hi everyone and welcome my name is city blancaflor and i'm a current undergraduate junior this is my second year serving as board co-chair for powershift network and it's been an honor to be part of this organization and work with our network members as we build a youth-led intersectional climate movement i'm excited to introduce today angela davis jamie marglin and destiny hodges for an intergenerational conversation this afternoon angela davis is a feminist and writer and through her activism and scholarship over many decades angelo davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world her work as an educator both at the university level and in the larger public sphere has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic racial and gender justice professor davis's teaching career has also taken her to san francisco state university mills college and uc berkeley she has also taught at ucla vassar syracuse university the clermont colleges and stanford university most recently she spent 15 years at the university of santa cruz where she is now a distinguished professor in merida of history of consciousness an interdisciplinary phd program and of feminist studies angela davis is the author of 10 books and has lectured throughout the united states as well as in europe africa asia australia and south america in recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination she draws upon her own experiences in the early 70s as a person who spent 18 months in jail and on trial after being placed on the fbi's most wanted list she has also conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race gender and imprisonment her recent books include abolition democracy and our prisons obsolete about the abolition of the prison industrial complex a new edition of narrative of the life of frederick douglass and a collection of essays entitled the meaning of freedom her most recent book of essays called freedom is a constant struggle ferguson palestine and the foundations of a movement was published in february 2016. angela davis is a founding member of critical resistance a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex internationally she is also affiliated with sisters inside an abolitionist organization based in queensland australia that works in solidarity with women in prison like many educators professor davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions having helped to popularize the notion of a prison industrial complex she now urges her audiences to think seriously about a future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st abolitionist movement i'm also really excited to welcome destiny hodges an environmental liberation organizer filmmaker and junior interdisciplinary communications major at howard university from birmingham alabama she's the co-founder and co-executive director of generation green home to the architects of the environmental liberation ideological framework and movement her work is rooted in the belief that crime of justice and environmental justice are key components of black liberation along with building community and solidarity across the african diaspora to build collective power needed for systems change as a student of black liberation movements with a love for journalism and storytelling destiny is embarking on a journey of documentary filmmaking as she organizes throughout the african diaspora organizing on howard university's campus destiny and two other students founded the howard university student sustainability committee as a coalition network of students and student organizations dedicated to sustainability and environmental justice on campus holding the administration accountable and serving the surrounding d.c maryland and virginia community she is also the assistant producer and marketing coordinator for the climate and culture focus podcast the coolest show presented by hip hop caucus in addition we're spectacularly lucky to have jamie marglin a 19 year old jewish colombian american organizer activist author public speaker and filmmaker she is co-founder of the international youth climate justice movement called zero hour that held the official youth climate marches in washington dc and 25 cities around the world during the summer of 2018. zero hour has over 200 chapters worldwide and has been a leading organization in the climate movement jamie is also the author of a book called youth to power your voice and how to use it which has been translated into multiple languages and sold all over the world the book serves as a guide to organizing and activism jamie is also plaintiff in that our children's trust youth versus the government of washington state lawsuit rgp versus state of washington suing the state of washington for denying her generation their constitutional rights to a livable environment by worsening the climate crisis jamie served as a surrogate for the bernie sanders 2020 presidential campaign speaking at several campaign rallies including the 2020 tacoma dome rally to an audience of over 17 000 people filming campaign endorsement videos and doing outreach to get out the vote for bernie sanders she is also one of the youngest or was the youngest delegate at the 2020 democratic convention this past year jamie is also the director screenwriter and weed actress in an upcoming web series called art majors which is a show a friend group of lgbtq plus art students struggling with queer love and breaking into the entertainment industry she's also the host of lavender u a podcast in online community talking um about queer arts and media representation please welcome with me angela davis destiny hodges and jamie marklin hi everyone it is such an honor to be here um and to be speaking with all of you and um dr angela davis it is such an honor to be on this panel with you as well thank you thank you it's it's wonderful to participate in this event i expect to learn so much from all of you and same from you same for us as well so i was really looking forward to this conversation because lately i've been struggling with a lot of hopelessness and burnout in the movement i'm 19 years old but i've been in the movement since i was 14 and after working for years and years and years and sacrificing a lot of like typical teenage experiences and a lot of my my youth to to try to push for change for climate justice um it's just getting to be overwhelming because i remember back in the the summer of 2017 um when i co-founded zero hour and