Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter. While this statement is true, I dislike it for the same reasons I dislike the term "environmentalist." Of course all human lives matter! Of course we all care about our surroundings! Everyone should embrace both ideals, making both terms completely unnecessary. Unfortunately, the need for both terms reflects the presence of--and pushes back on--people in our society who behave irrationally, and who don't care about people or the environment--or more accurately, people who do not act to change the way things are due to past practices and decisions that weren't in the best interest of people and the environment, and continue to influence our society today. And with both movements, people can be harming progress just by doing business as usual, because of a lack of education. We all must strive to educate ourselves, listen to experts, and do the best we can to help make the world a better place.


Black lives matter. This assertion explicitly challenges those in power who harm or murder Blacks. It also implicitly challenges the structural racism in our society that devalues Black life, resulting in disproportionate poverty, unemployment, pollution, incarceration, violence, and death in Black communities (as well as other marginalized communities).

After a week of protests triggered by George Floyd's murder by a police officer, and after a week of personal education and introspection, I feel I have only scratched the surface of antiracism and the available education resources--here are are just a couple of really good ones that I've found:

• Hour-long video: "How to be an Antiracist"
• Tweet thread: Police 'special duties'

I also am appalled at the bad behavior of both the public and the police across the country. Twitter has been full of examples of both, and each example is horrifying. But we have to remember these are exceptions--unacceptable exceptions to the rule that most people are behaving with kindness and love to each other (and some police are taking a knee in solidarity with protesters). But especially for the police, the bad behavior is not just unacceptable--I don't know if I have a word strong enough for what it is. It is as if you called the fire department and instead of putting out your house fire they burned down your whole block--and fought with the firefighters trying to save your house. One person on Twitter said that if you have 10 bad cops and 1000 cops that don't do anything about the bad cops, then you have 1010 bad cops. Well said. Police must meet a higher standard. But after watching multiple videos (far too many--like with Trump, just when you think you've seen the worst and it can't get any worse, you keep seeing worse behavior) this week of their reprehensible behavior, and after reading the second link above, I feel like I am more of an expert in how to do their jobs then they are. And they are supposed to get training and practice... but it is as if they have none.

As a parent, I can relate to escalating frustration with an unruly crowd, and having inadequate training for handling it. No one is required to learn how to properly be a parent, yet I encounter kids fighting and misbehaving every day in situations where parental conflict resolution skills are required. The way many police have been shown behaving this week makes me think of overwhelmed parents--thrust into a situation they aren't prepared to handle, pressured by expectations of maintaining order, and unproductively hassling and hurting the very people they have sworn to protect. But for police, it is their job, and training is required. The problem is in the training and supervision, or lack thereof. Improving that is an intensely-local job that needs to be repeated in every jurisdiction in this country.

The problem is also in the militarization of police. If you have a bunch of military tools, you will be inclined to use them--how else do you justify the expense of having them? If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Spending on these dangerous, largely-useless toys takes away spending from other areas of civic life that would make these weapons even more unnecessary. It is like how we fund the military instead of humanitarian aid and diplomacy--it ensures worsening conditions and escalating frequent conflict.

Those other areas of civic life have to include how we develop our cities. Land use planning may not sound interesting, but it has a huge effect on communities. I have always wanted to make a bumper sticker: Frequent Beautiful Places. Because humans need beauty, we need functionality, we need inspiration, and most urban areas are not beautiful, functional, or inspiring. This allows those with wealth and power to flee to beautiful, functional, inspiring places, leaving the poor and powerless in ugly, dysfunctional, uninspiring conditions. Fixing this is also an intensely-local job that needs to be repeated in every jurisdiction in this country.

My career has been spent restoring rivers. There are so many opportunities to give the people their rivers back, making their environments and economic prospects more diverse, beautiful, functional, and inspiring. The L.A. River (support FOLAR) flows through communities that could really use a functioning beautiful river. Central Valley rivers (support FOR, TBI, NRDC) are degraded by dams and industrial agriculture, and restoring them would restore beauty, function, and inspiration for not only some of the poorest communities in the nation, but also for the coastal fisheries. But fighting against this (often legally-required) work are some of the most powerful interests in the country. Daylighting streams in the Bay Area also restores beauty, function, and inspiration to many disadvantaged communities.

The movement to inhibit climate change is another important effort with benefits for all communities around the world. Poorer communities can't afford to adapt to climate change effects as well as richer ones, therefore climate change prevention is a social justice movement as well. And it is also an intensely-local job that needs to be repeated in every jurisdiction in this country. With all these local efforts, of course, there are parallel efforts needed at state and national and international scales.

What do we need to do? Education. Listen to the truth. Community. Action at all levels of government.

Environmental Justice is a movement that combines justice for people and justice for the environment. They are one and the same. Without justice, there is no peace.