One day I woke up in a hospital bed and could not feel my face. I looked around and saw people crying all around me. I could not recognize those in the room with me, nor remember how I got there or what was happening. All that I knew was that I could not move or even speak. Then it all turned to black; I couldn’t tell you anything else from that day or that month for that matter.

I have a lot of fragmented memories like this one after being hospitalized for a large portion of my late teenage and young adult life. This was a result of sustaining a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) among multiple other internal and external injuries stemming from a very violent act inflicted upon me by a man I did not know, but who felt entitled to ownership of my existence. Fortunately, I survived. However, navigating life as a disabled person thereafter, in an inherently ableist society, often led me to question why. Why bother? This especially became a recurring thought in my mind whenever I faced mainstream issues or experiences that excluded or denied disabled people our humanity.

The latest reiteration of normalized ableist exclusion has been the bans and debate regarding single use disposable plastic straws. Every time I come across it online, another one of these vivid memories from my life living in the hospital intensive care unit stirs up in my psyche. I remember in particular one of my friends from high school, Dini, sitting by my hospital bedside, feeding me baby food with a plastic straw that had a tiny spoon fashioned at the end of it. When I had graduated to receiving my sustenance through my mouth rather than through an IV, I had to start with liquids, ingested via regular plastic bendable straws. Eventually baby food and other blended-up food items were fed to me by these special plastic spoon-straws, provided in many hospitals to their incapacitated patients. My jaw had been wired shut for about a total of six months, and plastic straws were the only way I could eat and take my meds.

We Can’t Talk Climate Change Without Talking Environmental Racism
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Paper straws were of no use, especially for hot liquids—the paper would just disintegrate. Metal straws were not an option either, because they could lead to potentially serious burns in my already fragile mouth, face, and body from their hot content, not to mention that the metal could damage fresh surgical sites. But also, if I did not have the fine motor functions to eat or drink by myself at the time, having to clean and disinfect reusable metal straws was certainly out of the question. I tried every type of straw there was during that time period to find that only the bendy disposable plastic variety were of any use to me. This is likely the case with people suffering from ALS, dementia, stroke, seizures, or other kinds of disabilities and health issues that would require the regular use of them.

Those who want to ban plastic straws argue for these unusable alternatives, or say that disabled people should provide our own straws—at our own expense and effort. That we are expected to do this in order to maintain some modicum of a normal life is only half of the issue with this recent rendition of strawgate.

The issue of plastic straws seems to regularly cycle in the mainstream, but a recent viral video of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril furthered the impetus for strawgate 2018. It has now resulted in real life bans and never ending ableist debates across developed cities all over the world from Vancouver to Seattle to London, regarding the impact of straws on the environment. In all of the debates and proposed or implemented policies thus far, most have failed to include the disabled community—those of us who depend on plastic straws to carry out basic functions of daily living.

In all of the debates and proposed or implemented policies thus far, most have failed to include the disabled community.
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Questioning the ableism in these sweeping bans is often met with the rhetoric of “well if you need straws, bring your own.” But when you ask a disabled person to provide their own straws, think of the equivalents. You would not ask an abled bodied person to be even mildly inconvenienced to regularly carry their own chairs and table to an eatery, or carry their own oxygen mask onto an airplane. Thus the onus to offer environmentally friendly alternatives should not fall on disabled people. If an establishment is truly committed to the environment and their clientele (because both are capable for consideration simultaneously), the responsibility to seek and offer viable and usable alternatives that also work for disabled people and not leave us excluded, is on the establishment.

Furthermore, the understanding that for many disabled people, the alternatives just don’t, won’t, and haven’t worked for us, is truly absent. Disabled people are constantly under attack, heavily scrutinized and regularly challenged about what we often already know works best for us. After all, we are the ones who’ve lived in our disabled bodies as long as we have and have likely tried the whole gamut of suggestions that any abled bodied person could ever think up—no matter how well intentioned. The reality that disabled people can be masters of our own experiences, and therefore the most experienced regarding our own life situation, seems to be amiss among those who do not share our lived experiences as disabled people. The ludicrousness of being told, expected, and even demanded repeatedly to use alternatives that we’ve likely explored and already know don’t work, is akin to a lay person instructing a cancer treatment surgeon on how and where to remove a tumor. Mastery comes from experience, and there is no greater mastery than that of lived experience.

Disability Rights Are Conspicuously Absent From The Women’s March Platform
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Every so often this uproar about plastic straws makes its way around social media and becomes yet another pop culture display in self righteous faux activism. But the actual facts surrounding ocean plastics are lost under the performative outrage about plastic straws and their environmental consequences. Straws become a false flag that distract the everyday person from real and more pressing issues about the environment, and obscures who should really be held accountable.

