At Grist, Eric Holthaus interviews Isra Hirsi, the 16-year-old daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Hirsi is one of the three youth leaders who are planning the U.S. component of Friday’s International Youth Climate Strike. Around the world, participants plan to walk out of class to call attention to the urgent need for immediate action to deal with the climate crisis.
She will be speaking at the strike in D.C.. And so will her mom who is the only representative so far to confirm she will be joining the strike.
Here are some interview excerpts:
Q. How do you feel about [your mom speaking]?
A. I mean, I kind of got her to. It’s good. I kind of wanted to get people there. We invited some other people like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Bernie Sanders and we’re just hoping they all come. [...]
Q. How has your family influenced you? You said both of your parents “get it.” Where do you feel most of your inspiration is coming from?
A. I wouldn’t say it would be my parents. I would say more of the spaces that I’m in. Learning more about climate change and what it does, all of the different things that impact it. I learned about things like Line 3, and wildfires in California. There are so many things that got me realizing how important this is. It’s important to talk about what climate change does to marginalized communities, what it could do to your community. I think that’s a really great way to get more people involved.
Q. And watching the whole national conversation over the past few months.
A. Especially Sunrise. They’re very big now. Reading about the Green New Deal, it’s inspiring. Learning about all these things is kind of interesting. And Sunrise has helped put women of color at the forefront.
Q. Why do you think it’s important to have women of color leading the climate change movement?
A. People of color are disproportionately affected by climate change and that kind of just gets ignored. People are living with these things right now. Accessibility, when it comes to fighting for climate change, also gets ignored. Every interview I have, they’re like, “Are you striking every Friday?” And I’m like, no, I can’t. There’s no way. People say, “Oh you’re not vegetarian!” And I say, “Well, my family is not from this country. They grew up as meat-eaters, I can’t control those things.”
It’s important for people to step back and realize that they’re not the only people. Environmental racism is a really big thing. The environmental movement is still predominantly white, how do we change that conversation? Having women of color leading is one way to do that. [...]
You can read more about the strike in Sher Watts Spooner’s piece here.
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“Racial violence has been rationalized, legitimated, and channeled through our criminal justice system; it is expressed as police brutality, solitary confinement, and the discriminatory and arbitrary imposition of the death penalty.”
~~Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—British Envoy on US in Iraq: Thirteen Words Say It All:
"No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis."
That was British envoy John Sawers' assessment of the U.S. occupation forces to Tony Blair in May 2003, four days after he arrived in Iraq. Three years ago. The scathing report was loaded into a memo even more scathingly titled "What's Going Wrong," one of a series of leaked documents given to The Guardian, which described the exchanges as peppered with "unusual frankness."
The memos—written in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo op on the USS Lincoln—detail a devastating ineptness and indifference at every level of the occupation.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Everybody into the pool! Greg Dworkin, Armando and Joan McCarter were all on hand today for Manafort's sentencing, more lessons from the college entrance cheating scandal, reactions to Pelosi, Brexit news, new nuclear option warnings & more.