“No matter what they say now about highways and hospitals and penicillin, whatever was done in those colonies was not done for the natives. And the Belgians may not know this, but the natives do. What happened was very simple.” “You cannot walk into a country and stay there as long as the Europeans did and dig coal and iron and gold out of the earth and use it for yourself…By and by, it’s inevitable that someone will make a connection between the machines you have and the power you have.” James Baldwin, 1961 Much attention is paid to the . . .
Climate Change
Reject Statehood for Puerto Rico
The island of Puerto Rico has been under the direct control of a foreign power for over 400 years. Puerto Ricans have seen their freedoms violently stripped away and their natural resources privatized, yet in the face of this brutal colonization, Puerto Rico is still left standing, flag waving proudly , screaming, “¡VIVE PUERTO RICO LIBRE!”. As Puerto Rico continues to feel the brunt of frequent climate disasters, we must debunk the lie that further colonization through statehood would provide more liberties, aid, or protections from the United States. To suggest that statehood would create these securities is not only . . .
Justice for Jackson Mississippi
Jackson, Mississippi is currently suffering through an unprecedented water crisis. After decades of systematic and intentional neglect due to environmental racism, capital flight and deindustrialization, the city’s water system has collapsed. . . .
How Environmental Racism Perpetuates Over Policing
In 2022 New York City budgeted 10.7 billion dollars to the NYPD, continuing its presence as the largest police force in the United States, while allocating a mere 1.6 billion to the Department of Environmental Protection in a blatant act of ignorance to what real issues are facing New Yorkers. Predominantly Black Latine communities like the Bronx, Harlem, and central Brooklyn as well as the homeless population in New York, which is a combined 90% Black and Latine, are simultaneously on the forefront of inhuman policing policies and climate disasters. It’s of course no coincidence that these communities and populations . . .
The Earth Remembers What We Did, Let’s Move to Address the Wrongs
Higher rates of drought, deforestation, unpredictable rainfall and more dangerous storms are among the stark indicators of a strained ecosystem. In Nigeria, people are generally aware of the recent rain seasons being too ‘early’ or the cold harmattan winds unusually blowing long into the first three months of the year. When we consider the UN sustainable goals (SDGs), the Paris Climate Accords, or the Kyoto Protocols, it is clear to see that there is more effort to cater to capitalist interests as opposed to holding environmentally destructive corporations responsible for their actions. Consider that the highest polluters like the multinational . . .
Unreading Colonial Food Systems
Originally published in the August 2021 Out of Print Newsletter by the Noname Reads Book Club ︎︎Like many people who went through U.S. public school systems, I am intimately familiar with institutional food; canned vegetables, square cut pizza, frozen & highly processed mystery meats, syrupy fruit cups, all of that. Institutional food is low-cost, low in nutritional value, and arguably pretty gross. I remember asking our school superintendent why our cafeteria wasn’t able to purchase food from the vibrant community of local farmers. He told me that our school was bound up in a large multi-year contract with a number . . .
Do or Die: Black Liberation and the Climate Apocalypse
The history of the European World, the history of the West, is a history of colonization and exploitation. Wherever they go, destruction, dehumanization, and degradation follow. As Indigenous and African civilizations have shown us, we are the land, and the land is a part of us. When the land dies, we do as well. . . .
Climate Change or Climate Control: Understanding Planetary Conditions Under Man
“While the earth is enslaved, none of us is free. While the earth is ‘a nigger,’ … so are we.” Alice Walker, Everything is a Human Being “My turn to state an equation: colonization = ‘thingification.’” Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism This piece looks at the issue of ‘climate control’ versus ‘climate change’ in the hood. There is separation in our communities around what exactly has caused the rampant, more severe, more frequent superstorms, earthquakes, monsoons, and wildfires we are witnessing across the planet. Some people embrace the idea of climate change, which typically states that levels of wasteful overconsumption . . .