there were these massive wildfires that blew over the smog blew over my community and made it difficult for folks to breathe um and that's what sparked me to to found my organization and then back last summer the exact same wildfires were back um and but even in more fuller force as i could feel them from the opposite coast of where they were coming from and it's just a constant stream of bad news and sometimes the other night i found myself crying for like six hours straight just kind of overwhelmed by the state of the world by the exhaustion that i feel from having been fighting so hard and just feeling like we're not getting anywhere and feeling like every time i open twitter or turn on the news is just more tragedy and more of the same that we've been fighting against so like how do you after all of these decades in this movement how do you not give up because i've only been in this for like a little under five years and i'm already like had it sometimes with the world well well you know thank you for all of the work that you've done you know creating organizations elevating people's consciousness about the need to fight for climate justice yeah i i've been involved in various movements um probably since i was about 11 years old and and i just recently turned 77 so you can do the the calculations that's a long time and there were also moments when i felt exactly as you have expressed uh your state of mind um but it never occurred to me to disassociate myself from the movement sometimes i felt like i needed to do something different because you know it gets really boring when you do the same thing over and over and over again especially if you don't see the consequences of your work so there's nothing wrong with shifting gears and um but you know what i want to tell you uh jamie is that from from this vantage point i don't really think of all of the work that i've done as a sacrifice and i know this is the this is the language that we usually use when we're talking about activism activism requires sacrifices it requires people to refrain from engaging in the activities that are going to bring them joy and and love but i don't feel that i don't feel as if i've really made any sacrifices um even the the worst experiences i i i've had just you know spending time in jail being in solitary confinement i i now see that those experiences as a gift because i learned so much and i also realized that um we can figure out how to um make each other experience joy and happiness in the process of doing the work that we are uh doing i you know i always like to think about the fact that the movement for black liberation goes back hundreds and hundreds of years one can say uh you know 500 years uh at least and what is so remarkable is is not what has been suffered and and and not so much that there's been resistance to that because there has but what's most important i think is the fact that people figure out how to make their lives how to structure their lives around these struggles how to produce beauty in the process of engaging in in these struggles how to make other people feel happiness and joy even as we know the impact of the violence and and and and the repression so you know sometimes when you feel that way you have to take some time off and recognize that this struggle is never going to succeed as a simply as a result of one individual's commitment that it's a collective struggle so that when we feel as if we need to take some time off we need to rest we can't think that the movement is going to collapse if we have a collective perspective we know that our comrades our sisters and brothers are going to continue the struggle and we might need to step back for a moment um do some self-care uh you know do whatever uh but at the same time we know that the movement is continuing to grow and develop that's the beginning of of a conversation uh but i can tell you that um at this moment i think i feel more hopeful than i than i've felt since maybe in the 60s when we were convinced that the revolution was happening that there was going to be we were convinced that capitalism was being dismantled and just as the cubans had their revolution um you know just as the vietnamese were fighting against uh the um uh us military that we were also going to win um uh we didn't but we want a lot of other things that but i think i feel even more hopeful today that i felt then i think that's that's so important because as we seek to transform the world as we seek to transform systems we must also note that we you know must transform ourselves and that includes self-care our practice is a lot of decolonization you mentioned what activism requires i'm very curious to know i guess from both of you especially you professor davis how has the connotation of activists or activism change throughout movement history and how does that change the support for organizing on the ground especially in the context of today you know everybody's on social media there's a lot of performance of activism um and and people associate primarily the performative activism with activism and and not organizing mobilizing you know building strategy and things of that nature so how would you say the connotation has changed since um you know you've been here 77 years and you've been here in many movements um well yeah it it it has changed and i'm also interested in hearing what you and uh jamie have to say of this question um but it used to be the case that that we assume that when one became an activist you know first of all it was full-time and it required working with an organization [Music] and that is what one did with one's one's life i can i can remember that many of us were also really critical of those who didn't join us you know say on the campuses uh that i have spent time on uh you know i can remember when when we you know we i think um incorrectly single people out who would not join us uh i mean we weren't we weren't trying to be understanding we weren't trying to be compassionate we were assuming that we knew the way and that um all we had to do was to persuade others to follow us and and and that doesn't work i you know i think that we now realize that activism can take place in so many ways in diverse ways uh uh there's art activism something that people often call artism there's intellectual activism the activism of the teacher or or or the writer there's of course as you pointed out there's the activism of the organizer which is so central and i