Happy Earth Day Weekend
Throughout this weekend and into Earth Day, over 200 groups across the United States are holding direct actions and rallies as part of an effort to reclaim Earth Day from corporate greenwashing and the surface-level volunteering that often accompanies it. I am personally invested in this weekend because half of these groups are student movement organizations affiliated with the Campus Climate Network, a movement organization I recently joined in February as one of their new organizers. I basically coach and train college students to build power and win campaigns to remove Big Oil and fossil fuels from their local campuses and universities. The remaining 100 groups taking action this weekend are with the Sunrise Movement and Fridays for Future.
Yesterday morning, I organized with friends and comrades in Sunrise Movement KC to host our Reclaim Earth Day rally and our first direct action of the year. We marched through the streets of the Plaza, a frequent protest site in Kansas City. However, for many new members in our local hub, this was an opportunity to develop new leadership skills, become acquainted with taking confrontational risks, and ease our nerves.
I was given the opportunity to speak at Saturday’s Sunrise rally and I didn’t treat it lightly. I poured a lot of heart and soul into this speech, knowing I had to be vulnerable for it to truly resonate. And I think I pulled it off. Several people expressed appreciation and deep emotion when thanking me after the rally. So, for this blog post, I will share with you the script of my speech and I hope you resonate with something from this too. Enjoy! :)
Hello, my name is MAK, I use they/them pronouns and I am speaking with you today as a leader with Sunrise Movement KC!
Growing up, I learned that this world wasn’t built for me or my people. Poor and working people like you and me. The current system depends on us having no power and no agency over our own lives. People I loved were alienated, overburdened, and hopeless.
My grandfather was from Mexico. He served in the army during the Mexican Dirty War. Tired of serving for an oppressive government, he rebelled and migrated to the U.S. on his two bare feet. Because of the choice he made, he was forced into a life of oppression in a country that didn’t treat him as a full human because he was undocumented. That aint right!
My father is Chicano. He has spent over two decades in prison for drugs. I won’t get to see my father until I’m in my mid-30s. At the end of our phone calls, my voice cracks every time when I am expected to say “I love you,” not because I don’t want to love him but because I don’t know who he is. Our carceral system, a symptom of racial capitalism, has reduced my father’s humanity to a strange voice on the phone. While my father is incarcerated for drugs, fossil fuel execs are living their lives destroying our planet and communities with no accountability and that aint right!
My mother worked as a single mother of two rowdy kids. She had to work multiple jobs to put food on the table while also paying for community college. She married a US Marine, and they had three more children, making me the oldest of 5 kids. Raising five kids is hard in itself, especially with all the moves that came from being a military family. When my step dad was deployed to fight a war in Afghanistan seeing terrible things and getting PTSD, all of the parenting responsibilities fell on my mom and me. That ain’t right!
Growing up, I had to co-parent my younger siblings, a burden that no kid should ever have to take on. My childhood was stolen from me because of this world we live in. I felt hopeless. I adopted unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms to survive and, one day, to escape. And that aint right!
My escapism took me to Silicon Valley in the summer of 2016. I was an intern for a giant tech company named Apple Inc. One day during my internship I was riding one of their private buses that Apple employees use for themselves and themselves alone. I was alone on this clean and efficient bus. But when this private bus stopped at an intersection, I noticed a public bus across the street. It was late, it was dirty, and that bus was packed. There was a huge line of working class people waiting at that bus stop who looked like my family, my friends and people from my past. They looked like the people I loved.
And that was the moment when I realized I was on the wrong side. Greedy, wasteful corporations like Apple Inc. use their profits to enrich themselves at a devastating cost to people I love, from Mexico to rural Kansas, Congo, Palestine, and through the rest of the world. While we are dying in dire climate conditions, corporations and their execs get rich and that aint right!
I reached a crossroads: Would I become a cog in the very same system that had reduced the humanity of my grandfather, my father, my mother, my second father, my siblings, and myself? The people I love so much? Would I become a participant in my own disposal?
