Author: Jane

I’m giving you a sneak peek at what will be discussed at my Fire Drill Friday rally tomorrow at 11am PST. The relationship between white supremacy and the climate crisis is important to understand. Understanding this can help us abolish both crises. Two days from now is July 4th, the day we celebrate our country’s independence from Great Britain. Freedom from colonization was and is certainly an important cause for celebration. But an argument can be made that the control that the fossil fuel industry has over our economy and our government is in a league with colonization in terms of damage to living things and their life support systems. Colonialism was possible because of white supremacy—I am white and thus superior to the indigenous peoples of color whom I am colonizing and subjugating. This is my right as a superior white person in whose image God was created and if people do not worship this same God, they are heathen, too close to nature, and thus disposable. So the European settlers took the land, killed the people living there who had societies, governing structures, written languages and they cut down the forests because to them, nature was something to be conquered and monetized. The reality, which is not simply a state of consciousness but is based in science, is that we, the species of animal known as homo sapiens, are interdependent with all living things including other animal and plant forms. This is true on the deepest molecular level. We are interconnected and interdependent. Our wellbeing, our existence even, is bound up with all other living things. White supremacy denies this reality which is one reason why white supremacists hate science…because science proves this is true. But white supremacy is not just a world view held by individuals. It is the guiding, even if subconscious, paradigm behind most of our institutions. This is why racism is structural, a pathology that infects our economic, political and cultural institutions. Criminal justice is just one part of the problem. Because of structural racism, people of color have little chance of accumulating wealth, owning a home, accessing fresh food, affording health care or living without fear of violence. It is immensely moving to me that in just about every part of this nation, indigenous peoples are still fighting to save the natural world, putting their bodies on the line to stop oil and gas pipelines and uranium mines and trying to teach us Europeans why our way will be the end of us all. And it astonishes me that today, African Americans call on us to join them in non-violent acts of protest given the reality of what they have endured at our hands. So today, let us commit to freeing ourselves, our country and its institutions from white supremacy, the enabler of climate destruction. And let us all work to truly understand why the two are inseparable. Let’s fix the criminal justice system, yes, but not stop there. Let’s show the cynics that at this cruel, complex convergence of multiple crises, this existential crossroads we are at right now, that we are going to band together across race, sex, class, abilities, and age and do all we can and go all the way to simultaneously ending the humanity-denying era of fossil fuel extraction and the white supremacy that enables it… one and all. Once and for all.

Lots of great reading lists circulating right now – these are some of the books that have helped me: “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy” both by Ta-Nehisi Coates, both important and brilliant.

People have asked me a lot in the last week what I mean when I say that I benefit from white privilege. Part of understanding the current protests over the murder of George Floyd and the degree of pain and rage we are seeing requires understanding the meaning of white privilege. Therefore, I am linking to an article originally published in Teaching Tolerance magazine which I believe is a good starting point for understanding as it explains what white privilege is and how to recognize it. Please also read Part 2 which I will post tomorrow. WHAT IS WHITE PRIVILEGE, REALLY? BY CORY COLLINS Today, white privilege is often described through the lens of Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Originally published in 1988, the essay helps readers recognize white privilege by making its effects personal and tangible. For many, white privilege was an invisible force that white people needed to recognize. It was being able to walk into a store and find that the main displays of shampoo and panty hose were catered toward your hair type and skin tone. It was being able to turn on the television and see people of your race widely represented. It was being able to move through life without being racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped. All true. This idea of white privilege as unseen, unconscious advantages took hold. It became easy for people to interpret McIntosh’s version of white privilege—fairly or not—as mostly a matter of cosmetics and inconvenience. Those interpretations overshadow the origins of white privilege, as well as its present-day ability to influence systemic decisions. They overshadow the fact that white privilege is both a legacy and a cause of racism. And they overshadow the words of many people of color, who for decades recognized white privilege as the result of conscious acts and refused to separate it from historic inequities. In short, we’ve forgotten what white privilege really means—which is all of this, all at once. And if we stand behind the belief that recognizing white privilege is integral to the anti-bias work of white educators, we must offer a broader recognition. A recognition that does not silence the voices of those most affected by white privilege; a recognition that does not ignore where it comes from and why it has staying power.   