Plastic straws are a relatively tiny percentage of ocean plastics. Having worked for turtle conservation centers from Ceylon to the Maldives, and being an island person from indigenous cultures where our ways of living are inextricably linked to the environment that surrounds us, I’ve seen firsthand the devastation of plastics on our waters and ocean wildlife. But of all the ocean plastics that washed ashore every day, rarely were any plastic straws. Over 46% of ocean plastics are from fishing nets and gear that are disposed of or left in the ocean. But are we willing to give up on keto salmon diets or our fishing industries, or demand more stringent practices for fisheries, to end the devastation these cause to ocean wildlife?

None of the hundreds of turtles that we tried to save and nurse back to health at the conservation centers had been harmed by straws. They had either been severely injured and dismembered or killed from boating accidents. From massive luxury ocean liners, to personal boating vessels, to getting caught in the motors of small fishing boats, it was absolutely devastating to see how many turtles were regularly harmed or killed from human leisure activities. Are we willing to put a cap on human interaction with ocean life and the seas? Are we willing to dial back on ocean wildlife excursions or fishing/boating trips because of their harmful consequences on these poor animals?

I’ve seen firsthand the devastation of plastics on our waters and ocean wildlife. But of all the ocean plastics that washed ashore every day, rarely were any plastic straws.
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It is also irresponsible to place the weight and accountability of solving the ocean plastics problem onto individuals. The majority of ocean plastics are from a handful of powerful industrial conglomerates that pollute our oceans despite being warned of the consequences to their behavior since the 1970s. But so-called developed nations have not been making enough substantial, concrete, and legislative changes to seriously help the environment.  In addition to not doing enough in holding big businesses accountable for their waste, developed nations often blame developing countries as the sole contributors to our ocean plastics problem, while they quietly ship these countries their plastic waste for disposal. Countries like the United States also refuse to sign onto global conventions attempting to address this urgent issue. While individuals in the west pay more than 90% of the cost of recycling, their governments of these developed nations hand out huge subsidies to big businesses in fossil fuels—even though plastics are made out of fossil fuels.

It is indeed an overdue necessity that we clean up our oceans and find sustainable alternatives to our plastic problem, but straws that can make the difference for disabled people as a necessary accommodation are not the hill ableds should die on. We often hear “every little bit counts,” but even if every single person in this world reduced their plastic consumption drastically, it will not have ANY significant effect on our oceans. Instead of putting the onus of reducing ocean plastic waste onto an already marginalized group, why are we not holding these huge multi-billion-dollar corporations accountable for the massive amount of pollutants and plastics they’ve disposed of that are steadily obliterating our environment?

The majority of ocean plastics are from a handful of powerful industrial conglomerates that pollute our oceans.
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The inclusion of disabled people’s needs and accommodations—or even our very existence—always seems to come in the form of a hasty afterthought (and usually after much outcry from disabled communities). People rarely consider disabled people, whether in their policies or in practice within their everyday life. Nor do they consider the necessity of disability inclusion until after disability strikes them on a personal level. But disability inclusion and disability justice has to start being proactively considered and implemented, rather than relegated as a half-assed pitiful attempt after the fact.

Disabled people have value and are active members of society whether you choose to see us or not; therefore mainstream discussions about public policy and social change needs to include us in these processes. When we tell you what it is we need and the accommodations that we require, believe us. It’s not much to ask that businesses seek out and invest in viable alternatives while also keeping proven options that disabled people need available. Blanket bans don’t work in a diverse society filled with all different kinds of groups of individuals with unique needs and lived experiences, and disabled people shouldn’t be forced to draw attention to ourselves through never-ending requests that you make accommodations for us.

Maybe if disability inclusion training was normalized, this wouldn’t have to be said. But until then, I have to make these points. Blanket bans unreasonably force disabled people to advocate for special considerations about necessary and reasonable accommodations requests that should already be in place. This often results in arbitrary and inconsistent decisions reflecting often inaccurate perceptions about necessity or merit that are framed by ableist biases and assumptions, from individual staff members that may not have the knowledge, understanding, or training about disability inclusion and accommodations. It goes without saying that disability justice and inclusion training should be a staple of every establishment and public service.

We need to hold big businesses and governments accountable for their pollutants and ocean plastics waste, rather than putting the weight of environmental concern, action, and sustainability onto individuals. There is only gain from offering tried and true plastic straws to those who depend on them, and these should be offered without questions nor proof of disability. Considering the popularity of strawgate, it’s reasonable to assume that those who do not need plastic straws will not insist on having plastic straws be given to them. We need to move away from being an ableist society that demands disabled people prove our legitimacy, especially when current methods of having to legitimize ourselves are most often carried out in ways that are deeply dehumanizing and embarrassing, a breach of our privacy in a public setting, or otherwise exhausting.

Disabled people have a right to have our humanity and dignity recognized, considered, and accommodated without becoming the casualties of performative faux altruism by ableds. Ideas about accessibility should not be relegated to being a hasty afterthought out of pity, guilt, or irrational fears. Listen to what disabled people tell you we need—even if that means plastic straws.

