Dear Allison,

Yesterday, the Sierra Club published a post on their Insider blog – “Yep, We’re Too White”. It’s a very short post highlighting that last week, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson called for more “diversity” in environmental movements, and you, Sierra Club President Allison Chin, responded that the Club is increasing it’s diversity, and that your election as the first Asian-American president is proof positive of the changes.

My friend Bryant Terry, who, like me, is one of many leaders of color re-imagining sustainability and the relationship of ALL people to the planet, brought to my attention the comments section following the post. It’s pretty devastating stuff…lots of folks who think people of color aren’t (and won’t) do their part for the sustainability of the planet, who have no real understanding of how interconnected all people are, who can’t understand how decades long economic crisis in our communities makes it difficult to prioritize natural habitats over the home habitat, who seem perfectly comfortable with a majority-white environmental movement in a minority-white world, or who just seem really miffed about being called white.

I don’t have much to say to all of those folks, cause I will admit, the Sierra Club is not where I do my work.

But, perhaps, I can speak to you Allison, as a woman of color leader in a traditionally white environmental organization, in an overwhelmingly white environmental movement. From my own experience I offer this: Please ignore the hateful comments, and the divestment of hateful people from your organization.

Years ago, I wrote a piece about the changes needed in the environmental movement. I was just beginning to learn about the environmental justice analysis at that point, and was mostly upset that large scale traditional environmental organizations didn’t even seem to be trying. I was absolutely speaking about organizations like the Sierra Club.

The leadership, the members, the outreach – no one was connecting my life, and the real issues of my community, to the survival of the planet. It was planet first, people later.

Now I see further proof of why the change is so hard. The majority of the critiques that you are already getting for any attempt to evolve the Sierra Club focus on two things:

1) that people of color don’t really care about nature and why should white people bend over to include them in saving the environment, or sharing a healthier planet? and/or

2) that it is racist to even notice a lack of diversity.

This kind of thinking is as scary as it is sad. To start with the second point – it is important for Sierra Club members to understand why a group like theirs would consider being diverse. It would be easier to talk about that if folks in the traditional environmental movement learned how to hear that they as a body are too white, and not to take that as a personal critique of them as people, or even of whiteness, but as a political critique around who holds power and has privilege and makes decisions in this country.

The major missing piece in the environmental puzzle, still, is the understanding that we are one species on one planet. No matter how much we argue over superiority, inferiority, accountability, priorities – at a certain point we ALL have to face the reality that our existence is interdependent at the root, and we cannot resolve the issue of our collective survival in silos – be they separated by race, class, or any other lines. This means we have to be in the conversation, together, pushing and dragging and loving each other along.

Sister, do not be deterred. I was blessed when I came to head The Ruckus Society, because the majority of members and donors already recognized that the environmental movement needed more than mere inclusion and a variety of races at the table – it needed leadership and investment from directly impacted communities. It needed white leaders to take a step back while leaders of color took several steps forward – and with all that stepping we still only had a small chance at some equality, because the long-term legacy of systemic, structural racism and class-ism are so deeply rooted within all of us.

I was blessed because a majority of folks at Ruckus already realized that leadership from directly impacted communities isn’t a matter of identity politics, or social justice thinking intruding upon environmentalism…it is a necessary step in destroying the wall between these movements which isn’t allowing us to see the real solutions. We lost some donors for sure, but the majority of them understood that inequality is not an outcome of climate crisis, it is the cause.

We understand that you can’t just protect one little piece of land and think the birds and trees there will be safe, while everything else around it is destroyed in order to serve the needs of people who are constantly being told they need more of everything. We have been selling the entire world an American dream that is about material, instead of community. Now, we need to shift our priorities, and learn to live in community with each other. We need to all be on that message – not looking for easy, entrepreneurial solutions, but all of us taking the message to our communities that we have to evolve, we have to accept each other and protect each other, take leadership from each other and learn to live in new ways. That solution has to be leadership from every kind of people, in every kind of organization.

Even – especially – those organizations like Sierra Club which are already passionate about the planet. It is time to be passionate enough to see the human ecosystem, and invest in the health of the whole. I know all of your members won’t see that right away, and some of them never will. But the steps you are taking are right, and your leadership in this direction, at this moment is desperately needed. Don’t back down, don’t apologize, don’t acquiesce. Hold the mirror up to the Sierra Club, and transform it.