Racism vs. White Privilege Having white privilege and recognizing it is not racist. But white privilege exists because of historic, enduring racism and biases. Therefore, defining white privilege also requires finding working definitions of racism and bias. So, what is racism? One helpful definition comes from Matthew Clair and Jeffrey S. Denis’s “Sociology on Racism.” They define racism as “individual- and group-level processes and structures that are implicated in the reproduction of racial inequality.” Systemic racism happens when these structures or processes are carried out by groups with power, such as governments, businesses or schools. Racism differs from bias, which is a conscious or unconscious prejudice against an individual or group based on their identity. Basically, racial bias is a belief. Racism is what happens when that belief translates into action. For example, a person might unconsciously or consciously believe that people of color are more likely to commit crime or be dangerous. That’s a bias. A person might become anxious if they perceive a black person is angry. That stems from a bias. These biases can become racism through a number of actions ranging in severity, and ranging from individual- to group-level responses: A person crosses the street to avoid walking next to a group of young black men. A person calls 911 to report the presence of a person of color who is otherwise behaving lawfully. A police officer shoots an unarmed person of color because he “feared for his life.” A jury finds a person of color guilty of a violent crime despite scant evidence. A federal intelligence agency prioritizes investigating black and Latino activists rather than investigate white supremacist activity. Both racism and bias rely on what sociologists call racialization. This is the grouping of people based on perceived physical differences, such as skin tone. This arbitrary grouping of people, historically, fueled biases and became a tool for justifying the cruel treatment and discrimination of non-white people. Colonialism, slavery and Jim Crow laws were all sold with junk science and propaganda that claimed people of a certain “race” were fundamentally different from those of another—and they should be treated accordingly. And while not all white people participated directly in this mistreatment, their learned biases and their safety from such treatment led many to commit one of those most powerful actions: silence. And just like that, the trauma, displacement, cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, inevitably, gave birth to white privilege.   So, What Is White Privilege? White privilege is—perhaps most notably in this era of uncivil discourse—a concept that has fallen victim to its own connotations. The two-word term packs a double whammy that inspires pushback. 1) The word white creates discomfort among those who are not used to being defined or described by their race. And 2) the word privilege, especially for poor and rural white people, sounds like a word that doesn’t belong to them—like a word that suggests they have never struggled. This defensiveness derails the conversation, which means, unfortunately, that defining white privilege must often begin with defining what it’s not. Otherwise, only the choir listens; the people you actually want to reach check out. White privilege is not the suggestion that white people have never struggled. Many white people do not enjoy the privileges that come with relative affluence, such as food security. Many do not experience the privileges that come with access, such as nearby hospitals. And white privilege is not the assumption that everything a white person has accomplished is unearned; most white people who have reached a high level of success worked extremely hard to get there. Instead, white privilege should be viewed as a built-in advantage, separate from one’s level of income or effort. Francis E. Kendall, author of Diversity in the Classroom and Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race, comes close to giving us an encompassing definition: “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do.” But in order to grasp what this means, it’s also important to consider how the definition of white privilege has changed over time.   White Privilege Through the Years In a thorough article, education researcher Jacob Bennett tracked the history of the term. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “white privilege” was less commonly used but generally referred to legal and systemic advantages given to white people by the United States, such as citizenship, the right to vote or the right to buy a house in the neighborhood of their choice. It was only after discrimination persisted for years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that people like Peggy McIntosh began to view white privilege as being more psychological—a subconscious prejudice perpetuated by white people’s lack of awareness that they held this power. White privilege could be found in day-to-day transactions and in white people’s ability to move through the professional and personal worlds with relative ease. But some people of color continued to insist that an element of white privilege included the aftereffects of conscious choices. For example, if white business leaders didn’t hire many people of color, white people had more economic opportunities. Having the ability to maintain that power dynamic, in itself, was a white privilege, and it endures. Legislative bodies, corporate leaders and educators are still disproportionately white and often make conscious choices (laws, hiring practices, discipline procedures) that keep this cycle on repeat. The more complicated truth: White privilege is both unconsciously enjoyed and consciously perpetuated. It is both on the surface and deeply embedded into American life. It is a weightless knapsack—and a weapon. It depends on who’s carrying it.   