I’ve always had more than a few bones to pick with the environmental conservation movement.

Specifically, I’ve closely studied how the movement often disregards human rights; this is a movement that was born of privilege, is steeped in racism, and is at times willfully ignorant of inequity. I’m certainly not the only person to bear witness to the cruelties of conservation; the explosive growth of environmental justice organizations over the past few decades signals a growing, global response of people demanding that human rights be incorporated into environmentalism.

The birth of new organizations and the redirection of existing environmental organizations is described in the book Blessed Unrest, which illustrates how the human rights and environmental conservation movements are coming together. This is all to say, I know I’m not alone in advocating for sustainable seafood and worker’s rights — but I am calling out all the ocean activists I’ve met who put fish before humans.

I don’t just read about how conservation can hurt people, though, I’ve witnessed it myself. I saw it on the coastlines of the Philippines where the beaches revealed a sharp dichotomy of traditional use—i.e. fishing—and new, “sustainable” use—although the mounting tension between these uses are not shared with most tourists. Small fishermen lost access to public beaches to launch and land their boats because of the expansion of German- and American-owned eco-hotels. You know, the kind of hotels that might have a “5 green leaf” certification, advertise a privatized beach, and—ironically—their fresh-caught fish.

I’m calling out all the ocean activists I’ve met who put fish before humans.
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I hear it from the mouths of peers who put marine mammals on a pedestal and express their disgust of the whaling practices of indigenous people like the Makah Tribe. Despite a legally protected treaty right to hunt a robust population of gray whales, the Makah people are a frequent target of nasty words by elite environmentalists.

I see it on the grocery store shelves, where the proliferation of eco-labelling can be seen on everything from shampoos to bread. The number and diversity of products with eco-labels far surpass the number of products with labels like “Fair Trade.” Eco-conscious consumers must pay more attention to whether these products are good for people, especially when it comes to seafood.

I will say this. The average piscivore’s lack of knowledge about human rights in the seafood industry isn’t entirely their fault; it’s the outcome of an industry that is used to operating under significant secrecy. When The Guardian exposed slave labor on Thai fishing boats or when the AP exposed slave labor on Hawaii fishing boats, we were all shocked. But nobody dug deeper. Nobody really questioned whether slave labor in the seafood industry occurred within our borders. I certainly never expected it. I was blind to the possibility, and I’ve been studying the seafood sector for years.

How can you look for something you don’t know exists?

I also know I’m not alone in being a seafood consumer with high ethical standards. The proliferation of eco-labels is the response of the seafood industry to consumer demands. The growth is significant: Sustainable seafood was the #1 culinary trend last year. Some of the eco-labels come from third party certifiers, like Marine Stewardship Council. These labels signal to the consumer, “you can trust us.” And sometimes there is no label, and the conscientious consumer depends on a guide, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch App.

We’ve deceived ourselves into assuming that a company making good choices for the environment will also make good choices for people. In fact, food marketing rarely has anything to do with labor rights. Food marketers are exponentially more focused on finding the right picture of a farm for a cereal box and applying a few choice buzz words to draw you to their product; when the smoke clears, neither one actually means anything.

Like the poorly regulated yet ubiquitous term “natural,” the term “sustainable” has been slapped all over seafood menus and packages to draw your spending dollars and sense of fighting the good fight with those dollars. “A recent survey of 3,000 Americans…suggests that a majority of consumers want to feel good about the seafood they buy,” reports NPR. “The poll by Truven Health Analytics found that almost 80% of the people who eat seafood regularly said it is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ that their seafood is sustainably caught.”

Food marketers know they need to watch their language—because consumers increasingly care about transparency and social accountability—but these feel-good terms are often meaningless or misleading.

That’s the state of food marketing today. And seafood is particularly vulnerable to this, because most of us have no idea how to match a picture of a real fish to the generic white fillet on the plate, much less determine whether the fishery is being managed sustainably or not.

Ethical seafood consumption is complicated. In the 1990s, the “Give Swordfish a Break” campaign was a popular conservation program that used the celebrity of chefs to advocate not eating swordfish — but whether that was effective turned out to be more complicated than expected. Now, with changes in policies and fishing methods, we’re being told that swordfish caught by some methods in some countries are so sustainably fished that they are a “best choice.”

Clear as mud? Yeah.

Fisheries are complex, dynamic, and opaque. Buying seafood could be a straight path: Someone catches a fish which they sell directly to you, right? But more often than not, this is not the paradigm we participate in; the seafood sector is actually a very convoluted and sticky web of secrets. The fish doesn’t come straight to us from the fishermen because seafood is a globally traded commodity where fish from multiple sources are often consolidated, and often the fish are processed down to fillets, so we can’t tell one fish from another, creating greater opportunity for fraud.

