Is saving the earth humanity's common cause?
A note from our Project Director
I do a lot outside of Chronicling Resistance, and sometimes, my worlds overlap. Last month, I spoke on a panel at the Women Church Convergence Conference on the question, "How can equality flourish in a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-generational church?" Though the organizers asked me to speak because of work outside of Chronicling Resistance, I found lessons from our listening sessions and materials to be significant to the panel discussion.
One panelist at Women Church Convergence argued the Roman Catholic Church could foster equality within itself and throughout the world by promoting more action to stop climate change. She said the fierce natural disasters happening as a result of climate change have a disproportionate impact on poor people and people of color--the very people who are the majority of Catholics. So if the Church is going to encourage equality, couldn't all Catholics--no matter their race, gender, class, or nationality--be doing more about an issue that's doing more damage to the majority of congregants?
The panelist's position sounded familiar. Chronicling Resistance has conducted a few listening sessions with History Making Productions to discuss themes of resistance within their film, Sisters in Freedom. At the last screening, audience members suggested that the unity across racial lines depicted in the film happened because the women had a common cause: abolition. They felt that while similar alliances are possible today, they're unlikely, because what is today's common cause?
During the panel discussion, I brought up that listening session. I said that while the possibility of not having a planet to live on at all is terrifying, I wasn't sure climate change was the cause that would rally everyone. At least, I'm not sure it could rally everyone equally.
The question of who cares about what often comes down to this: who thinks they have a dog in the fight? People sometimes have to see themselves in the fight, see how that issue links with other issues they feel more directly every day. Say, for example, a woman of color living in poverty is fighting cancer and is aware of or active in organizations that fight for universal healthcare and a living minimum wage. Environmental justice may not be on her radar, even though her cancer is the result of cities caring so little about poor people and poor people of color that they allow companies to dispose of or burn toxic chemicals near her home. Surviving cancer and feeding herself or her family likely will remain her priorities, but making these connections opens up avenues for coalition building.
And coalition building is a prominent theme in the blog post we highlight in this month's newsletter, "Nancy Shukaitis: The Unexpected Activist." Read it. It's apropos for Earth Day.
 --Mariam Williams, Project Director
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