not limited to, Covid-19, extreme heat and hurricanes and other ecological disasters. Inequality also means that those resources are concentrated among the few, who perpetuate resource extraction. The climate crisis can only be defeated when these structural inequalities and injustices are righted, and the root causes of extractivism are eradicated. This means restoring and resourcing Black, Brown and poor people and communities, centered in self-determination.

As a coalition rooted in the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, we insist on centering Black, Brown and Indigenous people, communities and leadership in the fight for climate justice, who must speak for themselves. 

As those most affected fight for their lives and collective liberation, concentrated and organized white supremacist power combats those efforts. White people who consider themselves allies must challenge themselves and their fellow whites to acknowledge, understand, and deeply work towards dismantling systems of oppression in every way possible. 

Whether it’s taking to the streets right now, physically protecting Black and Brown people from militarized police, providing jail support, fighting to defund and divest our police forces, drafting and pushing truly informed anti-racist policy and infrastructure or investing money into frontline communities, it is time to step up and fight for Black lives and the right to a good life for all people. 

We want to live, we want to breathe, we want to be… there is no liberation without collective liberation. So, in this moment, in the words of freedom fighter Jafet Robles, we ask you: what do you want to be remembered for?”

About NY Renews: 

NY Renews is a coalition of over 200 environmental, justice, faith, labor, and community groups, and the force behind the nation’s most progressive climate law, New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The coalition fights for good jobs and climate justice in New York State. 

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