The catch is ever the more unstable due to climate change, and profit margins are pinched by increasing fuel costs and a whole bandwagon of middlemen. In longer seafood supply chains, there might be 5–10 companies between the fisher and you as a seafood consumer.

We’ve deceived ourselves into assuming that a company making good choices for the environment will also make good choices for people.
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As the research at Future of Fish described it, “as a supply chain lengthens, the margins get slimmer, and players become motivated to do whatever is necessary to cut costs (including, at times, committing fraud), as their customer (each player down the chain) is always looking to pay the lowest price possible.” To me, that seems like too many businesses taking a cut and way too many opportunities to lose the trail of where the fish actually came from.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that farmed fish are a growing prison industry in the U.S.

In the Netflix documentary 13th, the scenes flip through the variety of services and manufacturing done in prison industries. A lot of the scenes are from Colorado, because Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI) is a well-known example of a privatized prison network where prisoners do everything from dog training to building park benches. At 1:08:40, there’s a scene in which one of their facilities shows a stack of boxes with “Seattle Fish” printed on the side.

This product is farmed rainbow trout for Seattle Fish Co. — a Denver-based sustainable seafood distributor. The company supplies high-end “farm to table” restaurants with fresh and frozen seafood from around the world, and one product — the rainbow trout — comes from in state, farmed at CCI.

I reached out to Seattle Fish Co.’s Amanda Duran to learn about their seafood processing and their relationship with CCI. Duran said, “We’ve toured that facility and we send our buyers to visit there because we feel very strongly about giving them an opportunity to supply the product to the community. We talk to the participants who work for CCI and they have a lot of pride in the products.”

Duran emphasized that Seattle Fish Co. practices transparency in their seafood sourcing and that some seafood buyers choose not to have any rainbow trout when they learn it is sourced using prison labor. From her perspective, “When some customers choose not to buy from them (CCI) it puts the program in jeopardy.”

CCI is big into aquaculture; they grow trout, catfish, and tilapia. You may have heard about CCI when their relationship providing tilapia to Whole Foods was publicized. Whole Foods may have pulled that tilapia from their shelves, but that didn’t change tilapia’s status — farmed tilapia is still considered a sustainable choice. And that’s exactly the status of farmed rainbow trout in the U.S.; it’s also considered a “best choice” by Seafood Watch.

I turned to an expert on prison labor to try and parse out some of the tangled threads in Duran’s comments on the prison labor fish program being “jeopardized.” Only if we believe something is “good” do we risk putting it in “jeopardy.” Otherwise we’d want it in jeopardy, wouldn’t we?

Michael Moynihan, also known as Renaissance the Poet, is just the expert I was looking for. He studied the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) as a university student and used his research to lead a call against the University of Washington’s use of prison labor. Renaissance has a better understanding of the PIC than most people who study it because he’s been incarcerated before.

Why Are Inmates Still Being Denied Access To Menstrual Products?

Renaissance spoke to his experience as an incarcerated juvenile in Washington State. While serving time, he logged trees—and, ironically, fought fires — for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. Incarcerated individuals are fighting our wildfires — yes, even today. But we have to understand a little lesser-known U.S. history to see why this scenario is even possible. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution only kind of outlawed slavery in the U.S., because it explicitly allows for involuntary servitude as a punishment for people who have been convicted of a crime.

As the imprisoned population grew, state governments began to outsource the building and maintenance of prison facilities to private corporations while still promising to buy the products they produced, and the Prison Industrial Complex was born, proliferating across the U.S. The prison industries process and manufacture items and services around us on a daily basis: ergonomic office chairs, dorm beds, recycling programs.

Renaissance described our government agencies depending on this labor. “Within the prison systems — federal, state, private, and immigration and customs enforcement — all those combined make everything from paint to military grade equipment to furniture.” All this, and inmates are generally being paid cents per hour.

To complicate things even further, some states pass policies to make the prison industry the preferred bidder on government contracts. Maybe an agency wants new office desks; sometimes they have no choice but to buy the product from a prison corporation. A 2014 investigation by the Seattle Times found that the Washington State Correctional Industries was not delivering what it had promised. WSCI promised to save state agencies money by producing goods for in-house use — like uniforms for WSDOT ferry workers and street signs — and to only use the program as job training for individuals who would be released. The investigation uncovered that WSCI had not saved money but had cost the state $20 million and was using labor from individuals serving life sentences without parole.

White People, It’s Time To Prioritize Justice Over Civility

One common argument for prison labor is that the PIC supplies job programs, which in turn, help people secure employment after release. But Renaissance is quick to debunk that idea. If these programs were actually designed to foster independence and financial security in the wake of incarceration, “why aren’t there formerly incarcerated individuals pulled into management? You don’t hear about that happening, because it doesn’t.” (When discussing this, Duran noted that there may be one individual working at Seattle Fish who was a former part of the work program at CCI, but could not provide further details.)

