OPINION SAME VOICES = SAME OUTCOMES

BY FLOWS TEAM

At Foundations for Leaders

Organizing for Water and Sustainability (FLOWS), we center, elevate and celebrate the knowledge of underinvested and disproportionately impacted communities in the City of Boulder and CU Boulder students in environmental and climate justice work. We are a diverse group of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) from all over the world including Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nepal and South Sudan. At the Right Here, Right Now Climate Summit hosted by CU Boulder and the United Nations this past December, representation of and by impacted communities was a continuous theme. We expand on representation and why BIPOC leadership is crucial to climate initiatives and solutions. We start by honoring and showing gratitude to the Hinono’eino (Arapaho), Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ (Ute) and all original inhabitants and their descendants of this valley and Turtle Island. We recognize that the violent removal and genocide of these original stewards has also attempted to erase Indigenous and Earth-based values, knowledge, and practices in environmental and community stewardship that are so critical to addressing climate chaos.

Systemic racism, violence and oppression are tools of white dominance and supremacy to exclude and silence the most impacted communities both locally and globally from decision-making processes in climate initiatives. FLOWS member Adriana Palacios describes this as “epistemic violence that prevails over practices, stories, and knowledge that when perceived as different, as subaltern, as dominated, are denied, silenced and made invisible throughout history.” Additionally, people who are not from our communities wrongfully speak, represent and make decisions without our consent on issues that have tremendous impact on our bodies, health, water sources, homes, communities and environments. At FLOWS, we know our communities are the experts of their needs and must lead in decisions that concern them.

“Racism has clouded the mainstream portions of environmental and climate movements from recognizing solutions that are right there from communities dealing with and navigating the direct impacts of environmental degradation,” explains FLOWS founder Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish. In celebration of Black History Month, she emphasizes the importance of paying proper respects to Black leaders such as George Washington Carver, the grandfather of what is now being called “regenerative agriculture” and Martin Luther King Jr., who was organizing sanitation workers (a key sustainability issue) at the time of his assassination.

FLOWS member Ingrid CastroCampos mentions the importance that we are not diversity tokens or a check in a box for climate justice organizations in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. She adds that “spaces are often biased and unsafe … led in the majority of cases by well intentioned individuals … and yet … the systems from which they operate from are deeply influenced by the same issues that bring us to the space.”

FLOWS Assistant Coordinator Gabriela Galindo shares a similar sentiment: “Colonialism and capitalism hurt us all, including those