For this week, I’d like to offer a recognition that my words are not the words that are needed in this moment. Please dive into the following links with curiosity, courage, honesty, openness, humility, and a deep commitment to do what we can for justice and peace on our Earth. And let’s continue to expand our awareness of the ways racial justice, environmental justice, and conservation all turn on the same axis of a deep, national re-evaluation of what we recognize as value-able.
For people interested in thinking more deeply about racial injustice, environmental justice, and what it means to have white privilege:
For those interested in exploring righteous black environmentalists of contemporary and historical America:
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- Rue Mapp and Outdoor Afro
- Savonala “Savi” Horne and the Land Loss Prevention Project
- National Geographic Interview with Wildlife Biologist Rae Wynn-Grant
- Colonel Charles Young who was integral in protecting the iconic Sequoia trees of California’s Sequoia National Park
- “Planetwalker” Dr. John Francis (who boycotted motorized transportation for 22 years!)
- Majora Carter and the Majora Carter Group championing urban revitalization (and “Greening the Ghetto”)
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This is just a surface skim of available resources. I encourage all of us to listen deeply, speak truth to power, and choose love over fear, again and again.
Each week, the Greater Gila Campaign Team of Leia Barnett and Madeleine Carey will share what they are reading, listening to, and watching and how it shapes the connections they draw between the current crisis and their work to conserve large landscapes.