A coalition of climate justice groups led by Indigenous people and people of colour who organise talks, campaigns, and publications to address eco-racism and white privilege in direct action tactics for climate justice
Context
Several climate groups have been criticised for failing to think sufficiently about how racism is woven into capitalism’s environmentally damaging practices, how differences of race and class can alienate activists from one other, and how the use of activist tactics such as civil disobedience put people of colour at disproportionate risk of arrest and imprisonment.
Practice
Naming themselves in honour of the Martiniquian political philosopher Frantz Fanon’s book on anti-colonial theory, Wretched of the Earth Coalition represents the interests of the Global South and people of colour in the context of climate change and climate justice activism. The coalition has participated in marches and direct action campaigns, and has written open letters highlighting several critiques of environmentalist action. They base their actions and publications on three salient ideas. First, the idea that hierarchies akin to colonialism will only repeat themselves if climate activists suppress the voices of Indigenous people and people of colour in climate protests. Second, a critique of climate protests such as those organised by Extinction Rebellion, for pronouncing apocalyptic diagnoses for the planet. Such pronouncements erase the experience of Indigenous people and people of colour who have faced genocide and ecocide for centuries. Third, an understanding of privilege. The coalition states that directives for climate action should consider the way activist tactics assume white privilege by promoting strategies such as street protests that endanger Indigenous activists and activists of colour who account for a disproportionate number of people arrested, brutalised, and imprisoned.
Wretched of the Earth’s organisational structure as a decentralised coalition has the potential to democratise governance by bringing different interests together to collaborate, often temporarily, in a partnership towards a common goal, without centring around one dominant organisation or leader. Climate’s intersectional nature requires precisely this kind of multiplicity of perspectives. Practices of universal design, for example, could learn from this approach in considering an expanded ecology of users and implications. Wretched of the Earth’s organisation as a coalition, meanwhile, demonstrates the potential of working in flexible alliances that draw from members’ various disciplinary and professional skills (including law, policy, design, organising) to work across different contexts and with different methods, towards a shared goal of environmental justice.