A Message from Urban Farms LA

June 12, 2020

I don’t usually have difficulty expressing myself during challenging times, but the past few weeks have rightfully left me with more to read, more to listen to and more to absorb than I have to say. 

I know that my voice is not the most important one right now, but I also know that my voice, like all of ours, has the ability to influence those we interact with and in this weird online world, those that “follow” us.

My passion and platform has always been centered around climate and environmentalism. Those are the issues at the core of my being. In 2015 I took a class called Society and the Environment. It was the first time I had ever heard the terms environmental justice or environmental racism. We learned about environmental disasters driven by unregulated capitalism that left the nearby communities powerless and sick in countries all over the world. We also learned about our own American cities, where limited access to fresh food and polluted air and water caused people of color to lead shorter lives plagued with preventable illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.

While the idea that white supremacy, colonialism and environmental destruction go hand in hand were not new to me, I listened to something recently that just really hit me very viscerally. The NYT podcast “1619” (which I highly recommend) very clearly illustrates these direct ties. Ones that I knew existed but I am embarrassed to admit I couldn’t outright explain the history of.

“The cotton market explodes in America. But there is a problem. Cotton needed land. You could only grow cotton on the same patch of land for about three years before that soil was depleted. So where do we get the land? Well, the United States government itself took it from Native American peoples. It dispatched its military in Alabama, and Georgia, and Florida, and it acquires land and then it sells that land back on the cheap to white settlers. And suddenly, the United States had millions of acres that could be cultivated for cotton.” -1619, #2

As I listened to this over and over and now as I read it to myself, I can feel the violence so vividly. The violence in stealing land, in depleting it’s topsoil, in removing its native ecosystems and the indigenous communities that depended on them, in profiting off of slavery and then running out of space and doing it all over again.

I had been grappling with those few haunting sentences for several hours when I came home to the news that amidst the background of the Coronavirus pandemic and a national movement for defunding the police and demanding justice for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd among countless others, Trump had signed an executive order to expedite oil and gas projects, waiving environmental regulations in the process. These regulations include the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act.

In April, while a respiratory pandemic (disproportionately affecting people of color) was plaguing this country, Trump’s EPA told polluters that they no longer had to report on their gas emissions, including mercury emissions.

In June, our government then allowed the use of tear gas (a chemical weapon attacking respiratory systems) on people who were protesting police violence, another pandemic disproportionately affecting people of color and especially Black people.

These facts are not random, but rather intimately connected. 

COVID-19 is exacerbated by asthma, caused by air pollution, caused by unregulated industrialism. Power plants, chemical factories, landfills and waste facilities are placed in Black and brown communities. These undesirable parts of society are left slowly poisoning the people next to them, leading to not only asthma but diabetes, food deserts, heat stroke, cancer, unsafe drinking water… the list goes on.

Racism is a public health crisis.

Environmental racism is a public health crisis.

The climate breakdown is a public health crisis.

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There is an intersection of White supremacy, colonialism, race and environmental destruction in this country. It is an intersection that is marked with bold lines and dark paint. It can be traced from when White people first invaded this country half a millennia ago all the way until present day, with the disastrous environmental policy of this “President” and his Environmental “Protection” Agency.

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I am committed to the cause of active anti-racism of all kinds and I am committing to do more with my platform and my work to show up for that cause. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out how. I’m listening and learning. I’m very grateful for all of the resources i’ve been exposed to these past few weeks.

In addition to recent personal donations to White People 4 Black Lives & different bail funds for protestors, Urban Farms LA makes a recurring donation to Earth Justice, a nonprofit legal team that holds polluters accountable and protects the health and safety of humans and the environment. If you have not yet donated to a related cause, if you have not yet signed a petition, if you have not yet had a hard conversation with your family, I urge you to do so. I have attached some action links of people and places you can support at the bottom.

This was a long one so thank you for taking the time to read.

I am hopeful for the world that this generation is building and I want to recognize that we are all indebted to the generations before us who have been sounding the alarm on these issues.

In solidarity,

Sophie Pennes

Founder, Urban Farms LA

CLICK HERE for info on Black-owned farms & food distribution centers

CLICK HERE for a list of Black-owned restaurants in Los Angeles

CLICK HERE for a list of Black-owned vegan restaurants in Los Angeles

CLICK HERE for a comprehensive list of places to donate

CLICK HERE or HERE to learn more about racism x environmentalism