Anti-racism

Anti-racism is "the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach, and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and impacts." -Center for Racial Justice Innovation

Examples of anti-racism

Learning about, and actively working to identify and challenge, racial inequities	Racism is a part of all of our systems, including for example health care, criminal justice, income and employment, education and housing. One must learn about the history, impacts and/or experiences of racism.
Seek out media which challenges notions of race and culture	See the following for a list of recommended media on anti-racism, which includes recommendations for taking steps beyond educating yourself.
Organizing against racism	Fighting for equity, often in the form of a complete overhaul of our current systems (see abolition) and challenging the ways certain groups are disadvantaged is anti-racist work. Abolishing systems that perpetuate racism and building transformative systems that centre care is anti-racist work. See transformative justice for more.

Understanding why addressing racism is necessary for climate justice

Indigenous sovereignty halts capitalist resource extraction

The violation of Treaty Relationships by settlers has enabled for the continuation of capitalist extraction, one of the major systems driving climate change (see anti-capitalism). These agreements, meant to facilitate peace and coexistence, have continued to be violated by settler states like so-called Canada, while disregarding Indigenous sovereignty and the role it has in safeguarding 80% of global biodiversity By asserting their sovereign land rights, Indigenous communities pose a significant threat to the settler state and have the potential to halt destructive resource extraction (e.g. Standing rock and the TMX resistance)

Indigenous-led resistance movements have historically been the most effective against the climate crisis

We describe several successful intersectional climate justice campaigns on our wiki page: How we Win! Summary of findings on successful climate justice campaigns in North America. In the last 20 years, you'll notice that a good number of the campaigns/resistance movements we covered were Indigenous-led!

If you have any suggested revisions or additional resources to share related to the above content, please email them to kenzie@lehub.ca.

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