think you rightly point out that um we often don't to give enough credit to go to those who do of the work that makes it possible for movements to emerge and for the most part that's been women um across the board and then of course the spokespersons the public representatives of the movement have usually been these um charismatic male figures and you know what's so exciting about the current moment is that that whole paradigm of leadership has been challenged and i think we're beginning to recognize how absolutely sensual it is um to recognize the work of the organizer uh you know who makes it possible for movements to take shape and and develop and people should feel free to participate in whatever way they can and i'll say one more thing and i've said this over and over again you know sometimes i i feel like a broken record because i keep saying the same thing over and over and over again um but but it is important for people to be able to follow their own passions and we're all different uh we're all individuals we're we're we're individuals produced by communities and collectivity but we have certain proclivities we have certain talents we have you know certain knowledges and we ought to be able to use those in our activism so i always try to tell people to do something that is going to allow you to feel fulfilled uh something that will develop your own sense of who you are and don't think that you have to follow a script about the correct way to be an activist as long as you are committed to bringing about radical social change uh that is i think the real issue the real question that's such a wonderful answer i mean i've also destiny and i had had these conversations before especially in our generation with the rise of social media and performative activism i've also been kind of struggling to see you know how i've noticed that some people are rewarded for the work they do when other people are hurt for the work they do for example my family on my mom's side my mom is an immigrant from colombia in south america which has the highest rates of murders of environmental activists out of any country in the world but i was born and grew up in the united states and so here in the us i because of the work that i do and i started right you know with the rise of social media i find myself getting rewarded for the work that i do um with um media and attention and social media followers but if i were to be doing that work in my family's home country then i would be in danger um and and i would be um it would be a lot more dangerous for me and i i've noticed that that there are well some of us are heavily rewarded for our work and kind of put on a pedestal of like as like especially with climate activism there's like this whole rise of like celebrity climate activism and and other people are literally fearing for their lives and i think about that all the time of how i find myself in a place of privilege where because of where i live um i can i can do this work and get rewarded for it um but if i were to be um stayed if if my my mom stayed in colombia and had me there then it might be a very different story and so um it's also seeing the the rise of performative activism on social media i i found it interesting it's hard to navigate because on one end social media is such a great tool to create change like my organization zero hour would not have been able to take off without social media that's how i met my co-founders that's how we interacted that we posted graphics come to this protest at this time and people showed up which was a lot easier than like flyering in person though we also did in-person flyering as well um but then there's also um this rise of performativity where it's almost like every where it's suddenly like cool to be like i even saw this shift like when i was 14 and i started climate organizing it wasn't cool to be a climate activist and kind of everyone kind of looked at me kind of weird in school for doing this work but lately there's been a shift where it's like in vogue to be caring about issues and everyone is putting on a performance and it's on one hand it's like oh it's cool that everyone cares but then it's like do they really care or it feels like everyone's just virtue signaling to each other in in like their silos of of the same opinion so all of their friends who follow them will be like you're down with the cause too but it's just a silo of of performative wokeness and just to see who can who can out um who can out woke each other who can be the mo who's problematic who can like out do each other and then um there's this shunning and bullying of like people who don't like fit that criteria of like purity and it's this whole mess online and um i've noticed that you don't have an instagram or twitter that i'm aware of i see that you have a facebook like have you also seen this kind of weird social media culture of like performative activism and like um also this toxic spaces where where everyone has to be in like these echo chambers and the minute someone steps out of line it's like a social media like uh mob that the whole mob mentality too like is there a reason why you don't have um twitter or instagram or these accounts or have you noticed that kind of pattern because i've noticed it a lot and it's kind of disturbing and discouraging it kind of makes me less excited to do the work well actually you know i do have a a twitter account but that's um but i basically learn rather than a stupid account um and you know i'm not you grew up with this social media uh this is a a part of how you in engage in social relations i did i mean i think that it it can be very important as you pointed out before because it it can assist in the process of bringing people together but it can also be counterproductive uh and i noticed that nowadays a lot of people are talking about performative activism and and to tell the truth you know i'm not sure whether we should pay so much attention to that because in many ways i think it's inevitable uh and it's a kind of byproduct of the success we have achieved when the messages that we represent get out to increasing numbers of people and certainly you know when it i mean it's it's on the one hand it's really terrible that it's often seen as only a trend um but then on the other hand if it is seen as a trend then there are people who want to associate themselves with that trend and they often do it in absolutely the wrong way yeah um but i think that's inevitable