Category: Environmental Justice
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EQAT AT 10: Finding Resilience in an Unimaginable Year
By Lee McClenon. In the last few decades, some social scientists studying organizations have recognized that organizations are healthiest when they embrace a bit of unpredictability. In this model, networks are more powerful than individuals. Resilience is more important than brute strength. And a groundbreaking idea can come from anywhere.
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Examining Institutional Racism
By Lauri Langham. The intersection between environmental justice and racial justice is a busy one. We recognize how Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and low-income people are the frontline communities that suffer the first and worst effects of planet destruction and climate change: from the placement of toxic dumps…
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Equality -> Equity -> Justice: The Transportation Case Example
By Beverly Ward “Our equality testimony flows inevitably from our belief that there is that of God in every person. If we believe in Equality, we must work for Justice. British Friends remind us: ‘Are you alert to the practices throughout the world which discriminates against people on the basis…
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Build Back Fossil Free
By Hayley Hathaway and Ruth Darlington. “If we’re going to Build Back Better, we need to do better. And that starts by putting Indigenous people and their voices first, before any [fossil fuels] project is put in place…It is our Indigenous right to protect what little we have left,” shared…
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Spiritual Ecology: My Journey and Our Journey
A Talk by Shelley Tanenbaum I am deeply grateful to the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting’s (SAYMA) planning committee for bringing me here – and for asking me to talk about eco-spirituality and my personal journey. I’ve been asked to talk about what it has meant to me to connect on…
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What I’m Learning From the Pandemic
By Shelley Tanenbaum. EVERY YEAR WE Friends ask ourselves, “How has truth fared for Thee?” It is a way of refreshing ourselves, of self-evaluating personally and in our Meetings. It gives us an opportunity to change course and to respond to emerging leadings. What if we see the coronavirus pandemic…
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Sharing Love and Knowledge in the Time of COVID-19
An Interview with Beverly G. Ward. “IT’S LIKE PEELING an onion: layer after layer of pandemics and it all makes you cry,” shares Beverly Ward. She’s referencing the built-in injustice of her home state of Florida, where she works as Field Secretary for Earthcare for Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) and…
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Collective Community Resilience: Thinking Through Climate Change and Defunding the Police
By Sara Jolena Wolcott. ONE OF THE MOST important lessons I learned when working in sustainable development overseas is to listen to the people most impacted by the problems to appropriately co-create viable solutions. Sometimes they would prioritize things that seemed strange to me. But over time, I would realize…
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Young and Old for Climate Justice
By Hayley Hathaway. GEORGE LAKEY, lifelong civil rights activist, and Friend, hosted “Young and Old for Climate Justice: A Dialog” at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA this January. Forty Friends, ages ranging from 15 to 80, joined the weekend-long retreat in the redwoods. Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW’s General Secretary, and…
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Farming for Social Change
By Sayrah Namaste “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves,” Gandhi said. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has been addressing the impacts of climate change through programs in New Mexico, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Baltimore, to name a few.
