Cops plus climate change equals...?
What do climate change refugees and the CHOP have in common?
An essay in Dissent magazine says police violence will be the common element. As the writer put it, “[I]t’s a simple question of whom and what the political system chooses to protect” during a crisis.
Protester demands on the boarded-up SPD east precinct building, June 2020
Remember the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest area (CHOP)? Activists protesting police violence and George Floyd’s murder occupied the streets around the east precinct, demanding that the Seattle Police Department be defunded. One reason for the demand: police pose a deadly threat to Black lives, not a source of aid.
Police face Black Lives Matter supporters on May 30, 2020. Credit: Kelly Kline/Flickr
Considering this violent history, writer Olufemi O. Taiwo predicts “climate apartheid” will increase. Police will leave refugees to risk death during future climate disasters, while officers protect the powerful.
National Guard troops, Seattle police and protesters on June 3, 2020. Credit: Bruce Englehardt/Wikimedia Commons
At first I thought this argument was kind of a stretch, but then I realized my collage “TODAY, America. Today,” tells a similar narrative. I pointed out people of color usually suffer the most in a catastrophe — citizens as well as migrants.
I wish I could be more optimistic: please, please, please let me and this essay be wrong. But knowing our response to Hurricane Katrina (and before that, the Great Mississippi Flood), that essay writer in Dissent sounds more like Cassandra than Chicken Little.
Getting free on Juneteenth
I’ve seen a few interesting art developments connected to the idea of freedom, this Juneteenth. And though I hadn’t realized it until now, I’ve also been making small works about freedom and its absence.
These collages all have something to do with walls, most of the pieces featuring an enslaved person. Coincidentally, another enslaved person — Aunt Jemima — is finally free. After 131 years, Quaker Oats is retiring the syrup logo and the brand. This is especially great news to one of my favorite artists, Betye Saar, who’s best known for recasting Aunt Jemima as a revolutionary warrior.
Once you’ve liberated yourself, though… then what? Maybe you spend some time recovering from your trauma. Today Black artists are staging a “black out” of the CHOP [Capitol Hill Occupied Protest]. They’re offering a day of art and healing activities specifically for other Black people.
More importantly, these actions are meant to refocus attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. The art drawing people’s attention is still valid and restorative on its own. But this weekend is a reminder the art is also a means to the end: freeing people from constant assault on our existence.