i mean i i think that existed before social media uh and as a young activist myself i can i can remember um you know all the the the the people we assumed were only involved because it was hip to do that not because they had um uh deep feelings of of commitment uh but i don't know whether one should really worry about that so much uh i think one should worry about uh expanding the movement and finding those people who really are passionate and and and who are committed uh um because um we can oftentimes use too much of our our energy trying to combat the negativity and it it it also makes us sometimes um um you know perhaps um um it puts us in a situation where we we can't correctly gauge the impact of the work that we've been doing yeah so so i think you know sometimes uh as as i was saying to the group before i feel like i'm a broken record i say the same thing over and over and over again but i think sometimes you have to do that because if you don't continue to make the point then then maybe it disappears i mean i can remember uh people making fun of me because i said i was an abolitionist uh you know what what do you mean you want to abolish uh prisons uh that's not possible that's ridiculous that's you must be absolutely out of your mind um but now you see uh that uh abolition has entered into the public um discourse and vocabulary and there are a lot of people who pretend to support abolition um but they're actually um following the agendas of uh a more conservative and capitalist you know oriented uh you know that's something that's inevitable it's uh in in many ways in many ways it's a measure of the success that you're you're having and i think we have to figure out how to um um eventually uh or how to how to how to become more radical how to develop ideas that even go beyond you know what it is those who are engaging in the performative activism assume and we have to continue to move forward and those of you who are doing this really important work for climate justice are are doing the most important work of social movements because it makes no sense to imagine any of our movements against racism against misogyny against the prison industrial complex you know against transphobia it's hard to imagine any of those movements being successful uh at the same time that the climate continues to be polluted and poisoned because the the climate justice movement is ground zero of social justice if we don't have a planet then it makes no sense to continue to struggle for democracy and socialism and so i really want to um you know thank you deeply for the work that you're doing and remind me i need to tell you a story about an experience i had in colombia and that is directly related to the climate justice movement all right i will i'd love to hear that story i think um professor davis you bring up a really good point especially and hopefully this will help a lot of people understand um in the context of intersectionality um and just how things don't operate in silos systems don't operate in silos they very much feed into each other support one another um and so i think it's really important at least for me and my work that's that's also how i see it climate is is ground zero um environment is ground zero because in the definition of environment that i use in my organization generation green it's strongly um is depends on the environmental justice definition of environment which means that our environment is a context a complex interaction of the biological the social the political the geographical on and on and on um um systems and constructs and so if we define environment by that and not just nature then you must understand that all the systems are a part of our environment and if we look at the physical environment but as well as ourselves specifically me my black body as an environment then you you can't miss the layers um but the the climate and environmental movement has a history of being very siloed um of using the momentum of other movements i mean the movement itself is founded on racism and eugenics and noting that those like john muir theodore roosevelt and moore very much wanted environmentalism and conservation to be a luxury for white folks um and i think a lot of people are just coming to terms with that um especially last summer as we saw in the climate and environmental movement um with the uprisings the climate movement got called out you know um it's it's not a safe space i mean there's there's nowhere that's safe honestly for black organizers aside of in the in the community with other black folks and other oppressed people um but in in the climate movement they got called out and then everybody started scrambling and paying attention and to the point of uh climate celebrity culture or performative activism on social media particularly there was like a big rush of the white climate audience to go find uh bipoc folks or people of color black folks to to sit and i want to learn from you teach me how to not be a bad white person or teach me how to you know and it was it was very weird and odd to watch um and i would also say that i i've noticed a lot of um influencers which i honestly don't pay that much attention to it either but it's just interesting to see um how people take on the the the identities or the roles that are that are created for them and then they they utilize that um and then that becomes people's idea of activism and then it's this and so people don't understand you know what all goes into it the organizing the work um and i would just love to to hear more from from you jamie and you professor davis on the the intersections between um racism capitalism and colonialism and climate particularly because that's when we get into all of those systems being built upon each other and and climate and environment kind of as the foundation i know for me personally um i'm an environmental liberation organizer and at generation green we've um synthesized and created the term environmental liberation to note that climate justice environmental justice and black liberation are inseparable especially when we look at black folks across the entire diaspora we've had a unique environment to experience i mean from the arabic slave trade in the east which predates the transatlantic slave trade by over a thousand years to the transatlantic slave trade um to you know the caribbean south america the united states the uk canada black folks are everywhere and our climate experience is unique and