Black Americans Are Overlooked Victims of Gun Violence

By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, TIME

20 December 15

What happens in the ghetto stays in the ghetto

eb. 1, 2013, was one of the most moving and enlightening days of my life. I was at the NAACP Image Awards, where singer Harry Belafonte, 85, received an award for his nearly 60 years of civil rights activism. On an evening that was almost exclusively about celebrating achievements in the arts, Belafonte’s speech was both inspiring and sobering. “In the gun game, we are the most hunted,” he told the mostly black audience. “The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children. Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?”

The audience’s collective passion was movingly expressed by Jamie Foxx, who took the stage after Mr. Belafonte to receive his own award. His voice shaking slightly with emotion, Foxx said, “I had so many things I wanted to say, but after watching and listening to Harry Belafonte speak, sometimes I feel like somehow I failed a little bit in being caught up in what I do… But I guarantee you I’m going to work a whole lot harder, man.” It was an evening of such raw and honest passion that everyone left feeling elated by the eloquence and commitment of both men. And it was one of the only awards shows that felt more like a community coming together rather than a bunch of entertainers congratulating themselves.

But here we are almost three years later and gun violence in black communities continues to be a massive problem. African Americans are eight times more likely to be murdered than whites—1 in 5,000 versus 1 in 40,000. Between 2000 and 2010, gun-related fatalities for black people were double those of whites. Worse, gun-violence is the leading cause of death for black children and teens.

It’s a heavy burden to raise children who know that the color of their skin makes them walking targets. And gun violence isn’t just the immediate threat of bullets flying—it’s about the lasting effects that cripple the ability of the black community to protect itself and to heal from the damage inflicted.

Often overlooked are the survivors of gun violence who struggle to return to some form of normalcy. In New York City during the first half of 2012, 96% of gunshot victims, whether they survived or not, were black or Latino. Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice, has been researching the differences in the government’s response to violence when the victim or shooter is white and when they are of color. Sered concludes that very little is done to help black survivors. In an interview with New Yorker journalist Sarah Stillman, Sered said that had victims Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, and Michael Brown—whose deaths launched nationwide protests—survived but been left with disabilities, “nothing” would have been done to help them adjust to their lives.

The constant threat of gun violence and the responsibility of caring for the many wounded victims has also taken an emotional toll on the black community. Studies reveal high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in poor, mostly African-American communities in large cities. Dr. Kerry Ressler, a lead researcher for the Grady Trauma Project, told ProPublica, “The rates of PTSD we see are as high or higher than Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam veterans. We have a whole population who is traumatized.” The long-term damage of PTSD to the black community can be more devastating than actual bullet wounds: sufferers can be more prone to violence and depression, have more trouble in forming relationships and in parenting, and find it harder to adjust to the work environment.

After the attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people, fear of terrorism rose to the number one concern among Americans. The president addressed the nation from the Oval Office to assuage public fear. That’s after a single attack on U.S. soil. But fear is a daily reality in black communities with high gun violence. Where’s the outrage? The demand for substantive action? The address from the Oval Office?

What happens in the ghetto stays in the ghetto. As if people of color live in a snow globe of swirling violence that affects only them. If gun violence were the leading cause of death among white children, as it is among black children, there would be a whole lotta shakin’ going on.

We are several generations away from overcoming the personal paranoia, irrational justifications and political greed that prevent even the most basic gun protections from being passed. If the fact that children and teens in America are 17 times more likely to die from gun violence than their peers in other high-income countries doesn’t convince us, nothing will. If the fact that the U.S. had the highest rate of gun-related deaths in the world doesn’t convince us, nothing will. If the fact that toddlers in the U.S. are shooting themselves and others at the rate of once a week doesn’t convince us, nothing will.

Poverty breeds violence. People with little or no hope of a secure future for themselves or to safely raise a family don’t have much investment in the values of those who do have hope and money. So, addressing the joblessness would be a high priority in decreasing gun violence. An announcement from the Oval Office that we’re intensifying our attacks on poverty to save lives, strengthen the economy and give hope to other Americans who need it now would be welcomed. More PTSD screening in hospitals and comprehensive treatment for all of those diagnosed would be welcomed. A judicial system that focuses on rehabilitation rather than retribution would be welcomed.

America is in the business of hope, but we have fallen short in supplying that service to many of those who need it most. And when hope has a showdown with the estimated 300 million guns in the U.S., I’m not sure hope stands a chance.

