Dreaming of Black Liberation and the Green New Deal
In a society hellbent on destroying Black bodies, for me, the Green New Deal represents one of the most comprehensive visions of society that not only strives to address the single most existential threat to humanity -- climate change-- but also liberate Black bodies in this country. Here’s why I will spend the rest of my life fighting to make the vision of the Green New Deal real for Black people across America.
My grandmother, LaVerne Dial -- known as Nanny by the family -- was born in 1941, in Atoka, Tennessee. Her parents, sharecroppers, raised eleven children. Their bodies toiled the land; being Black and poor, she shares stories of how at times, when the family didn’t have money because the white landowner milked them of their profits, they’d eat mud to satiate their hunger.
My parents, Sedrick and Kaeva, met at FedEx. My mother, all 5 feet of her, was known for getting a package where it needed to be on time. My father, a barber, used his hands to cut hair and his mouth to share stories with Black men who were eager for an outlet to talk, to joke, to connect. When he wasn’t cutting hair, my dad spent his time off fishing in lakes across the Midwest. Occasionally, he’d take me along, pink Barbie fishing rod in tow and on these trips, I developed an immense love for nature and the water. Later, his hands would go on to put bags onto planes, in below zero degree weather, for a corporation that did not value or see worth in his body, only saw it as property to be exploited for profit. He currently has four herniated disks to show for it.
My body, a body so deeply drawn to the magic of the Earth, a special tethering likely a result of our shared trauma; my ancestors and Black bodies today, like the Earth, have been pillaged at the hands of white supremacy and capitalism.
My body, a body with more freedoms granted than the Black bodies before me. And still, I dream of the day where I can wander the streets at 3 am without fear of violence or assault. Where I can take feet to the pavement of my hometown, without fear of shootings or of gun violence.
It wasn’t until I joined Sunrise, a youth led movement fighting to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal, that I began to see and truly feel the possibilities of what my body could feel. It was in the trainings I attended with Sunrisers from across the country, in the bonfire circles scheming about how we’d bringing in young people en mass across race and class. It was in getting arrested for the first time in Delaware alongside 20-something other organizers and in the jubilee of singing movement songs, that I felt a deep solidarity with the many young organizers I met who knew that collective action was needed to address not just the climate crisis, but also build towards a world in which all life, all bodies, mattered.
In Sunrise, I learned about the Green New Deal (fun fact, one of the key architects of the GND is Rhianna Gunn-Wright, a Black woman from Southside of Chicago), about the promise of good union jobs and safe neighborhoods for Black people on the South Side of Chicago. I saw a world where Black bodies were not riddled with cancer because of the Chevron’s and Exxon Mobile’s of the world who see Black bodies as collateral damage for their oil and gas profits. A world where my own children's bodies could breathe in fresh air without fear of asthma. Where they could laugh, play and rest, without fear of crisis after crisis after disaster. Where they aren’t threatened by the trigger of a white police officer’s uncontrollable temper. Where their bodies can work dignified jobs and have a hand in the collective project of transitioning our country away from fossil fuels, away from capitalism, and towards a future where people and the planet thrive over profit and corporations.
In the spirit of Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party, Black bodies who fought for the liberation of Black people, I fight for a Green New Deal for the millions of Black bodies that are and that are to come. To experience love, to experience joy, to experience life, to experience true freedom. Because every body deserves that.
So I invite you to sit with more for a moment and ground in your body. Really feel what might be possible in your body, if we lived in a world where the Green New Deal was our reality? In a world where your body might release, exhale, and soften in this world, instead of restrict and tighten? And I invite you to ask yourself: What are you willing and ready to do to bring that future about?
And if you want to make the Green New Deal real, join Sunrise or support our movement here :)