White Privilege as the “Power of Normal” Sometimes the examples used to make white privilege visible to those who have it are also the examples least damaging to people who lack it. But that does not mean these examples do not matter or that they do no damage at all. These subtle versions of white privilege are often used as a comfortable, easy entry point for people who might push back against the concept. That is why they remain so popular. These are simple, everyday things, conveniences white people aren’t forced to think about. These often-used examples include: The first-aid kit having “flesh-colored” Band-Aids that only match the skin tone of white people. The products white people need for their hair being in the aisle labeled “hair care” rather than in a smaller, separate section of “ethnic hair products.” The grocery store stocking a variety of food options that reflect the cultural traditions of most white people. But the root of these problems is often ignored. These types of examples can be dismissed by white people who might say, “My hair is curly and requires special product,” or “My family is from Poland, and it’s hard to find traditional Polish food at the grocery store.” This may be true. But the reason even these simple white privileges need to be recognized is that the damage goes beyond the inconvenience of shopping for goods and services. These privileges are symbolic of what we might call “the power of normal.” If public spaces and goods seem catered to one race and segregate the needs of people of other races into special sections, that indicates something beneath the surface. White people become more likely to move through the world with an expectation that their needs be readily met. People of color move through the world knowing their needs are on the margins. Recognizing this means recognizing where gaps exist.   White Privilege as the “Power of the Benefit of the Doubt” The “power of normal” goes beyond the local CVS. White people are also more likely to see positive portrayals of people who look like them on the news, on TV shows and in movies. They are more likely to be treated as individuals, rather than as representatives of (or exceptions to) a stereotyped racial identity. In other words, they are more often humanized and granted the benefit of the doubt. They are more likely to receive compassion, to be granted individual potential, to survive mistakes. This has negative effects for people of color, who, without this privilege, face the consequences of racial profiling, stereotypes and lack of compassion for their struggles. In these scenarios, white privilege includes the facts that: White people are less likely to be followed, interrogated or searched by law enforcement because they look “suspicious.”  White people’s skin tone will not be a reason people hesitate to trust their credit or financial responsibility.  If white people are accused of a crime, they are less likely to be presumed guilty, less likely to be sentenced to death and more likely to be portrayed in a fair, nuanced manner by media outlets (see the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown campaign).  The personal faults or missteps of white people will likely not be used to later deny opportunities or compassion to people who share their racial identity. This privilege is invisible to many white people because it seems reasonable that a person should be extended compassion as they move through the world. It seems logical that a person should have the chance to prove themselves individually before they are judged. It’s supposedly an American ideal. But it’s a privilege often not granted to people of color—with dire consequences. For example, programs like New York City’s now-abandoned “Stop and Frisk” policy target a disproportionate number of black and Latinx people. People of color are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses despite using at a similar rate to white people. Some people do not survive these stereotypes. In 2017, people of color who were unarmed and not attacking anyone were more likely to be killed by police. Those who survive instances of racial profiling—be they subtle or violent—do not escape unaffected. They often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and this trauma in turn affects their friends, families and immediate communities, who are exposed to their own vulnerability as a result. A study conducted in Australia (which has its own hard history of subjugating black and Indigenous people) perfectly illustrates how white privilege can manifest in day-to-day interactions—daily reminders that one is not worthy of the same benefit of the doubt given to another. In the experiment, people of different racial and ethnic identities tried to board public buses, telling the driver they didn’t have enough money to pay for the ride. Researchers documented more than 1,500 attempts. The results: 72 percent of white people were allowed to stay on the bus. Only 36 percent of black people were extended the same kindness. Just as people of color did nothing to deserve this unequal treatment, white people did not “earn” disproportionate access to compassion and fairness. They receive it as the byproduct of systemic racism and bias. And even if they are not aware of it in their daily lives as they walk along the streets, this privilege is the result of conscious choices made long ago and choices still being made today.   