Everybody deserves a stable home, decent work, and a livable future. But right now, the people and places we love are being torn apart and brutalized by the chaos of climate instability. Every generation alive today has witnessed the harrowing effects of climate change. Our window of opportunity to end the crisis is closing.
The climate crisis looms over every aspect of our lives — how we produce our food, whether we have enough water, where we are able to live and whether we have daily security for ourselves, our families, our communities, our nation.
We are the flooded. We are the drought-stricken. We are the brokenhearted sifting through ashes. We are farmers yielding fewer crops. We are the poisoned, whether we know it yet or not. We are the young struggling to breathe and the seniors with limited mobility. We are friends and family, co-workers and neighbors. We are indigenous. We are migrants. We are of all colors, ages, races, religions, genders, backgrounds and abilities who want to protect the people and places we love.
Time and time again, the decisions propelling the dirty energy economy — the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and other natural resources — sacrificed those most vulnerable. Profit-obsessed corporations and the politicians who do their bidding have used, abused and discarded our communities.
As we rise to our rightful place at the table, the architects of the climate crisis and their enablers will try to divide us by class, age, race, gender, place and ability. They tell us that some communities must choke on dirty air for others to put food on the table, that we must choose between a stable climate and a robust economy, between “us” and”‘others.” They use slick words to hide the real culprit — themselves. No more. We refuse to support a system that does not support us and threatens our very lives.
The window to meet this historic challenge is closing. We are already losing our lives and livelihoods. Millions have already been impacted by climate change. We are limited only by fear. Instead, we must answer the call for innovative, ambitious solutions to create a government that works to protect all people and all of life on earth. The future is coming, by disaster or design. We can passively accept this fate, or we can join together and take back our power. If we so choose, our best days are ahead.
We have a legacy of coming together to face crises that threatened the very ideals of our nation. From the horrors of slavery to — the rise of Jim Crow, from the depths of the Great Depression to the spread of fascism during World War II, we have overcome trials before. We have the power to do it again.
Through sustained disruptive humanitarianism, we organize our communities and ignite a transformational era that ends the climate crisis centering racial and economic justice — an era where our government finally works for the common good. Arm in arm, we will transform America and end the climate crisis.
