National Black Radical Organizing Conference opening plenary entitled, "What Time is It?"
Liberal climate movements keep bargaining with capitalism, but the Black Radical Tradition knows survival requires its destruction. Environmentalism must adopt principles of abolition and anti-capitalism.
This past weekend, over 500 Black folk and their comrades descended upon Indianapolis, Indiana, for the Second National Black Radical Organizing Conference (NBROC). The goal, in part, of the Second NBROC, in the words of the conference’s organizers, was to “create a space to discuss, debate, train, assess, and create a collective way forward for Black/African/New Afrikan organizations and organizers who believe that our struggle is paramount to our survival.” On the question of the survival of Black/African people the world over, climate change (or as we refer to it, the racial capitalocene) represents a profound and salient challenge formed and sustained by root causes -white “supremacy” ideology, colonization, and patriarchy (which is to say racial capitalism) - we as Black, African, and all oppressed people have been struggling against for multiple millenniums.
To this end, while the racial capitolocene was not showcased or focused on in depth during NBROC, the lessons that we can glean from the conference can certainly be applied to the larger climate change discussion. In fact, key takeaways from NBROC actually established the need for any approach to confront and dismantle the climate crisis to incorporate and be guided by the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) if there is to be any chance of efficacy. Hence, in the context of the climate crisis, just as in the context of all other systems of oppression, incorporation of the BRT represents a requisite intervention for the survival of Black, African, Indigenous, and all poor and working class people. For the purposes of this piece, the BRT, in the words of Cedric Robinson, is described as, “a revolutionary consciousness that proceeded from the whole historical experience of Black people,” and, furthermore, “a collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anticolonial and antislavery efforts.”
NBROC stressed the need for understanding the moment that we’re in, which includes a necessary comprehension of the fact that the BRT is under attack and the methods utilized to wage this attack as part of the larger war on Black/African people. So, as NBROC asked, “What Time is It?”
In answering this question, our analysis must incorporate an understanding of the planetary, geopolitical, and human epoch, the racial capitalocene, that we currently find ourselves in. Moreover, our answer to this question, in the climate context, puts us in a better position to understand why the liberal, alabastrine, and euro-centric approach of mainstream western environmentalism in itself is not fit or equipped, philosophically, politically, or morally, to address the climate crisis at a requisite scale.
This much was revealed when Dr. Charisse Burden Stelly (aka Dr. CBS) proclaimed to attendees, “...we are disorganized and nothing brings this into sharper relief than our inability to stop a genocide.” From a climate perspective, Dr. CBS’s analysis can absolutely be applied to one of the most ignominious demonstrations of environmental racism and denial of human rights in the world, Cancer Alley in Louisiana. This is the sobriquet given to an 85-mile stretch of land, predominantly populated by Black people, due to the fact that the area’s residents have a 95% greater chance of developing cancer than the average United Statesian. And the reason for the high incidence of cancer, along with a slew of respiratory and developmental diseases, is the fossil fuel petrochemical industries and their toxic operations in concert with, as indicated by the group, Human Rights Watch, an unwillingness of lawmakers to protect residents of Cancer Alley.
Dr. CBS is absolutely correct when she notes how disorganized we are - and the mainstream environmental community may be the most shambolic entity in the world it purports to save. The U.S. climate community’s response to Cancer Alley is a perfect example in that it’s unacceptably similar to its response to the war crimes and genocide set upon the Palestinians by the zionist ethnostate of Israel - largely anodyne rhetoric bereft of an actual plan and set of initiatives to end the area’s documented human rights violations. And the failure to connect the denial of human rights and humanity of the Palestinian people to the denial of human rights and humanity of Black people who reside in Cancer Alley is rooted in the U.S. climate community’s lack of, and refusal to embrace, a Black Radical lens. The lack of a Black Radical lens is also demonstrated in mainstream environmentalism’s inability and aversion to decouple itself from two forces that play an outsized role in forming and exacerbating the climate crisis - capitalism and neoliberalism. As Max Ajl reminds us in his book A People’s Green New Deal, “Much of the liberal-left climate talk is based on administering rather than eliminating capitalism.”
Without a Black Radical lens, it will not possible for mainstream environmentalism to grasp and effectuate the organizing and political strategy necessary to confront and dismantle the climate crisis because those formations/organizations are flawed, liberal and capitalist to the core - they believe in unlimited growth and extraction necessary to preserve capital, even if it does result in externalities, sacrifices of human rights, and environmental racism - a toxic and co-opted form of utilitarianism that is reduced to cliche like, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
When knowledge of what needs to happen is met with an inertia that’s unwilling to exercise the necessary steps to make it happen, the conditions have been set for a revolutionary response - this irrefutable conclusion, in itself, vindicates the need for a BRT lens to inform, influence, and shape any discussion about the climate crisis as well as the collective initiatives necessary to confront and dismantle it. Robin D.G. Kelly, in discussing the BRT, adroitly espouses this idea, once writing, “the need to politicize the link between capitalism and racial domination is itself a response to how this link has been depoliticized and concealed by liberal and influential left theorists of capitalism.” Dr. Kelly could easily be describing a growing chorus of liberals, and even some leftists, who are calling for so-called Abundance theory that completely perambulates the myriad and incontrovertible ways that the climate crisis is also a crisis of racism and exploitation of poor and working class people and fails to connect environmental racism to fascism.