White Privilege as the “Power of Accumulated Power” Perhaps the most important lesson about white privilege is the one that’s taught the least. The “power of normal” and the “power of the benefit of the doubt” are not just subconscious byproducts of past discrimination. They are the purposeful results of racism—an ouroboros of sorts—that allow for the constant re-creation of inequality. These powers would not exist if systemic racism hadn’t come first. And systemic racism cannot endure unless those powers still hold sway. You can imagine it as something of a whiteness water cycle, wherein racism is the rain. That rain populates the earth, giving some areas more access to life and resources than others. The evaporation is white privilege—an invisible phenomenon that is both a result of the rain and the reason it keeps going. McIntosh asked herself an important question that inspired her famous essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”: “On a daily basis, what do I have that I didn’t earn?” Our work should include asking the two looming follow-up questions: Who built that system? Who keeps it going? The answers to those questions could fill several books. But they produce examples of white privilege that you won’t find in many broad explainer pieces. For example, the ability to accumulate wealth has long been a white privilege—a privilege created by overt, systemic racism in both the public and private sectors. In 2014, the Pew Research Center released a report that revealed the median net worth of a white household was $141,900; for black and Hispanic households, that dropped to $11,000 and $13,700, respectively. The gap is huge, and the great “equalizers” don’t narrow it. Research from Brandeis University and Demos found that the racial wealth gap is not closed when people of color attend college (the median white person who went to college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median black person who went to college, and 3.9 times more than the median Latino person who went to college). Nor do they close the gap when they work full time, or when they spend less and save more. The gap, instead, relies largely on inheritance—wealth passed from one generation to the next. And that wealth often comes in the form of inherited homes with value. When white families are able to accumulate wealth because of their earning power or home value, they are more likely to support their children into early adulthood, helping with expenses such as college education, first cars and first homes. The cycle continues. This is a privilege denied to many families of color, a denial that started with the work of public leaders and property managers. After World War II, when the G.I. Bill provided white veterans with “a magic carpet to the middle class,” racist zoning laws segregated towns and cities with sizeable populations of people of color—from Baltimore to Birmingham, from New York to St. Louis, from Louisville to Oklahoma City, to Chicago, to Austin, and in cities beyond and in between. These exclusionary zoning practices evolved from city ordinances to redlining by the Federal Housing Administration (which wouldn’t back loans to black people or those who lived close to black people), to more insidious techniques written into building codes. The result: People of color weren’t allowed to raise their children and invest their money in neighborhoods with “high home values.” The cycle continues today. Before the 2008 crash, people of color were disproportionately targeted for subprime mortgages. And neighborhood diversity continues to correlate with low property values across the United States. According to the Century Foundation, one-fourth of black Americans living in poverty live in high-poverty neighborhoods; only 1 in 13 impoverished white Americans lives in a high-poverty neighborhood. The inequities compound. To this day, more than 80 percent of poor black students attend a high-poverty school, where suspension rates are often higher and resources often more limited. Once out of school, obstacles remain. Economic forgiveness and trust still has racial divides. In a University of Wisconsin study, 17 percent of white job applicants with a criminal history got a call back from an employer; only five percent of black applicants with a criminal history got call backs. And according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, black Americans are 105 percent more likely than white people to receive a high-cost mortgage, with Latino Americans 78 percent more likely. This is after controlling for variables such as credit score and debt-to-income ratios. Why mention these issues in an article defining white privilege? Because the past and present context of wealth inequality serves as a perfect example of white privilege. If privilege, from the Latin roots of the term, refers to laws that have an impact on individuals, then what is more effective than a history of laws that explicitly targeted racial minorities to keep them out of neighborhoods and deny them access to wealth and services? If