Another commonly held belief is that prisoners choose to participate in these work programs. Renaissance’s research and experience shows that is also rarely the case. “The idea of prisoners choosing to work falls apart because if you choose not to work you risk physical harm,” he explains. “Sometimes people are put in blocks of different prison gangs or racial groups, knowing they will get beaten up. If you choose not to work, you are likely to be thrown into solitary confinement, which is considered torture.”

The idea of prisoners choosing to work falls apart because if you choose not to work you risk physical harm.
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Renaissance noted that formerly incarcerated individuals face a slew of barriers: They don’t qualify for food stamps, and it’s difficult to find a place to live or secure work because discrimination is so rampant. On top of this, millions of people released from prisons are burdened with debt to the system. Research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research looked at the 1 in 17 working-age adults who were previously incarcerated, and found that a felony conviction, prison, or jail term can have a substantial negative impact on future job prospects, costing the U.S. economy $57 to $65 billion dollars of annual GDP. Some states allow employers to use criminal records when making hiring decisions.

When you realize just how well the PIC has embedded itself into our institutions, the call to “Buy American” means something a little different. Renaissance summarized the challenge of combating the PIC in a globalized economy:

“Economically speaking, most of these products do not have a comparative advantage and can’t compete in the American economy. If these products were produced under American labor standards, they’d be too expensive to make and companies would shift production overseas.”

The practice of processing or growing seafood overseas is exactly what I was used to seeing. Much of the seafood caught in the U.S. is shipped across the Pacific for gutting, de-heading, and filleting — because of the cheaper labor costs in Asia — and then it is shipped right back to us. It’s usually frozen at this point, and then seafood counters and restaurants thaw it out and slice it into portions for us.

Dr. Edward Allison, adjunct professor at the University of Washington, studies sustainable fisheries, with a focus on the labor rights of seafood workers.

Dr. Allison describes a troubling pattern he sees in the industry; to stay competitive, seafood companies are slashing labor costs any way they can. And the lack of transparency in the sector helps them do that. He maintains that despite the proliferation of sustainability certifications and the consumer interest in sustainable seafood, social equity is often overlooked.

He noted that support for seafood worker’s rights has taken root in the European Union, but in the U.S., it is still a small movement led by NGO’s like Fair Trade USA, FishWise, Oxfam America, and Conservation International. In the wake of systemic failure, he’s now personally taking action. The Coalition for Socially Responsible Seafood — an informal partnership of environmental and social non-profits, academics, and industry consultants — aims to hasten this movement and focus attention on human rights.

Dr. Allison described why current sustainability efforts focus so narrowly on the environment — because they weren’t created to protect labor rights. “The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification was developed by fish biologists focused on conservation, and that’s a limitation of the framework,” he said.

Current sustainability efforts weren’t created to protect labor rights.
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In an email, MSC’s Oluyemisi Oloruntuyi told me that they are considering whether and how to include human rights in the certification chain, but a final decision has not been made. As the policies currently stand, you have to be prosecuted for using forced labor to be ineligible for certification. If consumers speak up now, then perhaps MSC’s standards will change.

Renaissance, Dr. Allison, and I all shared the same thought — if there is nothing to hide, then why is the prison industry so well hidden?

This is a globalized labor market, and prison labor is the only way we have stayed competitive. Our legislators have systematically created this monster —the 13th amendment legalized slave labor in penitentiaries, and we have written state legislation to force government agencies to source military equipment, office desks, uniforms, cafeteria food, and everything in between from the people we hold captive. U.S. production is subsidized by modern slave labor, which in addition to being a human rights travesty, also undermines the American businesses that are trying to pay fair wages.

We Can’t Talk Climate Change Without Talking Environmental Racism

Many have pointed to the numbers that show the U.S. locks up more of our citizens than any other country, and perhaps more than any other civilization, ever. But wait — it’s not just our citizens, we’re locking up citizens in other countries, too. Half of people held in immigration and detention centers are held by privatized prisons that may have a work program. And CCI is exporting their practices beyond our borders. Their 2015 Annual Report shows they have trained 1,250 foreign officials to put their ideas to practice in 28 other countries.

When there are profits being made through legalized slave labor, it’s not hard to see that there is a monetary incentive for these corporations to support harsher convictions, longer sentences, more privatization, and ever more people being locked up.

Half of people held in immigration and detention centers are held by privatized prisons that may have a work program.
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Two thirds of seafood sold in the U.S. is bought in a restaurant, cafeteria, or other food establishment. The industry counts on our willingness to pay a high price for sustainable fish when we’re out to eat, a 14% premium to be precise. And millennials are the focus of sustainable seafood marketing; they spend 44% of their food budget eating out. Peers, we are the solution.

This is a “sustainable” business model wholly dependent on the imprisonment and enslavement of people — it’s time we exposed it for exactly what it is.

By Kimberly Fanshier

Recently, public lands in the U.S. have gotten a lot of attention. After Inauguration Day, someone at the helm of the National Park Service’s Twitter account got a bit sassy. They shared a comparison of two photos, demonstrating the rather remarkable difference in attendance for Obama’s 2009 inauguration and the events this January.

