Why race and class matter to the environmental movement

[Kire]

Who You Calling Dead, White Man?
Activists of color argue "Death of Environmentalism" misses the mark

John Muir was no friend to African Americans and Native Americans, so many of today's environmentalists don't want to stand on his shoulders, argue Michel Gelobter and other activists of color in a feisty response to the ever-dubitable essay "The Death of Environmentalism." The environmental movement drew much from the fight for black power and racial justice, but fails to acknowledge its debt, just as "Death" fails to acknowledge the importance of class and race in the movement, they say. In a separate critique, environmental-justice campaigner Ludovic Blain contends that "Death" exposes the many failings of "elite, white American environmentalism" while ignoring the many successes of women, organizers of color, and local groups not just in the U.S. but around the world.

More: http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2005/05/27/gelobter-soul/index.html?source=weekly

[newswolf56]

1. Environmentalists hate the working class

From the linked article: Many environmentalists of color admire the mainstream movement's goals, but they also know firsthand that social justice is routinely ignored in the mainstream movement's decision making.

The same bitter knowledge is true of anyone with a working-class consciousness who is therefore committed to economic justice. The hostility of environmentalists to the working class -- especially to loggers and miners and commercial fishers and truck drivers -- is legendary. But it goes far beyond that: it is vindictive hostility to an entire class, an extension of the class warfare that grew out of the Vietnam conflicts, precisely the hatefulness that drove so many blue-collar folk into the Republican Party. It is also a classic example of how the establishment keeps us at one another's throats as it loots the entire planet.

Indeed I have tasted the environmentalist venom myself: nothing is more infuriating than being lectured by some obscenely pampered, super-rich, infinitely arrogant, smugly self-righteous college kid on how "you must learn to live with less" -- this when you're 42 and your employer has just gone bankrupt, thereby reducing you to working for minimum wage.

Believe me, my political sympathies (and more importantly my spirituality) are all very strongly with the cause of environmentalism, but for just the reasons described above -- that "live with less" encounter still infuriates me 23 years after the fact -- I find environmentalists themselves as bad as the worst Republicans in their Marie Antoinette indifference to economic and racial realities. Moreover, I suspect I am very much in the majority: hence the death of environmentalism itself.

[Ignoramus]

3. Hating the working class is not compatible with environmentalism

Wow it's pretty sad that the 2 posts I've seen so far that are about strategy have almost no responses.

The cited article cited the death of environmentalism article, which I hadn't read before. That is an excellent article. Does the lack of attention to this thread confirm the indictment of the left and environmental movement made by that article?

What you describe doesn't really sound like people hating the working class, it sounds like people being out of touch with the working class.

I think there is also confusion between working class values and ruling class values, which explains working class support for anti-worker republicans. So, opposition to republican/fascist ideology can easily be confused with opposition to working class values.

I have a similar mindset to people in a privileged class, even though technically I was raised by a working class parent. I also don't have a college degree, but I work in a job that requires technical and creative skills, which is similar to being in a job that would typically be reserved for people who were privileged enough to go through college, though I don't make as much money as say a construction worker, I think.

When I have gone to places like Mexico, Ecuador and working class areas of some American towns, I have this feeling like I'm a kind of fluff ball person. I don't really relate well. Essentially there is an area in which I'm weak from not having to deal with some of the hardships.

More importantly though, the disconnect between the people who are liberal because they have the luxury to think about global issues, and people who are directly exploited is a serious matter. Fascists do a far better job of courting the people they exploit than liberals do trying to fight for their interests while being apart from them.

That death of environmentalism article discusses the issue of the flaw in liberals trying to get the working class etc. to do something that liberals think is needed for social justice, environmentalism etc. It's arrogant, and so self-defeating.

It seems to me like what a privileged liberal person can do, is to try to involve themselves in worker lead/black lead/Latino lead etc. organizations or actions etc., in order to join with those groups in your goal of social justice/environmentalism, rather then trying to convince people who are having hardships to get on board with our privileged ideologies.

The main point of that death of environmentalism article is that all of the social justice/environmental issues are interdependent, which is of course fitting with the idea of ecology. So fighting for worker's rights for example is fighting for the environment.

You say you are working class, right? What do you think privileged liberals should do in order to relate to the working class?

[newswolf56]

4. I just noticed your response now and apologize...

...for not seeing it sooner. The question you raise is not just good but profound, and I don't think there is any easy answer. Part of the problem is the huge American disconnect between intellectuals (who in many societies are genuine spokespersons of the people) and workers -- one of the tactics by which the Establishment keeps its opponents divided and weak. Another part of the problem is the even greater chasm between blue-collar folk and white-collar folk: unless we are part of the $1017-per-hour (not a typo) executive plutocracy, we are all "working class" -- but the Establishment has deluded us into forgetting that fact. Far too many people thus ignorantly identify with the oppressor.

At least part of the solution is to do what Barbara Ehrenreich so admirably did: spend a year or two living the low-income reality. I have done likewise for many more years than two -- and not always voluntarily. Technically I am a writer -- an intellectual -- and that is how I have made most of my (usually meager) living. But I have worked as a commercial fisherman, a construction laborer, a printing-press operator and an agricultural worker and have also been unemployed for long periods. Thus I can more than emphasize with the folks on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder.

All in all, I think the question you have raised would make a splendid general discussion topic, but I am too new to know how to suggest such a thing other than to do as I am doing.

[htuttle]

5. Speaking as a working-class environmentalist, I say bull!

Industry has spent a lot of money keeping the labor and environmental movements apart, but it's not the natural state of things.

When the two work together, the establishment gets so nervous it tends to lash out. Best example I can think of is the IWW's work in the Pacific Northwest.

You see, out west, people in the logging industry were/are told that environmentalists are costing them their jobs as the mills close down. However, it turns out that the reason the mills are/were closing down is that the logging companies decided it was cheaper to send the raw logs overseas to be milled, instead of milling them here in the US.

When the IWW started working with Earth First on this issue, and worked on making the logging industry workers aware of this, their automobiles started exploding (with them inside).

The rift between labor and environmentalists is false, and promoted by corporations for the same reasons they've always tried to keep people apart.

Another good example that turned out better was the purchase of the Crandon Mine site in Northern Wisconsin. For years, environmentalists worked to keep the mine closed, as it caused a huge amount of damage to the environment. Finally, they allied with a duck hunting association and two Native American tribes to purchase the land and kick the mining companies off. While the duck hunters weren't exactly 'labor', they weren't your stereotypical environmentalists, either.

If you look outside the US, the majority of environmentalists are non-white. Look at Latin America. While they are often called 'indigenous rights activists', their main concern is usually the health of the local environment.

I've had my share of frustrating encounters with Trustifarians, believe me, but they are not dominant in the environmental movement -- they are only dominant in the right's image of the environmental movement.

[hunter]

2. God, I am so glad I am not "White."

I was born that way, but it was only skin deep...