As James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Thank you for facing the change needed in your organization, and in the environmental movement.

Stand strong!

Yours truly,
Adrienne Maree Brown
Executive Director
The Ruckus Society
www.ruckus.org

(cross-posted from It’s Getting Hot in Here)

During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” – appealing to the bank to pull its massive investments in Alberta tar sands projects. Supported by RAN, the Ruckus Society, and their Indigenous People’s Power Project, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN activists, swarming entrances to ensure every RBC employee heard our appeal Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to stop bankrolling the tar sands. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.

RBC is the ATM of the Tar Sands.

They are a leading investor in what has been called the dirtiest project on Earth and is one of the greatest social and ecological injustices of our time. Unless they’re stopped by grassroots pressure, oil companies will transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone – complete with lakes full of toxic waste that are so big that you can see them from outer space. Tar sands projects poison First Nations Communities, pollute precious water resources, kill wildlife, and are the single biggest contributor to global warming from Canada.

At the same time as the banner was being unfurled, thousands of RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC offer leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)

You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching).

Check out ongoing news coverage that is just starting, from Bloomberg, CBC, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Canadian Press, Daily Kos, Financial Post, Canada.com, Brandon Sun, Stockhouse, KBS Radio, New Brunswick Business Journal, AM 1150, Canadian Business, Vancouver Sun, and much more.

See lots of photos of the action here.

(more…)

We’re back from the Localize This! Action Camp, and already seeing some of the fruits of our labor!

Responding to the call of Backbone Campaign and other local islanders, we brought the Ruckus crew out to Vashon Island in Washington’s Puget Sound July 13-18, for a week of direct action trainings.  In addition to the standard action camp workshops Ruckus has used over the last 13 years, this camp included a track in kayak safety and water blockades, and Backbone held down the creative visuals track.

While folks came from all over the U.S. and Canada – including many from indigenous communities through our IP3 project – there was a strong showing of local Vashon folks, and with good reason:  local islanders are gearing up to fend off a Japanese multinational corporation named Glacier Northwest, who is trying to turn neighboring Maury Island into a gravel mine.  (Check out this great video about the training that aired on Seattle’s King 5 News on July 15!)

Over the course of the week, in between direct action theory and prep workshops, media and messaging, campaign action strategy, and tactical trainings in climbing, blockades on land and water, and visuals, discussions ensued about strategy for both the local Vashon campaign, as well as campaigns from participants’ local campaigns that they’re working on back home.

Local struggles varied across issue-focus, but also intertwined in their overarching theme of environmental justice for the sustainability of land and communities.  And it was clear that we were all there for one reason:  to learn how to take DIRECT ACTION to win our struggles.

Now, just ten days after the camp’s final action role-play day, two indigenous women from Canada who attended Localize This! climbed Royal Bank of Canada’s flagpoles outside their headquarters in Toronto this morning, and hung a banner appealing to the wife of RBC’s CEO to help stop the Tar Sands extraction project in Alberta.  (Click here to read more about the action, which was evidence of local indigenous participation in Rainforest Action Network’s tar sands divestment campaign against RBC).

This is just one example of how Ruckus trainings lead to action, and build the movement’s capacity to WIN.

Keep your eyes open for news about Vashon island’s “Mosquito Fleet” taking to the water to block the gravel mine!  The company could start construction as early as August 15th.

just did a little ruckus consultation at the Allied Media Conference to generate ideas. to come up with good action plans (in a nutshell) you need a long-term vision, mobilizing message, know your action capacity, determine your greatest possible local impact and create an action plan! here’s some of what we came up with:

- liberate zionist graphics to spread pro-palestinian message
- a fashion show in front of places that sell zionist shoes to say “put yourself in palestinian shoes”
- a pledge for folks to sign!
- informative bookmark slipped into israel travel guides (like fodors, lonely planet)
- DIY stickers
- hand-outs in front of stores like trader joe’s and whole foods to educate folks and ask for deshelving of israeli products
- thumbtacks strategically stuck into products like feta cheese to let the air out
- moving frozen foods to other parts of the store where they will melt
- bring it back to your organization and community and educate everyone you know
- build with unlikely allies (with healthcare organizers that hospitals are being bombed with your tax money, education organizers to understand that money is being redirected from us schools to bomb palestinian schools)
- get people of influence to speak out
- have professor reeducation day where professors don’t sign on but do commit to spending a portion of class educating about palestine
- deshelving in bookstores (moving books around, hiding behind shelves)
- creating a how-to BDS video
removing the shelf tags after removing products in store so folks don’t notice as quickly that it’s missing
- watch videos by max blumenthal
- organize boycott of zionist artists’ shows
- artists refuse to share stages with zionist artists and publicize why
- dress up as birthright tourguides and the teach palestinian freedom info!

hope to do more ruckus training with BDS on how to actually pull off these actions.

everyone in the room committed to doing an action!

adrienne maree here just off of vashon island, where localize this action camp is in full effect.