Inaugurations take place at the National Mall in Washington, DC, which is, in fact, one of our national parks.

As the administration was brazenly and visibly lying to us all about what happened on land our tax dollars maintain, they also began removing any mention of climate change from government websites and issued orders preventing environmental agencies from communicating directly with the public — and punishing those that resisted.

While this — alongside a barrage of attacks on human and constitutional rights across the country — went on, the president announced plans to start drilling for oil in the Grand Tetons and the Everglades.

Then, Rep. Jason Chaffetz pulled a high profile bill soon after its introduction. The title of H.R. 621, “Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2017,” makes it sound like the federal government has a bunch of extra, useless tracts of land hanging off the sides of the country, and that we’d better get rid of them as fast as possible for everybody’s good.

What the bill actually aims to do is direct the secretary of the interior to transfer federal land across the western U.S. to state governments.

Whether or not that sounds super threatening to you considering all of the other nefarious, aggressive, dehumanizing courses taken by the federal government in the past two weeks, you should know:

Something like this makes a lot of people who live in those states real mad. So folks from all over said something about it.

Threatening to sell federal lands — which aren’t so much ‘federal’ lands in practice — threatens people across the political spectrum.

Threatening to sell federal lands — which aren’t so much “federal” lands in practice, but lands managed with federal money, held in trust by the federal government for the people of the U.S. — threatens people across the political spectrum.

When it wasn’t just the usual crew of environmentalists and tribal leaders shouting at Congress, but anglers and hunters with conservative, moderate, and liberal politics as well, representatives noticed.

So why is public land such an intense, emotional issue in the West?

And why is it such a big deal to “sell-off” federal lands, or transfer them back to state control at a time when we have so many terrifying realities to deal with?

1. Conflicts of Private and Public Land Are an Intrinsic Part of Western America’s Identity

The creation of the U.S. was a massive project in speculation.

From the 18th century through the end of the 19th century, mapmakers and surveyors carved up the vast swathes of land beyond the Mississippi river in property grids, erasing the knowledge, culture, and conceptions of property and ownership of the people who already lived there.

The federal government then empowered settlers to strike out and colonize the land, homestead by homestead, fighting and digging their way across the country.

As tribes were relegated to reservations, cattle ranchers, sheep herders, loggers, and pioneers all began to have conflicts over space and resources.

From the 18th century through the end of the 19th century, mapmakers and surveyors carved up the vast swathes of land, erasing the knowledge, culture, and conceptions of property and ownership of the people who already lived there.
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Although we still have stretches of miles and miles with only handfuls of people in every state in the West, our economies have long been constructed on extracting natural resources from the land. And those will always be limited.

If a ranch owner wants to use a section of forest land to graze their cattle, but the federal government is pressured to regulate how many cows can graze there because of the detriment to river ecosystems, the corporations or people who own those cows get angry. Same goes for logging or mining.

While simply selling off public federal lands to a private oil company might seem obviously egregious, transferring their ownership back to a state to control it might seem like a more reasonable idea.

But don’t be fooled.

Managing big pieces of land takes money and resources — things that state governments are often short on. So when states are faced with an enormous new expense and the opportunity to sell it at a profit to mining, logging, and drilling companies, what do you think they’ll do? The fall-out won’t be surprising, and it won’t be new.

Intricate ecosystems that took thousands of years to build will be trammeled in weeks. Earthmovers, oil derricks, and semi-trucks will dig up the places you used to fish, wander, and farm.

And the ruinous pollution that comes along with ruthless, profit-driven resource extraction will poison the water and air in communities of poor people and people of color more than anywhere else.

The march of settlers, extractors, users, and builders across the West displaced and killed millions of native people, and also enabled white supremacist arrangements of property-based hierarchy that extend into our world today.

The march of settlers, extractors, users, and builders enabled white supremacist arrangements of property-based hierarchy that extend into our world today.
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Therefore, these tensions are not just something that matters to folks in the West, and they’re not something that’s only significant to people who care about the environment.

They’re essential to imagining a better, decolonized world, where the redistribution of wealth is possible.

2. This Allows States to Sell Land Stolen from Indigenous People to Private Corporations

You’re probably familiar with the years-long protest at Standing Rock over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Halted in December under the waning days of the Obama administration, the new powers that grab have announced aggressive plans to complete the passionately protested, unpopular project.

Violent removal of Lakota and other tribal and non-native water protectors has already begun with 76 arrested recently, including the politician and attorney Chase Iron Eyes, and destruction of winter encampments is underway.

Most of us are already living on occupied land.
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The protectors and activists around the country have used phrases like “Water is life” and “You can’t drink oil” to emphasize the abhorrent violence of threatening the water supply of an entire community.