white privilege is “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do,” then what is more exemplary than the access to wealth, the access to neighborhoods and the access to the power to segregate cities, deny loans and perpetuate these systems? This example of white privilege also illustrates how systemic inequities trickle down to less harmful versions of white privilege. Wealth inequity contributes to the “power of the benefit of the doubt” every time a white person is given a lower mortgage rate than a person of color with the same credit credentials. Wealth inequity reinforces the “power of normal” every time businesses assume their most profitable consumer base is the white base and adjust their products accordingly. And this example of white privilege serves an important purpose: It re-centers the power of conscious choices in the conversation about what white privilege is. People can be ignorant about these inequities, of course. According to the Pew Research Center, only 46 percent of white people say that they benefit “a great deal” or “a fair amount” from advantages that society does not offer to black people. But conscious choices were and are made to uphold these privileges. And this goes beyond loan officers and lawmakers. Multiple surveys have shown that many white people support the idea of racial equality but are less supportive of policies that could make it more possible, such as reparations, affirmative action or law enforcement reform. In that way, white privilege is not just the power to find what you need in a convenience store or to move through the world without your race defining your interactions. It’s not just the subconscious comfort of seeing a world that serves you as normal. It’s also the power to remain silent in the face of racial inequity. It’s the power to weigh the need for protest or confrontation against the discomfort or inconvenience of speaking up. It’s getting to choose when and where you want to take a stand. It’s knowing that you and your humanity are safe. And what a privilege that is. Collins is the senior writer for Teaching Tolerance. (Original Article posted here: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really)

  In May of 2018, I made this speech at the United State of Women conference in Los Angeles after which I introduced Patrisse Cullors.  Patrisse is the co-founder of Black Lives Matters, a NYTimes best-selling author, an artist, and founder of Dignity and Power Now.  You can visit her website here:  www.patrissecullors.com   The speech focuses on mass incarceration and I hope you will read it because it is a window onto the unique challenges faced by Black Americans:   United State of Women Speech May 2018 When Trump was elected and the toxic bedrock of White Supremacy in this country was exposed, I realized something new. I’ve been involved with progressive movements most of my adult life, but because I’m White, the lens through which I had been looking at race was distorted. It takes more than empathy, it requires intention to even begin to comprehend what people of color, no matter their class, face every moment of every day, and how much privilege, quite unconsciously, is enjoyed by those of us born White–even the poorest of us. Imagine you’re a single white mother of 3 sons, working 2, sometimes 3 jobs to make ends meet. You are constantly tired and stressed. You hope you’ll manage to get them through high school in one piece. One’s a pot smoker but you don’t worry too much, it’s regular teenage stuff. You pray that a promised rehab clinic opens soon in your town so that your other son, who is opioid-addicted, can receive proper treatment in time. Now imagine you’re a single Black mother of 3 sons, working multiple jobs. You’re constantly tired and stressed. You hope you’ll manage to get them through high school in one piece. But it doesn’t stop there. You wonder if you’ll get them through high school at all because only 50% of young Black males finish 8th grade. You worry that one’s a pot smoker because prisons are filled with young black men found in possession of even a few ounces of marijuana. In the Section 8 housing where you live, armed police are a constant presence. You pace through every day with the taste of fear in your mouth, fear that one of your sons will be shot on his way home because he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. And no one will be charged. Where you live, young black males are by definition “trouble”; where you live, all drugs signify criminal activity. Addiction in your community isn’t considered a public health crisis or an existential identity crisis; no clinic will be built in your neighborhood. If one of your sons is convicted for his small stash of pot and imprisoned, he is no longer eligible for food stamps or student loans. In your state he can’t vote, and he is forced to check the felon box on job applications–which means he’s not hired. Having been in prison, he can be stopped and searched by the police for any reason, or for no reason, and returned to prison for the most minor of infractions. Because he’s Black, an ounce or 2 of marijuana means he is locked out of the mainstream society and economy for the rest of his life. Nor is it only your sons at risk. It’s your daughters, it’s yourselves. Women and girls of color are the fastest growing population within U.S. prisons, representing 30% of all incarcerated women in the US, though only 13% of the female population generally. The rate of growth for female imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50%.  