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CW: Police violence

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John -

This year we have already been faced with the dark realities of police and
state violence against people of color.

In Tennessee, Tyre Nichols was on his way home from taking pictures of the
sunset and admiring the beauty of our earth when police officers pulled
him over, brutalized, and killed him.

In Georgia, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, also known as Tortuguita (Little
Turtle), was shot and killed by police for protesting and resisting the
building of “Cop City” – a city plan to build a police and military
training site in Weelaunee Forest.

Both Nichols and Teran deserved to live and to be treated with dignity and
respect. We’re left with complete rage and horror that their lives were
brutally and unnecessarily ended by a violent policing institution that is
rooted in white supremacy and prioritizes power and abuse over the needs
of our people.

This state-sponsored violence and over-policing disproportionately impacts
Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people – and it mirrors state-sponsored
police violence towards environmental defenders worldwide, especially in
the Global South.

Decades of environmental justice activism have shown that these same
communities also bear the burden of the climate crisis. While a select few
corporations and billionaires in the Global North profit, our communities
shoulder the harmful effects of fossil fuel extraction, pollution, and
their related health impacts.

As an organization and as a movement: we cannot say we are for climate
justice, without also rising up against state-sponsored violence.

Our work to achieve climate justice and end the era of fossil fuels must
be intersectional and focused on liberation.

There is no way to tackle the scale of the climate crisis without
addressing the systemic racism that fuels it or the violent institutions
willingly destroying our environment for training grounds to further more
unchecked abuses of power and violence.

There is no just recovery for climate, without addressing the systemic
harms of extraction that feed into a culture of anti-Blackness that
commits violence against Black and Brown communities.

Today and everyday, 350 is committed to building a movement rooted in
liberation for those most oppressed. None of us are free until we are all
free.

That is why we join our movement partners in calling for a complete
overhaul of public safety in the U.S.

At 350, we stand in solidarity with the demands of the Movement for Black
Lives, including the call to defund the police and pass legislation
inspired by the BREATHE Act – a comprehensive approach to public safety
that divests from brutal and discriminatory policing and invests in
community-based alternatives.

For more information on how we can make public safety actually safe for
the public and on the commonalities between global state-sponsored
violence and climate injustice, we recommend:

* [ [link removed] ]The Movement for Black Lives’ “BREATHE Act”
* [ [link removed] ]Global Witness’ “Decade of Defiance” report
* [ [link removed] ]Intersectional climate justice advocate Dany Sigwalt’s writings
* [ [link removed] ]Twitter thread from Yessenia Funes, Climate Director for Atmos Mag

As we recognize Black History Month, let’s also recognize and honor the
essential impact that Black communities and communities of color have had
on the climate justice movement.

In Solidarity,

JL Andrepont
Senior Policy Analyst
350.org

P.S. We encourage you to join or organize actions in your community to
#StopCopCity everywhere during the week of solidarity from February 19 -
26. For more information, you check out [ [link removed] ]the website and follow
[ [link removed] ]@defendATLforest on social media.




 




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