And yet, it’s important to note that this struggle is about more than just oil, sustainability, and public health.

It’s about the newest attempt — in a series of attempts over the past 400 years — of a private corporation, with the blessing and support of a section of the U.S. government, to usurp tribal land rights, ignore treaties, threaten indigenous sacred sites, and potentially destroy artifacts.

Most of us are already living on occupied land. Politicians or land owners advocating for land sell-offs will try to claim that the federal government is “mismanaging” that land, and it should be sold off to a private corporation who wants to blow up the shale underground and drain it of oil in order to care for it properly — that is, make a profit.

This is a grave offense and danger to every worker and every individual who values autonomy– but it’s doubly violent to the indigenous people who already have the legal right to that land.

The failure to observe treaties over the past 250 years is already an audacious injustice.

To suggest that we could ever move forward in recovering from a white supremacist history of property expansion and land theft by selling off public space to corporations bent on creating profit should seem shocking.
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But to suggest that we could ever move forward in recovering from white supremacist history of property expansion and land theft by selling off public space to corporations bent on creating profit should seem shocking.

The fact that it doesn’t demonstrate just how far we have to go, and how important the key of public land is in that journey.

3. There Is Nowhere People Can Sit Still for a Second and Not Have to Answer to Anybody

It’s not easy being queer, of color, disabled, trans, or non-conforming in any number of ways in this white supremacist, heteronormative, capitalist patriarchy we live in.

And while the ideas that nature is a totally separate, pure, wild place is complicated, it’s also fair to recognize that in the wilderness, the world looks different.

Stepping outside of roads, money, cars, banks, and buildings for a just an afternoon can be an immense relief. When I’m lost, flailing and depressed in the oppressive world that we live in, I can’t always see a way out. I fear that we will never escape the exploitative cycles that define our lives.

But when I sit by a river with my friends and my dog and build a quiet fire, I can start to imagine a world that operates very differently than this one does.

I fear that we will never escape the exploitative cycles that define our lives.
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Simply being allowed to be somewhere, to exist without challenge or suspicion, is a privilege. And it should not be. It should be a right.

And since we don’t currently have that right in our communities and daily lives, we deserve the opportunity to visit a space — such as the protected spaces that already exists, like our natural parks — to access that right.

We deserve a place to escape when we’re emotionally exhausted from being tailed by security, pulled over by police, yelled at on the street, and questioned for our presence.

When we’re worn out from carefully talking down another racist at the bar or another white feminist yelling on Facebook about people being “divisive,” we should have the chance to go elsewhere, where we might quietly breathe unpolluted air, put our feet in mud and water, or stand under a thousand-year-old fir tree and look up.

In South India, Women Empowerment Groups Fight For Land Rights

We deserve the right to have moments where we only have to worry about the simplicities of survival in terms of our water filters and orienteering, rather than our likelihood of being murdered by our boyfriends or the cops.

Our public lands provide us the extraordinary chance to exist, momentarily, unharrassed.

What if we lost that singular opportunity to have the right to take up space?

So, what are we supposed to do about it?

First, don’t be fooled by the potentially easy victory in the pulling of the bill I mentioned at the beginning of this article. There’s an even more destructive second bill, H.R. 622, coming right on its heels.

Stay vigilant, read between the lines, and never, ever trust the motives of people who want to sell off or transfer public land.

Keep calling your representatives about these issues specifically. Remember that “environmental” issues aren’t something that can be set aside because it feels like the immediate, bodily realities of people being detained in airports feels more suddenly important. It is important! All of it is.

These lands are not just a big, abstract idea — they are a tactile, tangible, material piece of our world, and our lives depend on them.
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But these lands are not just a big, abstract idea — they are tactile, tangible, material piece of our world, and our lives depend on them. Environmentalism isn’t just about not blowing up the literal Earth because we can’t imagine living another fifty years anyway.

It’s about social justice, the livelihood and flourishing of vulnerable people, and the imminent need to not let women and Indigenous people drown in polluted estuaries while the rest of us can scramble toward higher ground.

Just as the land we live on and walk on is physical, get ready, if you’re a person with a body that it’s possible to put at risk, to be physical in your resistance.

We must be willing to lay down on the ground in front of Earth movers and pipelines across this country. If we don’t, we will fail, and we will watch our world be dug up into a roiling pit of oil and set aflame.

It can’t just be radical activists and people who have no choice but to stand up in resistance anymore — we need everyone to shrug off fear and trepidation.

We must reframe who counts as our family, and we must toss respectability into the wind. Because this fight may come first for those on the margins, but it can’t be won with only the fringes.

flickr/Agustin Ruiz

Structural racism is deadly, and not just because of police shootings of unarmed black youth. Environmental racism — disproportionate exposure to pollution and toxicity — is a slower, more insidious form of violence against low-income communities of color.