And the Climate Pretender Award Goes To...

By Sandra Steingraber, EcoWatch

20 December 15

t COP21, aka the Paris climate conference, one of the most popular and suspenseful rituals was the announcement of the Fossil of the Day Award.  

Handed out by Climate Action Network in full-on burlesque fashion before an audience of hundreds, the award served to shame the nation judged to have done the “best” job of undermining the negotiations on any given day.  

On the last day, Saudi Arabia won for—among other dastardly maneuvers—attempting a last-minute gambit to force out of the treaty a global warming limit of 1.5 degrees, despite the consensus that had coalesced around that target temperature.

There was also the Ray of the Day Award, which acknowledged acts of de-carbonizing courage. Maldives and the Philippines—both island nations and members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum—received a Ray for promoting language that would ensure that nations return to the table in 2018 with more ambitious targets.

Taking place on a dinky, plywood platform in the back of Building 4, the awards ceremony not only made international news but, according to several longtime COP21 observers I spoke with, seemed truly to influence the course of the negotiations.

Appeals to shame are powerful. As is positive reinforcement.

Now that the world has shifted from the urgency of framing, drafting and revising the first global binding contract on climate change to the ongoing challenge of implementing, actualizing and operationalizing it, I suggest we keep the pressure up by continuing on with these awards.

Further, I’d like to propose a third award category: one that would be bestowed upon those who claim to be climate champions but whose actions show otherwise. Which is to say, we need a high-profile trophy that recognizes political figures (or organizations) who self-identify as rays of light but who are actually cleverly disguised chunks of carbon.

A fossil in solar clothing, so to speak.

Let’s call it the Climate Pretender Award, given to those who—for the purposes of attaining admiration, influence, grant money or a political legacy—best mimics the speech of a world climate leader while making precious little effort to keep fossil fuels in the ground, uncombusted.

My candidate for the inaugural Climate Pretender Award is California Gov. Jerry Brown.

While in Paris, Gov. Brown and members of his administration gave one self-congratulatory presentation after another that held up California as a model of climate leadership for the world to emulate—including how the state manages emissions from manure. (Manure and landfills were the topics senior advisor to the governor, Cliff Rechtschaffen, chose to discuss as a member of a COP21 panel on methane).

But not a word was spoken about the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch near Los Angeles, which, since Oct. 23, has been spewing 50,000 kilograms (= 110,000 pounds) of methane per hour into the air from a pipe that no one knows how to fix. The single leak alone is the greenhouse gas equivalent of six coal-burning power plants and nullifies hundreds other state-based efforts in California—including those directed at cows and landfills—to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Indeed, the flow rate of the escaping methane from Aliso Canyon is so extraordinary and the concentrations so astronomical that, out of concern that airplanes could ignite it, the FAA has declared a no-fly zone over the community that will be in place until at least March.

By week two of the climate negotiations in Paris, 1,800 Porter Ranch families had been evacuated, with many demanding that the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility be shut down altogether. But SoCalGas nixed that idea summarily, noting that no fewer than 14 California power plants depend on the gas stored there. No immediate plans to break that dependency exist.

And now we find out, thanks to a Public Accountability Initiative report, that the gas storage well in Porter Ranch is owned by a company where Gov. Brown’s sister is a highly-compensated board member. The report also points out that his sister, Kathleen Brown, plays an environmental, health and safety oversight role at the company.

According to the report:

Brown’s relationships with the oil and gas industry likely play a role in influencing his stances on these issues. This report, to be released in sections in the coming weeks, will detail Brown’s many ties to the industry: through his campaigns and political causes, which have benefited from significant industry funding; through close associates, who play advocacy and leadership roles in the industry; and through appointments to key regulatory roles.

The relationships, some of which have never been reported before, raise new questions about Brown’s handling of oil and gas matters.

This map helps spell out Gov. Brown’s family ties to the methane leak and fracking:

Meanwhile, back in Paris, in a high-profile speech at a gathering of governors and mayors from around the world, Governor Brown emphasized the urgent need to “decarbonize in a serious way. … We have to take courage to make the hard choices—big, fundamental and transformational.”

Not everyone was buying it.

No sooner had the governor finished talking when a dozen or more people in the audience—many of them members of indigenous communities—leapt to their feet and began chanting, “No more REDD!” and angrily challenging Gov. Brown’s carbon trading scheme. (REDD = Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).