in the context of these western nations we always know that they're the biggest polluters well they were also colonizers and many still are um and so when we try to you know have these world summits which there's a lot of them coming up when we try to have these international conversations um oftentimes people want to say climate justice is racial justice until it gets into an international context and then they can't they can't compute um they can't you know and so i would just love to to hear you all's analysis of global racial capitalism colonialism and climate it's very interesting i've i've been in so many conversations with people where i talk about climate justice and they're like okay but we need to solve the climate crisis and you need to stop slapping all these issues that have nothing to do with climate change on it um like i was talking about the green new deal and i was talking about health care and and um because health also has a universal healthcare healthcare for all is is also very um connected with the the climate crisis because um as a climate crisis gets worse people's health deteriorates people get more um diseases and all that stuff and i was having a conversation with someone and they're like we're never gonna get any where um we're never gonna stop the climate crisis if like leftists keep tacking on all of these issues that have nothing to do with climate change just make it about the environment stop talking about race stop talking about health care stop talking about um indigenous rights stop talking about immigration rights we need to focus on climate change like we're trying to compromise here and i i get that over and over again because um and the the work that zero hour does and and i think a lot of the the movements that that we're a part of this is starting to to to make it more of mainstream knowledge that the climate crisis doesn't exist in a silo separate from all other issues but rather is a symptom of the issue i always say that the climate crisis is not the problem it's the symptom of the problems of um like you said colonialism capitalism patriarchy racism everything and we see it's there's a lot of like pushback in in the political sphere of any anything that even tries to address the social um the social justice intersections the most popular thing is the green new deal right and house leader nancy pelosi called it the green new dream or whatever and everyone kind of laughs at um people trying to to address how the climate crisis disproportionately affects women 80 percent of people who are um displaced by climate change according to the united nations are women um and it's just all of these issues um are so intersectional but it's treated like a joke whenever i guess in the mainstream it's treated like oh these leftists are just trying to tack on all of their issues to fool us um the the greener deal is like a trojan horse for their leftist agenda we just need to focus on climate change and it's difficult because i feel like in the echo chamber of like the community that i'm working in um and the climate justice community there's like a consensus and an understanding that yes these issues are interconnected but beyond that i feel like even in the greater like in more moderate circles and just in the greater non-climate justice community people still look at it as a joke as like as of intersectionality and addressing the climate like addressing the climate crisis from all of these different lenses is like an extra thing like an optional an optional thing we can do um and i guess i want to know um professor davis like have you encountered that and like how do you think um we can push so more people can fully understand the intersectionality of the climate crisis and realize that intersectionality isn't just like a extra little cherry on top if you have time but it's actually the we have to get to the roots of this issue in order to solve it well i think you're absolutely right and this attempt to focus on single issues has always been so unproductive and has always really prevented us from you know understanding connections and relations uh and and and as you put it's the intersectionality of these struggles and let's talk about the relationship of um climate justice to struggles against capitalism i mean i happen to believe that at this particular moment where so many people have become politicized uh you know largely around the issue of racism but also uh in relation to misogyny and increasing numbers of people around issues of uh the the the climate there is the um there's also the assumption uh that um um capitalism is just sort of if capitalism is a problem it's um it's not really connected to our struggles against racism that that one you know that one can be a capitalist and make major contributions to the struggle against racism uh um how to real patriarchy i think you know one of the good things is that we've begun to recognize the structural character of racism and when we talk about structure that necessarily relates to capitalism not so much in the metoo movement that's still very much a movement that sees individuals as the problem uh you know rather than uh uh that heteropatriarchy so let's talk about the fact that um the um ways in which uh the planet has been uh so polluted and so exploited those ways are directly related to capitalism to racial capitalism and racial capitalism is not a subset of capitalism by the way there's not capitalism and then racial capitalism capitalism is racial capitalism because it reflects the way in which capitalism came into being colonialism and slavery you know what marx called the primitive accumulation that was necessary in order for this kind of economic system to begin uh to unfold um there had to be theft there had to be violence it had to be of destruction now and when one looks at the genocide of colonialism and the slavery that was introduced in order to provide labor for emerging um industrial capitalist concerns say you know the production of cotton uh um uh one uh can um can can recognize uh that um that uh these modes of production these ways of of exploiting human beings also reflected and exploitative relationship with the earth with the planet i mean how is it possible to have slavery and and not recognize the ways in which slave production was really designed to um extract from the earth and and and treating the the earth instrumentally you know not as something that has to be treasured and and and cultivated