By Plastic Pollution Coalition Team
“If you don’t want this to be the kind of country that you live in, then do something about it. Black men and women can’t do it alone and it is our health, our rights and our lives at risk. We need you to do more than care. Transformative change requires more than words. It demands action.”
-Monica Simpson, Executive Director, Sister Song Reproductive Justice Collective
The forces of xenophobia, white supremacy, and sexism, once veiled in our global community, have now been unleashed in broad daylight, into our political and social circles. Today, Plastic Pollution Coalition makes this firm statement in support of communities and individuals worldwide:
The oil and petrochemical industries continue to drive our worldwide reliance on single-use plastic. They have invested money to divide us, leading us to believe that as individuals, we alone are responsible for plastic pollution. Yet these corporations are the ones perpetuating inequality, devouring natural resources, polluting local waters, and producing plastic garbage to fill the land. These skewed corporate values elevate money above protection of the land and its people, jeopardizing our personal health and safety.
For so many members of our Coalition, the world can be a scary place. For some of our leaders, partners, and followers, simply waking up and going about the business of being puts them in danger – being a person of color or an activist, being a woman or non-cis, being a person with a particular income or one who loves in their own way. Yet they have dedicated their lives to solving our collective plastic pollution problem. They fight not just for the future of this planet, but often for their own security.
We all deserve safety. We each deserve autonomy from persecution, prejudice, terrorism, and violence in all its forms, physical and emotional, individual and collective. We are right to expect corporations and governments to protect our natural resources, and we are right to reject the rampant, unnecessary system of disposability forced upon us.
Our society has a lot of work to do to learn how to protect each other and to learn to protect and respect each other, through our daily words, deeds, and actions. We must actively work to dismantle systems of oppression that are perpetuated around the world today, sending signals about which groups of people deserve respect, autonomy, and security. Every person is worthy of respect and dignity.
Plastic Pollution Coalition stands and works for all people. We condemn hatred and prejudice in all its forms, and we outright reject any idea that a particular race, creed, sex, gender, sexuality, nationality, class, or wealth level has supremacy or superiority over any other. We stand with those who fight for equal protection of all people under international law and each country’s laws. We are those who fight every day for equal respect, health, and safety for all people on this planet.
Plastic Pollution Coalition envisions a world free from oppression and prejudice, free from systemic danger and violence, and free from the dangerous, violent, oppressive systems of plastic pollution. We actively support any and all groups and individuals working toward that shared vision.
CALL TO ACTION
Are you a member of a zero waste organization in your community? Have you attended meetings to oppose a pipeline? Do you support sustainability projects in your community’s schools or gardens? These are all causes to remedy injustice. Talk to your neighbors, go online, and search your social networks: Find an organization in your local community, and give them your time.
Don’t allow evil to triumph by doing nothing: Be active with your neighbors toward effective, positive change to solve these core systemic issues at the heart of the plastic pollution epidemic.
