WEEKLY DISPATCH

As I write this, I’m sitting in my home office with my floor heater running because it went from 80 degrees on Saturday to 50 degrees on Monday. My boots and coat remain well within grasp. These weird weather fluctuations have become more commonplace over the years. I remember the summer of 2006, when an EF2 tornado travelled from Sleepy Hollow — not far from my child’s elementary school — cutting across Westchester county and into Connecticut. I’ve experienced hail in the summer and a heat wave in winter. For the past few years — with 2020 being the exception — NY metro area kids haven’t had to wear coats while trick or treating in October.

Overall I’ve been spared the worst aspects of climate change, but for African Americans and others indigenous and people of color who live in under-resourced, racialized, redlined communities, the impact of climate change can be devastating.

Black communities are also disproportionately located in areas that are physically vulnerable to climate hazards, such as hurricanes and flooding. Moreover, they are often afforded unequal levels of protection from the government as compared to protection provided for other groups. For example, Hurricane Katrina highlighted the legacy of unequal flood protection in New Orleans, where racially biased distribution of government funding resulted in subpar levee protection for Black neighborhoods.
— from "Black Lives Matter: the Link Between Climate Change and Racial Justice," by Adelle Thomas, Rueanna Haynes.  

Last week, my colleague Lisa Osborne shared an email about Exposure Lab’s Climate Story Lab US-South. I perused the list of projects presented at the lab, and was pleased to see Razing Liberty Square, a BPM-funded project among the list. I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of other projects in development, but frankly, we need more stories  in the content pipeline that preface the Black and Brown experience of climate change. One release every few years won’t be enough.  Diverse representations across multiple platforms and artistic disciplines, engaging audiences at various levels, have a much better chance to bring about the level of awareness required to ignite the masses to demand change.