and and taken care of i mean this was the transition from the indigenous stewardship of the land to capitalist exploitation of of the land so i think it's so important for us to recognize that all of these modes of exploitation and repression are interlinked and that we can't uh really talk about uh adequately contesting racism unless we also contest the ways in which the development of racism was uh connected to this extractive and violent relationship uh to the earth so i you know i i i told you that i would tell you a story about uh colombia now i'm thinking about another story that i experienced in colombia uh tell us the story you know which one i i i visited columbia i think it was in in 2011 to express solidarity um with a group of people who were challenging eviction from um their um land uh who uh because of course uh it was discovered that there's a lot of gold there and and and and and these are people of african descent who actually lived on on that land um for the last centuries uh um and um and so we were creating a a a movement and you know from you know francia marquez uh um who's this amazing young black woman leader i guess she's not so young anymore the time goes by and people age but [Music] i had the most amazing experience there when people from her community showed us how they did gold mining and everyone in that community considers themselves a minor but they they mine for gold in ways that uh protected the earth one could not even tell of that uh this was a gold mine um and and when one compares that to the industrialized capital is ways of removing gold from the earth the ways in which they will shop off the top of a mountain in order to uh acquire all of the gold i mean i i'll never forget that that was such an amazing experience um and then the other thing i was thinking about was uh that um are there some we were in the area near kali uh and yeah you could see these um fields and fields and fields of green and we were told that people called that the green desert you know what was it it was sugar cane and why so much sugarcane because um uh people in in the north uh or or the west we might say feel the need to do something to avert the climate crisis so they want to use biofuel instead of fossil fuel and so all of this sugar came miles and miles of green deserts where people had been kicked off of the land people who actually had been attentive to the biodiversity of the land by you know their by growing the means of their own sustenance and and so again this is just an example of how one can with blinders so you know perhaps i shouldn't even use that term again but one can focus so myopically on an issue that one pays no attention to the reverberations it has uh in other areas you know how how can one feel good about uh buying biofuel when you know that huge numbers of people have been evicted from their land and and a prison even has to be built because of the consequences of of these evictions so i you know i think it's always so important to think um intersectionally to think uh uh complexly to recognize uh connections uh and and interrelationalities thank you so much dr davis i'm gonna direct you a couple of participant questions and also dr davis if you have 10 more minutes let me know in the chat because people are there's a hashtag going it wasn't me people are lobbying for a few more minutes but my first question is and this is danny um how do you understand and celebrate the intersectionality of an issue while still narrowing your work enough that you don't try to do everything at once okay i'm just typing i'm i'm i'll just tell you that yeah i have 10 more minutes so okay that works great fantastic thank you so much okay and so tell me repeat the question again absolutely so it is how do you understand and celebrate the intersectionality of an issue while still narrowing your work enough that you don't try to do everything at once well one can't do everything simultaneously i mean that's obvious but one can acknowledge that as one focuses sometimes uh in a very laser sharp manner on a particular issue one does that against the backdrop of recognizing uh the the the uh a whole range of issues and their interconnections uh um you know sometimes we think so simplistically and we assume that if we embrace this analysis that means we have to do everything at once that means we're responsible for dealing with all of the issues simultaneously which is impossible but it is possible to recognize their their their interconnections their relationalities uh um and to be willing to um engage in solidarity actions uh with those who are working on other fronts in other arenas uh and um and that that is something that i think uh we still have to focus on a great deal we do this a great deal more today let me tell you that as someone who has uh um been aware of this tendency to focus on single issues for a very very long time i'm telling you we are uh in 2021 a lot more advanced than who were in um you know 1970 i i i can't remember when i was in jail in 1970 as a matter of fact and i was asked to write statements for a whole range of uh of issues and movements and one of one of which was reproductive rights uh because there was a big demonstration uh for abortion rights and so in my statement i i talked about the importance of defending women's right to engage in abortion but at the same time recognize that we had to be opposed to um sterilization abuse which so many indigenous women were experiencing so many black women women in prison and i can remember at that time they would not accept my statement because they said that has nothing to do with uh abortion rights and that is what we're we're focusing only on this issue it's impossible ever to focus only on a single issue uh without recognizing the connections uh and the and and and and the ways um other struggles have an impact on this particular stroke i'm going to ask another question but also welcome jamie in destiny to offer any reflections to these questions you have also um what do y'all think of slash how do you account for the role of funding in movement spaces i'm thinking winner take all colonial phil philanthropy i come back to it as such a barrier in access and doing real radical work that the big money isn't there and i hate to limit myself by money and it's a reality but it's also a reality destiny i know you got thoughts about this i'm like i'm saying um [Music] funding is it it sucks that we're in global racial