Yet these women’s experiences are rarely foregrounded in plans to combat racialized state violence in communities of color. None of any of this is an accident. It’s part of a strategy developed in response to the gains made by Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement, just as the first Jim Crow was created in response to gains made by former enslaved people during Reconstruction. It’s called the War on Drugs, and it’s increased our incarcerated population from 500,000 in 1980 to over 2.5 million today. The War on Drugs has been intentionally designed to maintain a new racial caste system–without ever being accused of racism. John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s National Domestic Policy Chief, said about the administration’s position on Black people, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be black, but by getting the public to associate the blacks with heroin and then criminalizing them heavily, we could disrupt their communities. Did we know we were lying? Of course we did.” White people need to dare imagine the realities inhabited by people of color. Not just because this is the moral thing to do, but because we are, all of us, affected by racism. Institutionalized slavery stained our Republic’s founding, and systemic racism still saturates its soul. In the 1600s we abducted and imported non-English speaking Africans to build this country’s economy—the South’s and the North’s. In order to name ourselves a Democracy and speak of “liberty and freedom for all,” we thought we needed to enslave these people, make them legally non-human, based simply on skin color. If Blacks aren’t human, then enslaving them isn’t hypocritical. Slavery was a method of wealth creation. That’s why racism and class hierarchy can’t be separated. Furthermore, enslaved people were the only property that propagated itself, producing more property, more enrichment. That’s why racism and sexism can’t be separated.  Racism allows the 1% to deceive the White working class into believing that though they may be suffering, at least others are worse off. Racism is what keeps poor and working-class Whites from aligning with Blacks to identify and topple their common enemy. When the Legacy Museum on Peace and Justice, the first memorial to the memory of victims of lynching, opened in Montgomery, Alabama in 2018, a White man was quoted saying, “They should just get over slavery.” But it’s still alive, with us in a variety of forms blatant and subtle. One new iteration is mass incarceration: rounding up people of color by the thousands for alleged acts that are virtually ignored if committed by White people, erasing those who are incarcerated in perpetuity from the national discourse, making the incarcerated work for slave wages manufacturing products for our biggest corporations, products we buy without even knowing where they come from. Building more prisons and filling them with Black and brown people maintains the new racial caste system, all the while denying any of this is race-related. We are told it creates jobs and we are told it stops crime. It’s easy for Whites to believe that and even easier for Whites to look the other way. Bu it doesn’t stop crime. By shattering already-fragile social networks, slicing apart families, and creating a permanent underclass of desperate, unemployable Americans, the War on Drugs and mass incarceration actually have done more to create crime. We had to wage a Civil War to end slavery; we had to forge a Civil Rights movement to end Jim Crow (at least formally). To end the new Jim Crow, the system of mass incarceration, we must, once and for all, end the war on drugs and the construction of new prisons. And we must not ever again permit the replacement of one racial caste system with another, no matter how well disguised. That will necessitate emptying the prisons of our own minds and freeing the brave ideas and fresh solutions so long imprisoned there.

In its call for a Week of Actions, today, The Movement for Black Lives is demanding divesting from the police and investing in Black communities. In support of this demand, I want to tell you about what’s been done in Newark, New Jersey, a city that, in the 60s, went up in flames and violence. Not this time and Aqeela Sherrills explains why. Aqeela Sherrills used to live in Los Angeles and is a friend of my son, Troy, and knew my late husband, Tom Hayden. Now Aqeela lives in Newark and wrote this to a mutual friend of ours, Jodie Evans. “In the 6 years I’ve been in Newark, we’ve developed a comprehensive alternative to policing. I believe that policing as we know it is at an inflection point. Violence as a Public Health issue is no longer a tag line. Crime stats is an inadequate way of measuring “safety”. Safety isn’t just the absence of violence and crime, it is the presence of wellbeing and the infrastructure to support victims and survivors in there respective healing journey. NCST is putting the “public” back in public safety. Newark has become a national model for complimentary strategies to policing—There is tons of data (we’ve literally cut the murder and overall violence rate in half in Newark in 5 years) that shows our approach reduced violence and crime without police and improves peoples quality of life. I’m not advocating we push to get rid of police (they are too powerful and have too much money), but we can move more money to the type of work we do…and in 5 years, i guarantee you that in cities like LA where 54% of the general fund goes to LAPD, we can reduce by 15-20% and reallocate those $$.