I am the type of person who walks towards fires, not away from them. And I can’t ignore the fire in my heart…the fire to create a NEW system for poor and working people like us. The way it is today? For so many of us, and for the people I love? It didn’t have to be this way. We can imagine something better, and if we can imagine it, we can build it.
Now you know where I come from. So let’s talk about how I am feeling today.
Some days, I wake up in my bed with what I feel is a shotgun pressed against my head. In one barrel is the climate crisis. In the other barrel is living in a world of rising wealth inequality. The poor stay poor and the rich are getting richer. Both of these barrels are connected to the same trigger: billionaires and corporations who exploit poor and working people and pilfer our communities and lands for their private gains.
In the mornings I let this existential shotgun go off, and I leave my brains scrambled on the wall next to my bed. I move without purpose, I speak without hope, and I believe that I have no power in my life. I stay glued to my phone because now, more than ever, we can easily see the damage that corporate greed and the climate crisis has done to people across the world. With the scroll of a thumb, I can see people facing drought and hunger in Southern Africa, people drowning in floods and rainstorms in the Middle East, coral reefs bleaching and withering away, and migrants being slaughtered as they travel away from war and climate-torn homes.
When I see pain and problems of this magnitude, it is easier to hide in my little hole of consumption and ignore it all. I ignore it by watching the latest shows online, whatever sport is on my tv, or with whatever will give me the biggest dopamine rush I can find. I know I am not the only one who feels days like these. Profiteers and neglectful, harmful people in power would prefer we move like this because it makes their jobs easier. It makes it easier for them to accumulate power and wealth at the cost of us. And that ain’t right!
I got over this by leaving behind my guilt and by tapping into my righteous anger. I think there is another way for us to live. I know there is another way for me to live. On the mornings where I disarm this floating shotgun of dread above my head, I keep my brains intact. I move at a different pace. I move with intentionality, I speak with love, and I believe that I and the people I know have the power to change the world we live in. These days, I trust my poor and working neighbors, assume good faith, and organize for something we need in our world today. I move knowing that generations before us didn’t need a phone or the internet to know just how bad things were. Shit has always been bad but utopia was always found in the community and purpose that resonated with us the most. I know that my ancestors moved forward despite their fear because the only way out is through. And it is a hell of a lot easier to move through something as a collective than to go alone. And so it is our duty for us to move with purpose just like our ancestors did before us. Because if we are going to survive and thrive amidst this climate crisis, all of us must take hands and move towards the world as we know it should be, rather than accepting the world as it is.
I know that can be hard for all of us to do but it can happen. I have seen it happen. It is happening right now. On a loving kind of day, we bring ourselves out here for moments like this that transform us one person at a time. And boy do we need transformation now more than ever. If we can do this today, imagine what we could do to save our bus system, which is slowly being eradicated by KCMO City Council? Imagine what we could do to stop our local Honeywell from manufacturing weapons that are slaughtering Gazan’s? Imagine what could happen when we decide that Kansas City can be a beacon for surviving the climate crisis? Seriously, I want you to close your eyes for a moment and envision what that looks like. What does Kansas City 5, 10, 20 years from now look like to you?
Whatever you envisioned, squeeze it tight in your hands and feel it in your heart. I don’t need you to tell me because I already know I love your vision. And I want your vision to be my vision too. The climate crisis is here and it’s going to get worse whether we like it or not. The only way out is by going through and I wouldn’t want to go through this with anybody else but people I stand here with today. Are you ready to fight with me? If so, give me a hell yeah. I said if so give me a hell yeah! I wanna live! Come on, I wanna live! I wanna thrive! Come on now, I wanna thrive!
As a fun final note, I’ll share with you a little slice of my life. Below is a video of what I was graced with when I arrived home after Saturday’s rally. I am pretty fortunate to have such a caring creature in my life. Is there something or someone in your life that loves you this much too?