Plastic Pollution Coalition Stands In Solidarity With The Black Lives Matter Movement

Photo by Rob Bulmahn, Philadelphia, PA, June 2, 2020

George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, and so many others have been murdered by police and vigilantes, and this violence must end. We at Plastic Pollution Coalition add our voices to the collective grief. We acknowledge the pain and trauma Black people and communities are facing and have faced for hundreds of years, and we stand with the Movement for Black Lives.

As the protests against police brutality and racial violence continue across the United States and around the world, Plastic Pollution Coalition stands in solidarity with people and groups—including many of our Coalition members—working to end racism and systemic oppression. 

We stand with groups doing vital Environmental Justice work and call on ourselves and our colleagues to be active allies and find ways to work together to advance racial justice and empower communities. 

In many parts of the world including the Global South, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and communities of Color are included and uplifted in the environmental movement. We recognize in the United States this work has a long way to go. We are breaking out of these silos to reimagine and fix this broken system of power. We are speaking up and demanding change.

We are outraged at the violence and injustice that Black people and Black communities are facing. We have witnessed the powerful connection between environmental and social injustice and racism through air pollution caused by incineration plants, water contamination, and many other environmental injustices and recognize these are all part of a single, globally-connected Movement for Justice. 

We will work in collaboration with tens of thousands of individual Coalition members and more than 1,200 groups globally, to change systems of oppression, and end white supremacy by advocating for social, economic, and environmental justice for all.

What can you do? Join the weekend of action June 19-21.

For our allies who want to further unpack and explore their role in dismantling white supremacy, we have compiled a list of resources and readings below. We invite you to share other resources and readings you have found to be useful by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.

Resources:

• Anti-Racism Reading Recommendations from Politics & Prose
• Black Lives Matter
• Black Visions Collective
• Break Free From Plastic
• Break Free From Plastic’s Reading, Listen, and Watch List
• Color of Change
• Equal Justice Initiative
• Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
• “I can’t breathe” from Executive Director Air Copland of 5 Gyres 
• LiveFreeUSA.org
• The Catalyst Project – Anti-Racism for Collective Liberation 
• The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

 Readings:

1. Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
2. How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
3. 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice by Corinne Shutack
4. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism by Dr. Robin DiAngelo
5. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
6. Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
7. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Olou
8. Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum
9. Article: 5 Things White People Can Do Right Now to Combat White Supremacist Violence by Showing Up for Racial Justice
10. Racial Equity Tools: Environmental Justice – Key Sites, Research & Practices
11. Environmental Health and Racial Equity in the United States: Building Environmentally Just, Sustainable, and Livable Communities