CHOKE

“Without racial justice, there is no climate policy.” – Sarra Tekola

September 2019. Massive climate strikes are happening all over the world. Marches and demonstrations take place in over 125 countries, featuring 1600 events, and an estimated 1.6 million participants. The urgency of the climate crisis requires collective action on a global scale.

Enter COVID-19. Officials now have a much more immediate issue to solve, with the pandemic killing people around the world at a rate the planet has not seen for a century. Most are forced to stay inside, and activists scramble to keep momentum going for the climate justice movement, since gathering in large groups is virtually impossible.

May 25, 2020. News of George Floyd’s murder comes through the airwaves. It immediately sparks worldwide outrage and protests against police brutality. After the release of the 9 minute 29 second video, massive support reemerges for the Black Lives Matter movement, and environmental justice seems secondary once again.

It’s at this moment that we find three activists - Sam Grant, Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, and Sarra Tekola - navigating this crossroads. These three activists have to make a choice – either to put climate change on the back burner, or to combine the fight for climate justice and racial justice as one and the same.

Tamara recounts, “The staff were asking, ‘Can we have some time off because we need to go deal with these protests?’ And I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t want people to take time off. I want them to do this as a part of their work.”

Sam adds, “When I started my organizing career in 1983, I thought about racial justice, economic justice and environmental justice as the three things that mattered most to me. And they were three distinct things. I’ve come to understand that they’re not three distinct things.”