An Open Letter to All Participants in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change/ COP 21

They call us “sacrificed.” We live in homes, neighborhoods, communities, and regions where industrial pollutants invade our waters, our air, our lands and our bodies.

We are the inhabitants of blown apart mountains, we walk atop the land of aging and feeble pipelines, we are those who wait at the intersection for the tanker trucks and bomb trains that run day and night through our communities. We are the children of oil streaked and fracking contaminated waters, of the deadly and toxic tar sands, of the stolen trees and scorched earth, of the uranium polluted desert sands, and the survivors of those living and dying in the shadows of refineries and chemical plants across the continent.

We are the residents of justice denied, and we write to you today in one voice.

As the international collective of government leaders, NGOs, and individuals, prepare to travel and participate in the important talks and corresponding activities surrounding the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, we wish to inform you, with good intent, of our needs as those most affected by the systems of death which often denies us life and liberty.

Many of you know us. We have marched beside you in the streets, we have held your banners and ours, we have given speeches that define our collective narrative of dauntlessness, we have organized and attended rallies across the continent and globe, and we have consistently stood with you in direct defiance of the rape and destruction of our natural world. We have been arrested, criminalized, and suffered humiliation and retaliation, while defending our homes and homelands from the harmful and malicious effects of capitalist industrialization.

DO NOT SELL US OUT.

These are dark times. The natural world is under assault by corporations who openly engage in the immorality of putting the importance of their profit over our existence. In our areas, the State has often become a one-track facilitator of global capital and development, as opposed to a steward of public good. We demand that the human and natural right to clean air, water and land for all, be tantamount to development goals that profit a few.

We do not want false solutions, however, and we rebuke REDD+, Cap and Trade, and all so-called solutions which reinforce the delusive mechanisms that would continue to undervalue our existence. These mendacious scenarios, which work only to pacify the global demand for environmental and climate justice, would continue to put our families and communities in the cross-hairs of the malicious industries that threaten our lives.

Further, we appeal to the higher sense of universal moral conscience that defines the sacredness of all life, as we stand together to demand in singular acceptance a recourse of no more than an 1.5 ºC average global temperature increase, that the Precautionary Principle be enacted in all situations of future energy and chemical development, the encouragement of food sovereignty over industrial agriculture, that 80 percent of remaining fossil fuels be left in the ground, an immediate end to the government subsidizing of polluting industries and also the role of market mechanisms in climate politics.

Doing so is the only way that we will accept your intention as true recognition of our right to live with the dignity and in good health.

With regard to the climate movement, and as we continue to live with the daily impacts of the failure of our governments to respond to this unrelenting assault upon our families, our communities and our world, we lay our claim as leaders of solutions to this sustained struggle, in full respect, and as the caregivers for our own welfare and well-being.

Additionally, we stand united against the continuing displacement, poverty, dispossession, exclusion, environmental degradation, and injustices in the face of industrial contamination and climate disaster, and do declare ourselves as our own experts in all attempts of solving.

Continuing to react to disasters as they occur is insufficient to confronting the common local and global conditions of this time. The forces that perpetuate the abuses and injustices of our world, although multiple and well-resourced, must not control the curative of our problems.

We call for a universal investment in real and independent science in and for our communities, and thus the protection of our health, environment and climate.

We call for justice, and the understanding that our lives have value, through a collective confronting concerning the criminalization of our leaders.

We call for an end to racial prejudice and colonizing practices that continue to steal from us the social wealth and welfare of our communities.

As movement leadership, we demand a just transition through the development of a worldwide Ethical Energy Plan.

With respect to the critical importance of solidarity, we request that you remove any and all reactive and superfluous motions from every table, and instead call for the aforementioned stances in order to ensure our continuing support and in recognition of our undeniable stake in the future of our communities and our world.

In conclusion, we stand with the people of Paris, of Beirut, of Baghdad, of Sudan, New York, and all other communities around the world who have suffered from horrific acts of terrorism. We know your fear, we have similar - of when the refinery or fracking well will explode, that the spill will happen, that the pipeline will leech into our water, that benzene and other chemicals will poison our children, and more. This form of state sanctioned terror must also end. Because frankly, we are tired of burying our neighbors and loved ones, do not negotiate with government sanctioned terrorists, and will no longer accept the title “sacrifice zone” for our communities.