John -

Today we celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of
enslaved African Americans on June 19, 1865 — two and a half years after
the Emancipation Proclamation.

We celebrate Ms. Opal Lee, who, at the age of 89, walked from her home in
Fort Worth, TX to Washington, D.C., in an effort to get Juneteenth named a
national holiday. The [ [link removed] ]Juneteenth Legacy Project reports that she
“traveled two and a half miles each day to symbolize the two and a half
years that Black Texans waited between when Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, on Jan. 1, 1863, abolishing slavery, and the
day that message arrived in Galveston, where Black people were still
enslaved, on June 19, 1865.”

Juneteenth is a poignant reminder that oppressive systems can still be
upheld, even after they’re formally dismantled. Slavery ended on paper
years before it ended in practice — and even then, anti-Blackness, white
supremacy, and structural racism simply took on new forms, further
entrenching themselves within our culture and systems.

The era of slavery was followed by decades of racial subordination, most
violently through what the [ [link removed] ]Equal Justice Initiative describes as
“racial terror lynchings.” According to the EJI, terror lynchings peaked
between 1880 and 1940 and claimed over 4,000 lives between 1877 and 1950.

Environmental racism is one of many facets of white supremacy that
continues to this day, both within the US and globally. And while many
white climate activists might agree that climate denial is racist, it is
much less common and much less comfortable to confront the work that
remains to dismantle white supremacy within the climate movement. This
includes interrogating the structures that non-Black climate leaders and
white-led institutions benefit from and perpetuate.

So while the 350 US team is off from work today, we have grounded
ourselves in this hard-fought federal holiday this way:

It is a day off for Black team members to spend the day however it feels
good to them.

But we have called for a day on for non-Black team members to interrogate
how they’re contributing to and existing within systems that are rooted in
anti-Blackness, and how they can hold themselves and each other
accountable to dismantling white supremacy 365 days a year.

We firmly believe that working to dismantle white supremacy is a condition
of membership in the climate movement. With that in mind, we’re sharing
these articles and resources with our supporters:

* MSNBC – [ [link removed] ]‘Climate denial is racist'
* Atmos – [ [link removed] ]‘Climate denial’s racist roots'
* Brookings Institute – [ [link removed] ]‘Environmental racism and the struggle for
climate justice’
* TIME – [ [link removed] ]‘Why the Larger Climate Movement Is Finally Embracing the
Fight Against Environmental Racism’

At 350.org, we are calling out the white supremacist work culture that
permeates the nonprofit world, including our own organization, with
sustained internal trainings on anti-racism and anti-bias work, and we are
calling in our network with upcoming political education webinars that
will highlight how the climate movement must intersect and align with the
racial, political, and social movements that have and continue to lead the
way to liberation for us all.

Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

In solidarity,

Team 350


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