I Can't Breathe: Examining Justice Through an Environmental Lens
I was infuriated watching the video of Eric Garner's death over a year ago. As I sat at the counter of the print center in the Boston University Library, I watched the police end a human life. I watched as a man was unnecessarily harassed, I watched as he was taken down, I watched as his body lay dead in the streets, I watched the EMTs half-heartedly try to save him, I watched everyone pretend he was still alive. But as jarring as these grotesque images were, I was perhaps even more struck by the sounds. In utter despair I watched the YouTube video and counted seven times that Eric cried out, "I can't breathe!"I did not come to this work as an environmentalist. Until now, my activism, if it can be called that, has always focused on issues I considered to be of a more "direct" human concern: Political corruption, income inequality, structural racism, ideological vanity, These are the causes for which I planted my battle flag. For me, environmental work always seemed like work for the privileged — a cause for those who may have had some intuitive understanding of justice but who had no real problems to confront in their own lives. Global climate change, the protection of certain species, and the preservation of the planet all seemed like concerns only for those who were already well-fed.If I'm being honest, my experiences have not entirely proven this to be untrue. However, as of late, I have been undergoing a shift in thinking. This shift is largely due to GIPL's work as it relates to Environmental Justice.The lens of Environmental Justice (EJ) provides a way for me to understand how the work of Creation care affects us all. EJ is a doorway through which the poorer, the darker, and the disinherited may enter into this important conversation. For me, this work of attending to the environment has no depth without a connection to the human element. Luckily (and sadly), it isn't hard to draw a line between the destruction of our planet and how we treat the "least among us." The willingness to pollute the air, desecrate the water, ravage the land turns so easily into a willingness to pollute their air, desecrate their water, ravage their lands. And who are they? Those who do not have power to stop it.The concentration of environmental degradation in poorer, darker parts of this country and this world is an implicit acknowledgement of the deep sins we are committing as a human race. We dump our waste in places that we can't see, where its impact may be contained under well-understood constructs."Of course the poor are sick. They have always been sick. It has nothing to do with what we're doing.""The poor have always had dirty water because they are unclean.""The dark races have always had health problems because they are inferior.""The lands of native peoples have always been in flux. That's why they're nomads, right? Their crops, lands, and lives are supposed to be unstable."We try to bury our trash in invisible places near people we do not see with voices we rarely hear.Maybe even more infuriating than watching the video of the death of Eric Garner was what happened after I yanked the headphones out of my ear. It was hearing the sound of silence. I looked around the library to see people's heads buried in books and computers, silently attending to their lives. In that moment I realized that, just like in the video, no one in that place of privilege heard Eric's cry.Despite the myriad of signs that our destruction of the environment is currently taking a devastating toll on the less privileged among us (see: asthma rates, infant mortality, loss of jobs, famine, wars, and a host of other issues), their cries, by and large, go unanswered.The Environmental Justice movement is an attempt to say "I hear you."
Demarius J. Walker joins GIPL this year as a Road Fellow through the Episcopal Service Corps.