What can organizers of the upcoming People’s Climate March learn from organizers of some of the earlier, broad-scale demonstrations for justice in the U.S., like the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom? That’s the question I posed to Dorie and Joyce Ladner, 72 and 71 years old respectively, who helped coordinate many of the major civil rights protests of the early ’60s. Their credentials include the sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, the Freedom Rides to do the same for buses, Freedom Summer for voting rights, the March on Washington, and countless others.
Fifty years ago, the Ladners and the other coordinators of Freedom Summer faced the crucial decision of whether to enlist white people from the northern states in the upcoming civil rights and voting rights campaigns. Some of the Ladners’ colleagues feared that white activists would overpower the civil rights movement. The Ladners voted to bring them down, and they weren’t alone. After years of being arrested and attacked, the bail money was running out and patience was wearing thin. They needed more people.
Organizers of the climate march this Sunday have been intentional about making sure the event doesn’t resemble the unbearable whiteness of being too often found at climate endeavors. The older conservation groups have banded with newer climate justice outfits and entrenched environmental justice organizations. That kind of inclusion is a credit, in part, to people like the Ladner sisters, who paved the way for a multi-racial front on issues of justice.
I spoke with them both recently as part of a series initiated by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones for ProPublica commemorating Freedom Summer’s 50th anniversary. We discussed how the marches today compare with those of the 1960s, and about the lessons learned. […]
Question: So what lessons should climate marchers take from Freedom marchers?
Answer: Joyce Ladner: Well, the issue is so complex. There are so many parts to it. The question is, What piece of climate change do you take off and mobilize people around? I remember SNCC and some of the anti-war movement activists saying it’s time to buy some Dow chemical stock so that we can go to the stakeholders meetings and protest. That was us taking on a larger entity trying to find a piece of it we could affect through direct action.
So what part of the climate struggle do you take on and at what level? Do you attack U.S. policies? Do you organize people to contact their representatives in Congress? Do you find ways to boycott products made from the people who are polluting? Or do you do all of these things?
Dorie Ladner: Be persistent. Be committed. Don’t stop. You may not have even 100 followers, but as long as it’s right, keep working at it. Movements start as a small nucleus of people who have an idea, and that idea starts growing and then it gets out into the public domain. But most movements are not large movements, or at least they don’t start out as large movements.
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