An understanding of the symbiotic relationship between racial capitalism and the climate crisis has yet to be demonstrated by the mainstream environmental community in the U.S. and globally. There are many reasons for this, chief among them is the fact that these liberal nonprofit organizations and institutions are not anti-capitalist in the slightest and believe that capitalism can be tweaked to be fairer, safer, and less racist. We saw this when far too many climate groups touted Biden and the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) while also knowing that numerous elements of the bill would sacrifice Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor environmental justice communities.
The IRA is the antithesis of the BRT because it’s nothing more (or, we should say it was nothing more as the Republicans are poised to all but kill it as part of their “Big Beautiful Bill”) than greenwashed capitalism, hence why it had no problem sacrificing Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor people by opening federal lands and waters to more oil and gas drilling, deregulating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and allocating the vast majority of federal dollars through tax credits to so-called red states where their “right to work” laws result in cheaper and more exploited labor force. The Abundancers and the Green Keynesists', who champion the IRA, refusal to connect climate solutions to a final solution for capitalism, are demonstrated in their lack of understanding that a capitalist approach to expanding renewable energy can fuel capitalism as much as oil and gas already does. These forces also refuse to embark on a collective campaign to de-commodify energy and transform it into a framework that primarily serves the commons. The BRT understands that the commons are consistently destroyed by privatization and imprisonment - and this understanding illuminates another key variable missing from mainstream environmentalism’s climate change equation - an abolitionist framework.
While waxing full poetic during the “What Time Is It” panel at NBROC, writer and activist Derecka Purnell explained the need to apply an abolitionist lens to our organizing and political strategy because policing and militarism are key for capitalism to operate. This is a take one rarely, if ever, hears from the mainstream environmentalists, despite the rising repression of direct action and other forms of protests against polluters and toxic fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines. For instance, activists and justice seekers in Georgia who took direct action against the planned Atlanta -based Cop City are now facing RICO and domestic terrorism charges and the murder of Indigenous Cop City protestor, Tortiguita, at the hands of the State both demonstrate that we’ve been living in a fascist state well before the second Trump presidency. With the exception of ephemeral attention and outrage, the mainstream environmental community has more recently acted like a U.S. Navy submarine in enemy waters and gone quiet on the issue of Cop Cities and the murder of Tortuguita as a method for suppressing climate liberation activism.
The BRT, on the other hand, makes the connection between domestic/international militarism, racial capitalism, and the climate crisis. For instance, as Dr. Kelley points out when discussing the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)’ A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice, “By calling for an end to the war on Black people - here and abroad - and the reinvestment of resources from the carceral and military state to education, health, and safety, creating a just democratically controlled economy, the Movement for Black Lives effectively presents a plan to transform the entire nation, save the planet, and ultimately end racial capitalism.” The BRT, like Kelly, understands, “the new abolitionists are not interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to racial capitalism." The Black Hive at M4BL’s Black Climate Mandate, which is informed by the BRT, showcases a better understanding of this conclusion than any version of the Green New Deal, save the Green Party’s.
However, the languorous approach to fascism, militarism, and racial capitalism exercised by mainstream environmentalism is why, as Dr. CBS explained at NBROC, liberals sound the alarm of fascism while also planning for the next election more than they are developing infrastructure and organizing for resiliency in the face of a climate crisis that will, in the next few months, deliver the most extreme heat, extreme storms, extreme drought, and extreme smoke from associated wildfires since last year and one that’s pushing us to an even earlier breach of the 1.5 degree global warming threshold than previously anticipated. This reductive approach and lack of proactive strategies yield a willful refusal to embrace the reality that the racial capitalocene is a manifestation of the larger global war on Black/African people that is sustained by western colonial governments and driven by the same white “supremacy” ideology that drives the climate crisis. The BRT understands what mainstream environmentalism does not - the climate crisis is not something that can be reformed into submission, it, like fascism, militarism, and racial capitalism, must be summarily abolished.
Moreover, without a Black Radical lens in the climate discourse, we will not link the climate crisis to an assault on human rights. National organizer Austin Cole made this clear as part of a discussion I had with him during NBROC, in which he noted, “the climate crisis must be about people-centered human rights and our ability to survive.” And if, as Audre Lorde, reminds us, “survival is a promise” then our survival as Black people/Africans also requires a collective promise to study, exercise, and promote the BRT as a requisite tool to confront and dismantle the climate crisis and, in the process, affirm our human rights and self determination while also keeping us alive.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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