FIND YOUR FRONTLINE

The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

— Antonio Gramsci

THE WORLD AS WE SEE IT

Two days before the manuscript for this booklet was due, Japan had the largest earthquake in its history, pushing tsunami waves across the entire Pacific Ocean. The earthquake shifted Japan's coastline eight feet and tilted the whole Earth's axis. This year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded the highest land temperatures in human history, yet again. Immediate effects include fifteen thousand heat deaths in Russia, accompanied by record wildfires devastating crops and skyrocketing prices of corn and wheat. Record droughts have ravaged Pakistan. In Latin America, record rainfalls washed away entire mountainsides. While the two of us refuse to be paralyzed by the end-of-the-world-mongers, it is undeniable that we're living in exponential times.

But digging up all the carbon Mother Nature sequestered underground and burning it for energy didn't just happen. It was the result of an ever-expanding global economy. Turns out, it's impossible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. The basic logic in our economic system is bursting.

Just as the climate crisis is one symptom of our current economic system, we're facing other ecological crises too: fisheries are collapsing, species are disappearing faster than the last great extinction, drinkable water is vanishing. The climate crisis is just one expansive element of many overlapping crises associated with the collapse of the ecological systems that support life on this planet. In fact, we're living during a period of the most rapid transformation in human history on all facets of life: technological, political, cultural, ecological, economic ...

Okay. That's a bit overwhelming. But it's clear that stoking our cultural fear of some "doomsday" in the future is not useful for building organizations, community, and mobilizing people to create a livable future; or for preventing the worst impacts of runaway climate chaos.

People often talk of climate change as a single apocalyptic event that may happen in the future; either humanity averts it, or we do not. The reality is that the impacts of climate change have been happening for quite a while to peoples across the planet and are now increasing in their number, severity, and location. In fact, climate destabilization accelerates and amplifies the other crises that marginalized people have been dealing with for generations.

Therefore, we see our main challenge as finding ways to navigate the multiple crises that are already changing our lives. What we do next will determine the scale and the scope of our transition. When we think about it that way, having hope at the center of our work makes sense in the face of such overwhelming odds.

So if collapses are already here, and we see more and more coming, our question isn't whether we can "solve the climate crisis," but how do we navigate change? Will there be justice on the other side? That is our work together. That is where we find vision and inspiration.

Liberation struggles throughout history have always been urgent. They have always been life-or-death, but each have had their own timeline. For example, if you are working to decolonize your country from a European occupier, you fight until you win. The ecological crisis we face has that dimension, plus a science-based timeline that we can't negotiate with. What we do in the next two years will determine the landscape for the next ten years, which will determine the landscape for the next one hundred years.

No pressure.

Because of this timeline imposed on us by Nature (and revealed by science), social movements must ask new questions that we wouldn't be asking if we had all the time we wanted. Because ecological collapse is embedded in all aspects of life on this planet, we need to think about scale in new ways. Social movements need to make unlikely alliances that we wouldn't otherwise make. We therefore need a political compass with which to navigate these choices in a strategic and principled way.

This booklet is an effort to tune that compass for the task ahead of all of us. We hope it will be useful to you too, in locating yourself and your work in relation to the expanding North American Climate Justice movement.

The least likely future is one in which things stay the same. One way or another, the existing culture and economy will need to shift to meet the ecological disruptions it is causing.

We may face a scorched and lifeless earth. But they're accountable to their shareholders first. That's how the world works.

— Propagandhi

Some of those in power are squinting over these turbulent, unpredictable waters along with us, wondering how to make it across. Corporations are finding ways to fleece our crises, proposing schemes to make money from our disasters and calling them "climate solutions." Pentagon projections focus on new kinds of warfare in a resource-depleted landscape driven by climate chaos. It's clear that the business-as-usual crowd is thinking about scale in this transition. Their main motivation is to keep the big "status quo" ship sailing through the storm, maintaining their own wealth and power as much as they can. The "status quo" is dynamic and adaptive.

Unlike the power-holders, when we gaze across the rough sea, our motivation is to create the most equitable lifeboats possible, so we can all live well through what will be a bumpy ride. Our task is to navigate change differently than those in power.

THE POINT OF THIS BOOKLET

Find your frontline — Align it with others'

Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.

— Dolores Huerta

We're still wrestling with our own particular roles inside movements for social change in general, and understanding the framework of "climate justice" in particular. Unsatisfied with the notions of "solidarity" (though we also do solidarity work) or the identity of "ally" (though we also consider ourselves allies) that used to offer us clarity, we searched for a way to think of our work that can holistically capture the nuance of our moment.

We are part of a community of practice that has been thinking through useful ways to understand these concepts, and we owe a lot to the ideas of our peers and mentors. The thinking in this section is drawn heavily from contributions from grassroots organizers involved in the 2010 U.S. Social Forum EcoJustice People's Movement Assembly process, the "CJ in the USA: Root-Cause Remedies, Rights, Reparations, and Representation statement," the "Grassroots Organizing Cools the Planet" open letter (inspired by La Via Campesina's slogan "Small Farmers Cool the Planet'), the work of Movement Generation, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and others who have been making thoughtful contributions to how we articulate our challenge.

The fact is that...