April 23, 2020 | 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Via Facebook Live
Event Recording
“COVID-19 and the Indigenous Just Transition: The Renewable Society of the Seventh Generation,” featured environmental economist, organizer, and activist Winona LaDuke, Program Director of Honor the Earth, based at the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota; activist, writer and community advocate Carol Bebelle, co-founder of New Orleans’ Ashé Cultural Center; and Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Director of Environmental Justice and Community Development at Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark. The event, moderated on Facebook Live by Jack Tchen, was held to commemorate Earth Day 2020. The one-and-a-half-hour discussion was wide-ranging, covering topics such as environmental racism and COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black, brown, and Native American communities; the importance of biodiversity and sustainability; and working together across racial, ethnic, and cultural divides to build a unified movement to achieve greater environmental, social, and economic justice. The three female activists from around the country shared their thoughts on using the COVID-19 pandemic to reimagine grassroots organizing and chart a new environmental and socioeconomic course domestically and globally. The discussion spanned the personal, political, and communal, using as its starting point writer Arudhati Roy’s conception of the “pandemic as a portal” through which society can walk to rid ourselves of old socioeconomic structures, forge new alliances, and build a better, more sustainable and egalitarian world. On several occasions during the 90-minute event, the discussion shifted to workers on the frontlines of the pandemic and the need to rethink our ideas about labor. All the panelists agreed that the pandemic created an unprecedented opportunity to organize, reimagine the current socioeconomic order, and push for a more progressive American and global agenda.
To read more on topics discussed at this event, please read "Price Institute Hosts Online Earth Day Summit With Leading Female Activists"