capitalism to say the least you know and it sucks that one of the main resources um that that drives the system and that we must depend on for our livelihoods is money um and so first let me state that it is a blessing to be paid to do this work because that has not always been the case um as professor davis said earlier you know when you assume the role of an activist or an activism that that was your life's work and in how she spoke about it and so it's a blessing to be paid to do this work but many of us are underpaid also and for many of us this this is our life work um or we're managing you know two three jobs in the middle of covet some of us also going to school myself included um and trying to scramble and make ends meet and then that ends you know the stress the way of the world you know being an activist all of that is what we're juggling with um and in the case of funding i can say that as a black youth-led organization with generation green it is most definitely difficult to to get funding um especially any anybody doing work that's perceived as radical revolutionary or really shifting change it's extremely hard to get funding even in this age of white guilt money it's still hard to get funding because folks want to you know talk the talk but when it comes time to write a check they don't want to do it um but i think one of the things that that's really gotten me through like these these funding issues or or going back to self-care and you know feeding into ourselves as manifestations um and i know everybody does things differently so i'm not gonna do anything specific but i try to really focus on on what i'm trying to manifest what i'm trying to produce how can i be my best self in this process and and letting things take care of each other but i'm also seeking out and making connections constantly because network is a really big thing just like all the folks in this chat right now i think it's like almost 300 people in here donate you know donate to generation green to to zero hour to many of the groups that folks are dropping in the comments yes that howard network hu um but but just in general utilizing a network but also realizing that money at the end of the day is is not the end-all be-all what should be the end-all be-all is the community the connections you make the impact of your work and i think someone asked the question earlier in the chat you know how can i how can i do this work start with your community feed into your community build community with the folks that you work with the folks that you're friends with um and expand that but funding is is a really hard reality to face but i don't let it get me down um i do look for grants i do the hard work behind the scenes i think as organizers we always fill all the gaps including the funding searching um but hopefully there's some funders in this in this chat that can um drop some links and and fund some people's work yeah it's very difficult to raise money for um movements and stuff like that i remember i feel like at some point like grant application is like a college application um it's it's like they they just want everything and i remember for the original um 2018 zero hour youth climate marches our fundraising director madeline too like faked being sick so that she could go to the nurse's office and scramble to finish a grant just in time she was like 16 at the time and scrambled to finish a grant in the nurse's office being like oh i i can't be in class right now i'm sick and and finish it so we could get the the funding we were like down to the wire we needed the funding for like the basics of like a stage sound system and stuff for our march on washington and um i mean it says a lot that a 16 year old student had to like pretend to be sick to scramble for just the right amount of money so that we could barely pull off our action and yeah i think that that speaks a lot in itself of of how i i get very annoyed because there is this i don't know if fetishization is the right word but i guess i'll use it of like youth activism where leaders and people like oh my god you're so cute i love the work you do here's a trophy here's this like like kind of fake honor i put you on like a list or something and be like you're so inspiring keep up the work but when it comes to actually resource or actually support or actually even like implement the changes crickets it's just like a like a feel-good tweet um where's the support oh where is the actual like especially i don't know it's hard to feel supported as a young organizer as a student in college like as soon as i'm finished with this i have so much homework to do oh my god i don't even want to think about it i got so much homework um um doing all this having so much homework and then getting people like governors and like people in power just like patting you on the head being like great job you're so inspiring let's take a picture and then it's like okay that's it no money no tangible difference um and shoving the responsibility on our shoulders like you youth are so inspiring you're gonna save the world um i'm so excited for for you the youth to to to save the world thank you for your work and then they proceed to sit back not fund not make any changes and just be like hey you teenager with a bunch of homework and um your own issues and the stresses of growing up solve everything i will retweet you but that's it it's like it's difficult yeah so yeah you know i think that it's so important to um and thank you both um i really uh appreciate your your comments um uh the structure of philanthropy in in this country uh uh recapitulates the structure of capitalism and and i actually you know i think that social justice organizations should be governmentally funded no strings attached i mean i i know that sounds weird to ask the government to uh give you money uh to challenge the government but i'm thinking that in places like australia uh organizations that are really radical automatically get governmental funding now because they're doing social justice work so that people don't have to spend all of their time trying to figure out how to raise the money as you said jamie just to be able to get a stage and just to be able to to create the infrastructure for some kind of mobilization it's it's so absurd and it makes me so angry that that that that we have to confront at every turn the impact of of the um of racial capitalism um but then then you know there are people like i you know i like