Art, Justice & Local Climate Action in Queens, NY

Art is designed to be something that we engage with, that provokes thought and reaction, and often emotional reaction.

I once took a group of older adults to a program where they were a little distressed because they didn't like what they were seeing, and we had an excellent docent there who said, Part of what you get to do with art is you can say, I don't like this, this makes me feel uncomfortable, and talk about why those things are.

And that's something that I've really taken to art, where art makes a big difference, it gets people thinking, it gets people feeling.

Climate change is kind of an abstract topic.

I think that's part of the challenge.

Would you say that it's personal to you in your life? And the answer can be yes or no.

Sometimes I struggle to feel how it's personal to me, but I work on this for a living, so for me it's kind of a thing that's out there.

But how do you think about it? Is it personal?

Absolutely personal to me.

Yeah.

I mean, I have asthma.

There are fewer and fewer months in the year when I can breathe easily outside.

You notice that? Oh

yeah.

The more hot, the more humid it gets, the less I can breathe.

Now I'm a scientist, I'm an engineer.

I've been working on climate change and trying to develop solutions for some time.

And one of the things I've noticed, and I gotta say, as a black guy, that I've noticed, Climate change is a pretty white topic, meaning a lot of the scientists, a lot of the activists, a lot of the people working on the topic especially come from the United States, especially the coasts, and Europe.

So why is climate change so white? Or is it white at all? Do I have it wrong? I'm curious if you ever think about that and if you have ideas.

First of all, do you agree with that? Second of all, whether you do or don't, how do you see that issue and what's a way to move that forward?

I think a lot of issues related to climate and by extension, the environment are predominantly analyzed and discussed in more white and Eurocentric spaces.

And in my opinion, that's because one, science and academia are still very elite spaces that aren't as accessible to a broad range of people.

The other part of that is we're still dealing with a lot of colonial and post-colonial mentalities in that space because that's what we're attempting to undo.

And so this piece relates directly to that.

You know, sugar and cotton are two of the cash industries, biggest industries of European colonialism of the Americas.