The Green Scare and White Supremacy

Last night I had an interesting conversation about the so-called Green Scare and the impact of The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Like so much recent legislation, AETA does an incredible job criminalizing those who work to defend the earth and its creatures. By criminalizing the defense of the earth, our land-base and its creatures, the Federal Government and AETA in particular aid in defending the death of millions of people and thousands of species. Furthermore, acts criminalizing the defense of the earth are complicit in structural white supremacy preventing people from dismantling the ecological weapons used to inflict environmental racism on communities of color.

Due to environmental racism, communities of color tend to be most affected by oppressive environmental policies. Places like Louisiana's Cancer Alley, the three super-fund sites near my residential Black and Latino neighborhood of Clayton, Navajo land brutally affected by uranium mining each exemplify ways Corporations informed by structural racism have created health hazards in communities of color and ultimately decreased the life-span of people of color. In 2007 The United Church of Christ put out a disturbing report called Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007 that demonstrates the various ways communities of color are drastically impacted by toxic dumping.

As the Green Scare sweeps eco-activists, the racist criminal-industrial complex continues to target and detain Blacks and Latinos, ICE attacks immigrants, and the military attacks Arabs and Muslims, resistant forces against environmental destruction, imperialism, racism, and oppression should unite forces against the true criminals--the politicians and business people profiting from dozens of genocides executed through environmental, military, and economic aggression.

Prisoners rotting in Guantanamo Bay, victims of the Green Scare, people of color targeted and incarcerated because of their race should be uniting forces with each other and with academics, media, artists, and above ground activists who can demonstrate the connections between environmental destruction, white supremacy, and capitalism and prove once and for all if we want to survive as a species we must live sustainable lives and abolish racism and oppression.