The term “environmental racism” was coined in the 1980s to highlight the placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity to environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, especially toxic waste sites. Race plays a major role in the location of polluting industries in the U.S. This is a pattern that stretches deep into U.S. history, and we’re watching it play out right now with the water crisis currently raging in Flint, Michigan.

It’s telling that last night, black stars like Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler ditched the #OscarsSoWhite Academy Awards to help raise money for this crisis at the #JusticeForFlint fundraiser. Racism played a key role in this crisis — and, moreover, it’s continuing to play a key role in the devastating progression of climate change across the globe.

The Toxic Situation In Flint

A series of structural inequalities combined to create the toxic catastrophe in Flint, most of which boil down to valuing money over human health and life. For decades prior to 2014, Flint — a majority-black city in which 41.5% of the population lives below the poverty line — relied on Detroit’s water system. Facing financial difficulties, a state-appointed official switched the source to the Flint River with the aim of saving the city $5 million in two years.

The Flint River has been contaminated for decades by industrial toxins created under the capitalist belief that more is better. For generations, motor city behemoths GM and Buick City dumped industrial waste directly into the river, polluting on the order of tens of billions of gallons of industrial waste per day. Buick City shut operations in 1999; GM continues to run.

After the city switched to using the Flint River for its water supply in 2014, Flint residents began complaining of horrible smells coming from the tap water. Children became sick with horrendous rashes. Others told stories of hair loss and mood changes that they believed were linked to their tap water, which flowed the color of rust.

It wasn’t until September 2015, after high levels of lead were found in the blood of children — almost 900 times the EPA limit for lead particles — that these stories of poisoning were taken seriously. After two years of toxicity, however, the irreversible and deadly damage has already been done to this low-income community of color. Children in Flint, among the most vulnerable members of the population, will have to cope with lifelong and irreversible brain damage caused by lead poisoning from the public water supply.

The Flint water crisis is both a class and a race issue. Companies nationwide dump toxic waste directly into poor communities’ air and water supply; this pattern is well-documented.

Affluent communities would leverage their privilege to prevent such an injustice from occurring in their homes and communities. The America we live in is one where the white and wealthy are healthy, while low-income communities of color are poisoned by the powerful, in the name of making a profit.

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Decisions about the environment are tied to political power, and political power is tied to race and class. Landfills, sewage treatment plants, smelters, incinerators, and other hazardous waste sites end up in the poor’s backyard. In this way, white and affluent communities are favored over black communities with regard to municipal services. People in low-income communities of color bear the burden of environmental degradation and industrial pollution. Even more egregiously, officials who are elected to protect these communities routinely ignore the voices of the poor and vulnerable.

The Flint water crisis could be considered a small-scale environmental injustice, in terms of the number of people it affects. But it’s mirrored in one of the largest threats that the global population currently faces: climate change.

Environmental Justice Writ Large

Climate change is environmental injustice writ large. As with other examples of environmental racism — the location of coal-fired power plants, the dumping of nuclear waste, the lack of adequate public transportation — it disproportionately harms indigenous communities and people of color. These communities also have the fewest resources to cope with climate change, as a direct result of institutionalized racism.

Just as the toxic water slowly but inevitably poisoned the Flint community, many feel immobilized by the slow-acting but irreversible impacts of climate change. Corporations and governments prioritize profits now over the life and health of future generations. Climate change is a result of business-as-normal policies. These actions amount to a slow poisoning of our collective future.

In January 2014, I spent a month living in Tuvalu, a tiny coral atoll nation in the South Pacific on the frontlines of climate change. In this Pacific island nation of around 11,000 citizens, the highest point is only 4.5 meters above sea level. The seas have been rising at a steady rate of 5 millimeters per year since the Australian government started monitoring the main wharf in Funafuti in 1993. In the event that Tuvalu disappears underwater, New Zealand has agreed to accept the country’s citizens. A number of Tuvaluans have already moved to New Zealand; not just immigrants, they are “climate refugees.”

A variation of this problem faces communities in the Arctic. According to the UN’s most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, the region is warming over twice as fast as the global average, and many changes are already visible. Weather patterns are increasingly unstable. Sea ice is declining. Pack ice that supports marine hunters is further from shore and often too thin to travel to safely. Storm surges erode coastal areas. Sunburns, never experienced before, are now common.

Global climate struggles are geographically unique, yet linked. One of those links is the great irony of climate change: Across the board, communities that contribute the least to causing climate change are the most severely affected.

On December 12, 2015, at the United Nations conference on climate change, 195 countries adopted the first universal climate agreement, which aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in order to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. The climate justice movement, though, is by no means done. While this agreement marks a touchstone in the struggle, now, more than ever, is the time to keep momentum going on these critical issues — which is why events like #JusticeForFlint are so important.

White environmental activists must not ignore what activists of color already know: Environmental racism is real. The people who are disproportionately affected by climate change (and a whole host of other environmental issues linked to reckless capitalism) are black and brown, and that’s an injustice we all have to work to correct.

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