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For the Love of the Land
By Pamela Haines. I’VE LOVED THIS bit of land for over fifty years. Coming up over the hill, my heart always opens anew to the jewel of a valley spread out below, part of the rolling farmland and woodlots of central New York state. My father bought an old farm…
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“We Had Something, Now We Don’t.” Bolivian Friends Face the Climate Crisis
By Emma Condori Mamani. My name is Emma Condori. I am from Bolivia. I was born near Lake Titicaca. Most of my childhood was very beautiful because I was raised in community life in one of the indigenous communities we have in Bolivia, called Aymara. One thing I really appreciated…
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Casa Pueblo: Truly the People’s House
By Liz Robinson. THIS STORY STARTS with Hurricane Maria and our Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting’s decision to select Casa Pueblo as the beneficiary for our 12th month charitable giving. Because of its outstanding reputation, and its amazing hurricane-disaster recovery work providing solar energy to restore power to vital community services…
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Displaced by Climate Change: Diaspora Communities Share Wisdom
By Pamela Boyce Simms ON JULY 10, 2019 Lorenz Nehma told the story of the Yazidi people, a religious minority in the Iraqi/Syrian region, during the Quaker Earthcare Witness side event at the United Nations High Level Political Forum (HLPF). He shared their history from early persecution and acts of…
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Eco-Justice: Ecological Responsibility Linked with Social Justice
This article is part of our Pamphlets for Sharing series produced by QEW’s Publications Committee. Download the PDF here or order print copies by emailing info@quakerearthcare.org. “You can’t achieve peace unless it’s accompanied by a constant striving to address the issues of justice. This means that your work…
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A Fight for The Yintah
By Daniel Kirkpatrick. THE THIRTY OF US STOOD in a quiet circle in the gravel on a sunny, cool morning. Wood smoke rose toward the sky from the adjacent lodge, and boreal forests surrounded the clearing. A First Nations elder, Lht’at’en, spoke in her Wet’suwet’en dialect, offering a prayer before…
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Stewardship is a Likely Place to Start: Mountain Valley Pipeline Resistance
By Jenny Chapman Jenny Chapman, a birthright Quaker whose ancestors made the pilgrimage to America with William Penn, lives on a farm on Bent Mountain in rural southwest Virginia and is a member of Roanoke Friends Meeting. She and her husband raised their two sons on the Mountain and now…
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Praying on Seeds: Solidarity for Puerto Rican Sovereignty
By Marian Dalke. SUNDAY MORNING’s soft light casts through deep wooden windows. The light shifts and picks up the soft cotton of milkweed seeds, sailing over the heads of those gathered for Quaker Meeting for Worship at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Grace Gonglewski shares a message about “praying on seeds,”…
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Rising Together: Community Health Mapping in South Florida
By Beverly G. Ward MANY COMMUNITIES in South Florida experience “sunny day” flooding during periods of very high or “king” tides. During a new or full moon, when the sun and the moon are aligned with Earth in their orbits, the gravitational pull on the oceans is at its strongest,…
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Relocalization Among the Most Marginalized in an “America First” World
By Pamela Boyce Simms. LET’S KEEP OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE and not be distracted. Let us remain focused, not only on surviving the current U.S. administration, but on building the foundation for thriving in the oil-constrained future on the horizon. Let’s ensure that we cover the basics: access to…
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Friends Help Ban Fracking in Maryland
By Karie Firoozmand. ON APRIL 4, Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan signed legislation prohibiting fracking in the state. This is a huge success for the individuals and organizations that have been working together for this goal for several years, as well as a precedent for other states. I have been working…
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Bringing Light to the Dark: Environmental Violence
By Brad Stocker, Miami Friends Meeting. ONE OF THE MORE POIGNANT things to have affected my earthcare work was 2016’s QEW table and display, which had a darker element than in the past as it focused attention on those who have been killed for their involvement in environmental justice. We…
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Reflections on Standing Rock
Sacred Stone, Clean Water, Gathering People By Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary. The gathering at Standing Rock, with more than 280 indigenous tribes represented, is historic and has been an inspiration to all of us. The ongoing gathering is being held to block construction of the Dakota pipeline that threatens…
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Young Faith Leaders Rising During GreenFaith Convergence in New Orleans
By Sara Wolcott. Myself and the other 60 young (aged 20-35) faith leaders from across Canada and the United States who were partaking in GreenFaith’s 2016 North American Convergence eagerly peered out of our bus windows as it turned onto the road leading to Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana. We…
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Reckoning the “Other”
By Shelley Tanenbaum. Two dynamic and challenging speakers stood out for me at the 2016 Friends General Conference (FGC) gathering in St. Joseph, Minnesota this July. Nekima Levy-Pounds, law professor and leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, came to us after sitting-in at the Governor’s mansion in the immediate…
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Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline
By Vicki Tolbert As a member of the Blacksburg, VA Friends Earthcare Committee reminded us, we have been “thinking globally, acting locally” as we take on a global issue confronting our local area: the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline. Appalachia has historically been a target for those…
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Climate Justice—from Katrina to Paris and Back to New Orleans
By Shelley Tanenbaum. When we talk about how global warming will affect the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, or when we talk about how countries that have historically emitted the most carbon have a greater carbon debt than those with smaller carbon footprints, or how polluting industries…
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