My heart breaks for what’s happening, for the pain and grief and rage caused by George Floyd’s murder. And grief for his family. I beg people reading this to understand that his murder is a match thrown on the dry tinder of racism. There have been at least two other previous murders in Minneapolis with officers not being held accountable. The one time an officer was convicted of murder in that city the victim was white, the officer was Black. Imagine you are Black and let that sink in. Apparently, George Floyd had tried to buy cigarettes with a counterfeit bill when cops were called. Female Senator, Kelly Loeffler was being investigated for insider trading on the Covid information she’d received but her husband gave $1 million to a Trump PAC and the DOJ dropped the investigation. Imagine you are Black and let that sink in. Hundreds of Black men and boys and women have been murdered at the hands of police who have never been held accountable. Add that onto the decades of black people being incarcerated for things that white people are never charged for—like possessing an ounce of marijuana or holding a cell phone the wrong way—that’s the new Jim Crow. That’s added on to the century of the original Jim Crow, when Black men were arrested for made-up crimes and sold to factory owners to work in factories and mines under unbelievably brutal and inhuman conditions and Blacks were deprived of any rights. And that was after slavery had been outlawed. Add that onto the centuries of black people being considered not human, sold like animals, beaten, tortured, raped, castrated, lynched. If white people had been subjected to this history of unspeakable violence they would be burning things…or worse. That said, there is evidence that the majority of African Americans in Minneapolis have been protesting peacefully and that outside rightwing agitators have deliberately engaged in violence in order to justify police violence of the kind that Trump is referencing when he says , “If there’s looting, there will be shooting.” I’ve read that the officer whose knee was on George Floyd’s neck had 18 previous incidents of violence against people of color. Police forces all over the country must rid themselves of people who evidence racism and a violent bent. But beyond that, in this time of covid-19 when the bandaids covering the profound inequality in this country are being torn off, let’s all of us do all we can to begin the real task of doing away with the policies that maintain racial disparity–like red-lining, discrimination in banking, insurance and voting–to name but a fraction of policies aimed at making it near impossible for Blacks to save, invest, and improve their situation. That means we must vote, every one of us, and make sure everyone we know is planning on voting and, if necessary, be prepared to help those who lack transportation or reading skills to get to the polls and understand what to do. If African Americans can’t vote because they lack postage stamps to mail ballots — the new poll tax–bring them stamps or whatever else you can do to overcome the barriers that have been erected to prevent true democracy. And while we’re at it, let’s work on ourselves, especially us white people, to understand why it is we benefit from white privilege. Read Black histories, learn about the legacy of racism. Four years ago I realized I didn’t know enough so I began to study and it has opened my eyes and my heart. You might start with Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” If you want more suggestions let me know. I have a whole library now of books that have educated me. We can do this. This is the year we have to do this. But peace can’t wait for all the white people in the US to rid themselves of racism so please vote out the bigots and racists in our midst and make sure the people you replace them with are doing the necessary work.

I have a new book coming out on September 8th, called “What Can I Do? My Path From Climate Despair to Action,” published by Penguin Press in the US and by HQ Stories in the UK. I love this book so much! It recounts how last fall I had an epiphany about the state of our planet that sent me to Washington DC and changed my life. I didn’t think that could happen—at my age—but it did and I’m not looking back. Everything I learned and what you need to know about the climate crisis is here from the mouths of experts and the too often unheard voices at the frontlines of the crisis, with stories and ideas that will change the way you think. It changed me. And what’s more, it gives clear ideas to answer your question: What Can I Do? You can learn more and pre-order your copy here.