Transcript for:
Creating a Just and Sustainable Future

We are building a future where everyone has the  resources we need to thrive. Clean water and air,   nutritious food, a place to live, education,  basic income, and a caring community. A shared   future where we're all valued and have equal  access to meaningful work. But every time we   make progress on one part of this vision,  there are big lies that are foreclosing on   our community's progress and the future of  other communities. A big lie. Some places   must be treated as sacrifice zones. In places  like Cancer Alley in Louisiana and Port Arthur,   Texas where Black, brown and poor people have  been redlined into polluted neighborhoods,   suffering from asthma, lead poisoning and  cancer as they suffer from overt policing   and mass incarceration. A big lie, you  can extract people from their communities   and incarcerate them out of sight, and this will  make communities safer and healthier. A big lie,   you have to make trade-offs that sacrifice  some people for other people to be well.  You have to have pollution if you want to have  good jobs. If you want safe neighborhoods, you   have to have over-policing and mass incarceration.  A big lie. We have to spend billions on extractive   industries like oil prisons and police. There are  thousands of city blocks where more than a million   dollars is spent every year to incarcerate people  who live on one block. Billions of public dollars   go towards giving fossil fuel corporations free  support. What would be possible if this public   money were invested in an economy that works for  all people and the planet? A big lie, there are   not enough resources to meet all communities'  needs. The truth is that nature and all of us   together are abundant and all communities  could be thriving. But resources have been   misused by the powerful and created the brutality  of mass incarceration, the climate crisis and the   heartbreak of losing loved ones to violence. Our bodies are extracted out of communities   to be exploited. We call this being a fence line  community. Just across our fences are refineries,   redlining and gentrification, segregation,  coloring, everything from our architecture to   the asthma in our lungs. Maybe we're in Appalachia  watching prison projects being planned while   our communities struggle against joblessness,  addiction, and overdose. Maybe we're in a Texas   prison the day the storms come or a California  prison when the fires rage hot, watching climate   change wreak havoc and knowing incarcerated  people are on the front lines fighting fires.  Those of us who have survived know we  need transformation. We know our futures   are linked and our struggles are connected. We  tap into our collective abundance, connection,   and power. We must divest from zero-sum  narratives, from communities competing,   and unite against the systems and  elites, keeping us struggling to survive.  We've seen the transformative power of movements  coming together against our common enemy of an   extractive system. We've seen immigrants and  formerly incarcerated people come together and   defeat jail expansions in California. In Hawaii  indigenous people came together with military   families to demand the military close the Red Hill  fuel facility, which had been leaking petroleum   into the water for decades, and they won. We've  done this in community and we know it works.   We all deserve the opportunity to thrive, find  joy and dignity in our work, and live in right   relationship to nature. And right now like  watching a rose sprout from a concrete wall,   we're building to be free from systems of  oppression for a just world where everyone's   liberation is interconnected. In other words,  we are watering the roses now. Come join us,   and we'll liberate each other. The movement  for a more just world starts with you.