Dramatizing the "death" of environmentalism doesn't help urban people of color, or anyone else

Dramatizing the "death" of environmentalism doesn't help urban people of color, or anyone else | By Adrienne Maree Brown | Grist Magazine | Soapbox | 15 Mar 2005: "...If you work on environmental issues, chances are you don't know me. I represent the other other side. The one outside the greenhouse. I'm young, I'm colored, I'm female, I'm urban -- and environmentalism isn't reaching me like it needs to. [...]

"At the end of that day, I may not separate the glass from the paper, the plastic from the cans. I may not carry my own water bottle everywhere I go. For a lot of young people right now, the environment is an issue for the privileged or the issueless. People who feel they are becoming extinct care less about the extinction of owls and oak trees. We sit on buses that pump nasty black smoke into our air, dreaming of owning SUVs. Many of us don't see real, unfenced trees anymore. We don't see stars -- the blue of our skies is unreal. The natural world is becoming a place to visit or dream of, a privilege for those who can find work outside cities, or a trap for those in the migrant worker population who lack fair wages and work situations.

Overall, too many young people see the struggles of humans as separate from the struggles for a healthy environment. It isn't because we have bad intentions -- it's because a generation that does not care about the impact of its lifestyle on the environment can be easily manipulated for corporate greed. We are getting played out. And unfortunately, the environmental movement has actually helped enforce that disconnect by seeming to draw divisions between the natural world and its human inhabitants -- and by seeming to worry more about the former than the latter. [...]"