um i like uh uh mackenzie uh what is her life jeff bezos's ex-wife scott yeah listen who apparently has donated uh a good portion of what she um got from uh being connected to uh the richest man in the world to all kinds of organizations but with no strings attached because you know one of the problems with the ways in which funders require you uh to move along a certain trajectory to be able to provide evidence uh uh of a certain sort uh you know what is the what is the one the the the one-year outcome of the work that you're doing you know what is the two-year outcome when we know that oftentimes this work takes decades and you can't um you can't monetize it in that way yeah but then of course i know that you all were struggling against that as well i think i may be one of those people who who's looking to the youth uh you know also to change the world no but that's but see you're it's different like you you've been doing the work you you've been like we're standing on the shoulders of the amazing work that you've done i'm talking about like like literal governors who are sitting there with like all of the power in their hands who literally could write and congress people who are just like you're gonna save us and then they're like literally the ones who make the laws but like we're standing on the shoulders of your work and i'm eternally grateful i mean i was just kidding i was just yeah yeah i mean you're not only standing on on my shoulders on our shoulders but because you know i always say because you stand on the shoulders of the generation before your vision is more complex you can see a lot further than we can and so we have to uh always remember how much we have to learn from you as well on the note of youth um i want us to all also consider what youth are being funded um what youth are being put at the forefront especially in the context of climate and environmentalism and that movement because black youth are are not at the forefront so if we're not even seen of course we're not even funded um and especially when it's in the context of i'm always speaking from an african diaspora context so black youth or even youth of color in general from the global north are always put as the token the spokesperson but rarely if ever do we see um black youth and and people of color um youth from the sat from the global south and it it's wild so it's it's like it's so many layers to it especially being black again because we have such a unique experience and it's happening all over the world at the same time the people who are trying to build coal plants in the united states are also trying to build coal plants in kenya they're also trying to extract fossil fuel and labor in jamaica in brazil which has the largest population of black folks outside the continent of africa and it goes on and on back to the intersectionality piece um but it's always important to to look at the narratives um that we're portraying that we're telling and who's being shown who is the face of things especially when it comes to money because i know there's a lot of talk there's a lot of these uh philanthropy foundations and things having moments where they're doing research and interviewing youth climate activists and folks but they're not interviewing youth climate activists who look like me so that means the funding that comes out of their research will not go to activists and organizers who look like me um so in the context of funding but just in all of our work it's also really important to to keep that in mind with the narrative and and the faces that we show and the stories that we tell or the stories that we change um as we talk about these things and you know i so appreciate uh the internationalism of the climate justice movement uh because of course we're talking about a planet oftentimes when we address issues like racism we don't think within that internationalist context you know we think in a very narrow domestic context and we failed to recognize that um you know just as colonialism and and and racism have had an impact on north america uh colonialism and racism have been felt all over the planet uh and so as as we as we think about uh um um george floyd and brianna taylor and um dante wright and and others we have to imagine that this is a part of a necessary struggle all over the world including in brazil as you pointed out where there's a larger black population than any other in any other part of the planet outside of the continent of africa and they have been struggling against police violence militarized racist police violence for a very long time yet we don't have the connections that we should have um france you know there are struggles against police violence in france in south africa even though the majority of the police now are black they are still heirs to this horrendous uh system of policing that is absolutely determined by structural racism and and so and the reason i'm thanking you is because i think your approach is the approach that all of the other movements should be taking uh you know whether we're talking about movements against federal patriarchy movements to support immigrants uh movements against racism movements against ableism they're all interconnected and we we who are involved in some of those other struggles can learn a great deal from the work that is being done for environmental justice so thank you and thank you especially for your internationalism thank you thank you so much thank you all right friends it's been wonderful my name is danny i'm co-executive director of starship network and on behalf of everybody so who's had made this convergence a possibility i'd like to thank destiny and jamie and dr davis for their contributions this evening afternoon depending on where you're at and we're really looking forward to continuing this conversation so head on over to the sked if you're registered for the convergence to figure out where we're going next thanks y'all peace thank you i'm also putting some links in the chat for resources and stuff if people want to stay in touch with me or zero hour and maybe destiny and and professor davis can do the same but i'm just going to be putting some links in the chat for anyone who wants to stay in touch all right thank you thank you thank you thank you this has been fantastic yeah thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this conversation and i wish you uh so much success in the work that you're doing thank you thank you thank you so much