10 years after organizers gathered for globalize this (and went on to be a part of the masses that rocked the battle in seattle), we found ourselves back up in the beautiful northwest with a new call. localize this is all about how we take our action skills and apply them to the communities where we and our families live.

the host community is up against multi-national Glacier, who want to destroy the area with a massive mine. participants and trainers came from all over the US and as far as the tar sands in canada. we started off the week with vashon folks sharing what they are up against, and then everyone else thinking about how they would localize the training they received this week when they got home.

then, we tried on a new approach for setting the camp culture. we wanted to address that there were folks there from a variety of experience levels in terms of work around anti-oppression and/or decolonization. the model we unveiled is based on our action framework (“a call to how to ACT”).

first we presented a 5-step perspective on moving towards equity.

1. OTHERING: many folks start with viewing folks who aren’t the same race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc as “other”. that “other”-ing can manifest in many ways – superiority, enslaving, hating, fearing, suspecting, inferiority.

2. EXOTIFICATION: when an appreciation of some aspect of a person or group of people you see as “other” develops, and becomes a desire. this can manifest as wanting to own it, have it, control it, bed it, eat it, visit it (within a safe bubble – think resorts in “exotic” locations).

3. TOKENIZATION: when logic, self-interest, good intentions or force makes an individual or organization realize that they want/need to have representation of the “other”.  this manifests in obvious and/or subtle ways, such as having one (insert black/female/gay/etc) friend, one (insert poor/impacted) board member, or one (differently-abled/trans/immigrant) staff member.

4. EMULATION: wanting to actually put on the behavior, dress, music, names, spiritual practices, political struggles or culture of the “other”. this is deeper than a visit – this is preferring the “other” above your own identity, and believing you have the privilege to just opt-in to the experiences of the “other”. this is most harmful when it manifests as an individual leaving behind their own communities and families and immersing themselves in the communities which their historic ancestors have negatively impacted, taking up space and resources and not respecting or understanding boundaries. what’s deep here is that individuals involved in emulation are often of the belief that they are showing love and respect for the “other”.

5. EQUITY/EQUALITY: when there is equal opportunity to resources, and fairness and justice in terms of decision making. this is a liberated state of mind that allows you and all the people you interact with to exist outside of constant reaction and struggle, and to evolve. this can manifest in respectful sharing of history and culture, deep appreciation of a whole individual (meaning their complex multiple-identities, not just the surface view).in the long-run, this could manifest a world in which sustainability and self-determination are possible for everyone.

i would go so far as to say active equity is the deepest form of love, and to approach the world from a space of equality and equity the most liberated state. i’m not there yet, but i am working on it.

the easiest way to explain the work that i’ve been able to come up with is the ACT model.

A = awareness. being aware of all of who you are in relation to any group you are in, who else is in the group, and the ways in which you can be part of the mainstream (feeling comfortable, normal, understood, powerful), and the ways in which you are part of the margins (uncomfortable, different, misunderstood, powerless). training for change has a great exercise for this which i encourage you to seek out. we asked folks to think this through for themselves with one other person. the first time folks think and speak through this is usually powerful. many people of color, for example, spend our lives being called “minorities” and fighting for resources – it’s powerful to think of all the ways our culture is shaping the mainstream, the spaces in which we are actually the most powerful people in the room. it’s deep to acknowledge we are the world majority, and have been divided and conquered so successfully. it also helps to hear another person share, and realize just how trained our minds are to put people into boxes based on our perceptions, rather than staying open to their actual experiences and history.