Under the REDD project, a California polluter—say, an oil refinery that processes tar sands from Canada—can expand operations as long as it purchases credits somewhere else—like in the forests of Mexico or Brazil—so that the photosynthesizing trees that take carbon out of the air offset the carbon added by the refinery.

Protesters argued—loudly—that REDD is “a shell game” that not only allows high-emission industries to pay to pollute but also instigates land grabs that evict indigenous people from their forested communities throughout the developing world. Far from being a model for the nation, California’s REDD, they declared to the governor, is a false solution that should be removed from the draft Paris Accord.

In an interview with me out in the hotel lobby after the confrontation, Tom Goldtooth, of the Indigenous Environmental Network and one of the protesters, said that any plan that addresses climate change by privatizing forests in the global South to excuse fossil fuel pollution in the global North is, unacceptable, doomed to fail, and means that “Governor Brown needs be very concerned about his legacy.”

Cassandra Smithies, a researcher with No REDD in Africa Network, added that the California model “commodifies photosynthesis” through the creation of offsets while providing no plan to cut extraction and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Indeed, California, already the nation’s third largest oil-producer, is doubling down on fossil fuel extraction via fracking and other extreme, toxic forms of oil and gas development, including in the Los Angeles area where 1.7 million people live or work within a mile of an active oil or gas well.

Kern County, which serves as a top producer of the nation’s food crops, hosts the highest density of drilling and fracking operations in the state. The recent admission by state regulators that companies had been wrongly allowed, for years, to inject fracking waste directly into California’s freshwater aquifers, has led to the closing of many fracking waste disposal wells. In turn, the lack of disposal options has diverted fracking waste into irrigation canals with unknown impacts on food crops.

For these reasons and more, on one of the final days of the Paris negotiations, a collection of civil society groups—with a hard-won police permit for assembly—staged an anti-fracking rally outside of COP21 headquarters. Chanting “climate leaders don’t frack!” they singled out Gov. Brown for special mention and called on him to ban fracking in California.

This was not a lightly considered decision. Throughout the rally, which the permit had limited to 45 minutes and 50 participants, no fewer than 32 heavily armed military police ringed the demonstrators. In addition, because images of political leaders had been banned at this rally, pictures of Jerry Brown’s face on signs and banners had to be carefully duct-taped over. (The effect, to my mind, was to make the visual message appear more, not less, sinister).

In short, the rally was peaceful; the mood was tense. It took real bravery to bring an anti-fracking message to climate negotiations and call out Gov. Brown for his duplicity.

The following day, at an official COP21 panel discussion called “Not Just California Dreamin’: Climate Action from the Golden State” and where the speakers were government leaders and renewable energy CEOs, it was as if none of this had happened.

No one on the panel mentioned REDD or fracking.

No one mentioned that, according to this year’s California Air Resources Board’s greenhouse gas inventory, overall emissions have increased in California since Brown took office.

No one on the panel talked about leaving oil and gas in the ground even though another civil society protest, which involved hundreds of people, had just wrapped up in a space not far away and chants of “leave it in the ground!” were still ringing in the air.

Instead, Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, enthused, “The world is looking toward California as a leader. … NRDC loves California so much that we have two offices there!”

During the Q&A, I asked California Sec. for Environmental Protection, Matthew Rodriquez, about the expansion of fracking in California and how it squares with Gov. Brown’s professed vision for the state. At which point the moderator announced that we had run out of time for further conversation.

But Sec. Rodriguez answered my question anyway. He urged patience. “To the issue of fracking, change doesn’t happen overnight. The goal is to reduce oil by 50 percent by 2050. … We have the most effective regulations in the world. We understand the implications. We are monitoring. … We’ve got it under control.”

Which is a different kind of message than Gov. Brown delivered two nights earlier, before his fellow governors, when he warned of the fierce urgency of the climate crisis, saying, “Unless everyone does everything they can, there will be a catastrophic impact.”

Nor does it align with the message of science, which says that: to have a shot at limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need a 100 percent shift to renewables by 2050, not a goal of 50 percent.

So, let’s keep that awards ceremony going in the days ahead. Bring back the cabaret curtains and the plywood stage. And queue up old Jackson Brown for the opener: “Say a prayer for the Pretender / Who started out so young and strong / Only to surrender.”