Larry Glass, NEC Board President
Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
In the 50+ years that the NEC has been around, there have been many changes in the local environmental movement, from the recognition that feminism and labor rights need to be considered in our work to the more recent embracing of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and acknowledgement of the environmental harms caused by settler colonialism and white supremacy. Lately, the movement is transforming in large part because of the intersecting crises of the climate catastrophe and late-stage capitalism, which has attracted a large and diverse group of younger people to the cause. This is a cause for great celebration for many of us who’ve been in this movement for years and we recognize this as a great opportunity to grow and learn.
With all the new people engaged in this work comes a responsibility to look at ourselves and listen to ourselves and make sure that the elitism, classism, patriarchal structures, racism and sexism that are part and parcel of the systems of oppression that we are fighting as environmentalists are not creeping into our behavior, the way we conduct campaigns and the way we communicate with each other.
After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, environmental groups around the country released statements of solidarity, made promises to examine their racist histories, and embarked on initiatives of diversity, equity and inclusion. Three years later many, including the NEC, are realizing that it takes more than just opening the doors wider and saying “BIPOC environmentalists encouraged to apply” to diversify our organizations. We also need to examine the culture of our organizations and movements to see how the way we operate often stifles and excludes certain voices. And then we need to change accordingly.
The fact is, we are all products of the dominant culture, which prizes and rewards certain behaviors and holds certain expertises and bodies to be more valuable than others, so changing the way that our movements operate – and the way we as individuals operate in movement spaces – takes more than just an anti-racism statement or a land acknowledgement. There needs to be an ongoing iterative practice of self-reflection, along with concrete actions to change exclusionary practices, so we can uplift those with lived experience on the frontlines whose knowledge is imperative to the fight against environmental degradation, climate change and the systems of inequality that prop them up. All of this involves listening, especially to the criticisms that may be hard to hear, and learning from those who we are trying to work alongside. It involves changing the way that we talk to and treat each other. It also involves using our positions of privilege as leaders to hold our fellow environmentalists accountable when they exhibit behavior that is racist, sexist and classist, whether that behavior is intentional or not.
This can be difficult for those of us who’ve been conditioned to accept this bad behavior as commonplace. Many of us have learned to keep quiet (or roll our eyes and complain to our friends later) when Bob (purely an example, we are not talking about a specific Bob) is acting in an elitist and patriarchal way. When our thoughts and opinions aren’t the ones being stifled, it can be easy to just write it off as “well that’s just Bob” and quickly move onto the next topic. Just because time and familiarity has desensitized us to it doesn’t mean it’s any less egregious. And it certainly isn’t harmless. Since those anti-racist statements of summer 2020, environmentalists of color have continued to speak out about being dismissed and devalued in the predominantly white environmental organizations that were clamoring to welcome them. We’ve seen this within our own organization. It pops up in various ways, from questioning the words that Indigenous scholars use to describe their struggles, to aggressively silencing BIPOC staff who dare to have a different point of view about the issues we work on. Part of the problem is the prevailing idea that there is only one way to be an environmentalist, and one way of defining “environmentalism”, and that anyone is welcome as long as they conform to that. This narrow view is harmful to our movement and won’t help us build the knowledge base that we need to address the challenges that are facing us.
We want to acknowledge that there is an immense amount of expertise and experience in this movement and people who have been doing this work for decades. There is a lot to be learned from these folks. There is also a lot that can be learned from younger environmentalists, Indigenous environmentalists and environmentalists of color who have not been a part of the mainstream movement for various reasons. We do ourselves a disservice by not taking the time to listen, reflect and adapt.
We’ve gotten flack lately from some of our supporters who’ve facetiously called us the Northcoast Everything Center for our expansive view and focus on environmental justice. We embrace the nickname because everything affects the environment, and the environment affects everything. It is all linked. And while some may think that we’ve wasted our space here talking about the -isms instead of forest planning or the climate action plan (they decided not to use industrial point source emissions, so thanks for writing your supervisor about that!) we don’t think the NEC can be successful in its mission without continuing to speak out about this. We cannot fight climate change without supporting BIPOC environmentalists and building the relationships we need to move towards a better future together. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we’re here, we’re listening, and we’re in it for the long haul.