C = communication. learning to communicate clearly, powerfully, at the right time, and from your own experience is a lifelong process. but the better you get at being able to actually communicate from a place of awareness, and understand how you want to be communicated to, the more powerful you can be as a member of your community both within your community, and when representing outside of your community. we had the participants get into affinity groups and think about assumptions and offenses often communicated TO their groups, and how other groups in the room could really communicate well with them for the temporary community of the week.

T = truth-n-reconciliation, both as a formal and informal process. we are going to post more about this process in the near future, but the depth of relationship and equity possible when both parties can bring their truth into the room, reconcile differences and past wrongdoings, and pre-empt future offenses and oppression – that depth is astounding, and illuminates what sustainable and self-determined communities really look like.

this is all old knowledge, old growth knowledge, wisdom that already exists in communities and is just waiting to be remembered.

a new friend, logan, then offered a consent process that helps to create a safe space around sex and sexuality – really important when we have folks going through very physical and interactive trainings.

after that, we got in the introduction to nonviolent direct action, direct action planning, media and messaging, and the three tracks.

that’s when i had to take off, because ruckus is playing a major role in the allied media conference (july 16-19 – www.alliedmediaconference.org) and the u.s. social forum process (see post below for more on that!).

send love to the participants and trainers and kitchen and volunteers and visions working on vashon right now!

Excerpt:

The first US Social Forum was in Atlanta, Ga, in the summer of 2007. This is where I and my organization entered the process – the Ruckus Society got involved late in the planning, mostly to support on the big opening march, and security. It wasn’t easy to get to the planning table – partially because the folks working on it were overwhelmed, and partially because there was an intentional effort to have grassroots, basebuilding organizations at the center of the process.

It would be impossible to over emphasize the importance of having grassroots organizers in the center of the process – as most national (and international) processes and organizations are still led by a privileged class – privileged through education, race, or resources. The attempt to invert the power structure, locally or globally, requires putting shared values for bottom-up, grassroots leadership as a top priority.

The first forum was declared an overwhelming success, with estimates that 15,000 people came together for workshops, panels, plenaries, marches, parties and relationship building. It was also a learning process in every possible way.

Now, as we build towards the second forum, there has been an effort to cull the lessons from the first go round.

Read more…

the world is in a particular state of uproar right now (or perhaps, communication advances allow us to be more and more aware of the uproars happening all the time), with major uprisings recently (and still) in peru, in iran, in honduras.

these uprisings are for very different reasons, but there are connections between them. in each case people are taking to the streets to exert the power of people against the unaccountable behavior of their governments. in each case, the u.s. is playing a role – be it directly by training and supplying the arms to the unaccountable government, or by creating and spreading trade practices that leave millions in economic devastation, or by changing twitter avatars to green and jumping feet first into calling for democracy in a region with a history most of us aren’t well-versed in.

the politics are complex, to say the least, and its nearly impossible to be well-informed about all of it while still maintaining a job and a life.

what i want to call attention to is the spirit of uprising, the cultural difference that exists between masses in other nations and masses in the u.s.

when there is an injustice – a fraudulent election, a coup – the instinct to take to the streets and stop business as usual is natural. in the u.s., we have been trained to divert that instinct into online petitions, punditry, coffee shop debates and internalized angst.

the results we get suit the effort we put into it. change inches along here, and we get ecstatic about steps that may not even be taking us where we want to go – compromised policies, individualistic elections, even increased solidarity amongst communities being slowly killed off.

hopefully this isn’t a dramatization of our situation, just an observance.

what will it take to set up a political condition here, in the u.s., that normalizes action, the kind of action that doesn’t compromise our visions?

obviously first we must have visions, name them, share them, develop and pursue visions which do no harm (or as the tewa women said at Deep Change, do LOVE).

then, we have to deeply understand the organic process of action. actions don’t work because we figure out what worked once and then repeat it again and again. actions work when a large enough body of people feel that action is one of the tools at their disposal, and understand that a unique action suited to the circumstances is the only option for advancing a negotiation.

most of the people i know, when they see an election stolen (one way to exact a coup), get sad and then keep it moving, doing the bare minimum, and wonder why nothing changes.

i look around the world at people’s movements, engage in processes like the World Social Forum process, with deep humility. There is no – “be democratic the way WE are” – in my solidarity. There is a lot of – “when will we who are impacted and abused in this country lose our fear, and be the way YOU are?”

democracy is only as useful as the participation of the people, and i actually see it happening now (in a truer form than we currently experience it in the u.s.) every where i look.