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Soul Pitt Quarterly Green Issue: Spring 2012
Take a look at “African Americans . . . The Environment . . . Healing” in the Spring 2012 Soul Pitt Quarterly, an urban magazine in Western Pennsylvania. I was overjoyed to read three other black and green articles including: “A Conversation with ‘Black Into Green‘ Blogger Gloria Johnson from Cleveland.”
Monongahela River Weeds and the Ghosts of an Industrial Past
At the Waterfront in Homestead, Pennsylvania, I discovered a trail with the Monongahela River on one side and a mall on the other side.
Homestead was an access point for immigrants who worked in the Homestead Steel Works during the 19th century. The immigrants moved from the river’s edge up the hill to 8th Avenue. Fast forward into the future, and I spotted a robin on a limb on the trail re-framing the past for leisure and recreation. The rivers edge is covered by trees and weeds, some flowering.
It’s great heading out the woods for a hike but we can find places to walk in urban places like Pittsburgh.
Photos by Dianne Glave on an iPhone
Eve Project, A Farm, A Saturday Afternoon
What a lovely afternoon spent with the EVE Circle. LaVerne Baker Hotep, with the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime (CVVC), organized a retreat for a group of African American women at Wild Red’s Gardens, formerly known as Mildreds’ Daughters Farm. It is the only farm within the Pittsburgh city limit.
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The women spent a joyous day outdoors on the farm. When the skies darkened and it got cooler, they joined together for food and fellowship.
I shared part of the afternoon with the women sharing about African Americans and the environment, and leading a guided meditation focusing on faith, the environment, and health. I was delighted to see Lois McClendon with B-PEP/Coalition Against Violence and a Pittsburgh environmentalist.
Photos by Dianne Glave
The Hunger Games: From the Dystopian to the Great Depression
The Hunger Games has a somewhat integrated cast that includes African Americans: Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of the Hunger Games, sure loves black people. And we love her too. I’m often critical of the relationships between African American and whites, along with stereotypes of African Americans in film, television, and literature. But The Hunger Games got it right. Cinna, an African American man and Katniss’ stylist, becomes the father she lost in the District 12 mines. Rue, the little African American wood elf, initiates an alliance with Katniss in the games-to-the-death. They find a sister in one another. Katniss in particular, embraces Rue much like the little sister Katniss left behind in District 12. There’s no patriarchy here where whites save African Americans. And the African Americans are not stereotyped as mammy’s or thugs. True relationships are established on film and experienced by the audience.
Without the relationships, the Orwellian dystopian themes typical of science fiction would not matter. The foundation of The Hunger Games is George Orwell’s 1984 (1949). He is the great granddaddy of dystopian science fiction in the form of the novel. 1984 is where we get the term Big Brother, the roving eye of technology that is always tracking us in the 21st century. We see much the same in The Hunger Games where even the trees have electronic eyes. And the world in The Hunger Games has gone to hell in a hand-basket, a post-war hand-basket in which the survivors live in a police state. If that isn’t Orwellian, I don’t know what is.
Oh, the first scenes in The Hunger Games are moving pictures that mirror the gritty still photos of rural people taken during the Great Depression. The pain, the seams in the faces of even the young remind me of Dorothea Lang’s “Migrant Mother.” In the film, the camera stops at a worn laced high-top shoe. It lingers on the wind in the trees. The people in District 12, Katniss’ little town, are a worn people, worn by mining. Those scenes, mirroring a Hunger Games Appalachia, are the most memorable in the film.
Katniss leaves home to fight as tribute in The Hunger Games. The trope of youth battling in games is not new going back to ancient Greece. There’s also a modern take which I believe is a nod to “The Most Dangerous Game,” a short story by Richard Connell. In the story, one man hunts another. Ultimately, the hunted creates intricate traps to capture the hunter. Both the human-hunt and traps are echoed in the Hunger Games. Katniss did something similar turning the game on the elite, her captors and humiliating them.
Taken together, what does the Hunger Games say about contemporary American society? The Great Recession of the 21st Century first comes to mind. Much like the children living in poverty in the 12 Districts and battling in the games, we are frightened at every turn by unemployment, high gas prices, and a depressed real estate market. The film reflects our national malaise. In addition, our children are consumed by technology and even in a virtual forest, the children in the games are moved around like puppets on strings among the trees and along the creek. As Americans, have we lost our rugged individualism, unquestioning puppets in the day-to-day drudgery of survival?
Hopefully, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, the next novels in the trilogy will translate well, meeting the high expectations already met by The Hunger Games, the first in the trilogy.
2012 State of Diversity and the Environment Blog Carnival
Another Blog Carnival Presented by Rooted in the Earth! Read the original call for blogs.
I am going to keep this simple: my hope is to join with each of you to meaningfully and fruitfully gather together face-to-face focusing on people of color and the environment in the near future. In 2009, Audrey Peterman did just that with Breaking the Color Barrier in the Great American Outdoors.
Some thoughts on some wonderful work in 2011 and where we are headed in the future including 2012:
~ Andrea Roberts’ Extending our Useful Lives Being Honest About Sustainability and Mortality
~ Rue Mapp’s The Year of Relevancy
~ Dianne Glave’s She Wolf Transitioning to the New Year of 2012
Go to the blogs to read thoughts, ideas . . . some are transforming thoughts into action.
Do contact me at dianneglave@gmail.com if you would like to add your blog to this carnival.
Thomas Merton Center: Environmental Justice
The Thomas Merton Pittsburgh’s Peace and Social Justice Center continues to do the good work. The center started 40 years ago focuses on social justice based on the non-violent resistance.
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They serve the Pittsburgh community and beyond in the areas of economic justice, anti-war, and prisoner’s right. Just recently, the center launched another committee on environmental justice based in part on faith and spirituality. Wanda Guthrie, one of the Thomas Merton board members, was central in launching this new committee. Many thanks for her hard work along with the other committee members present at the first meeting.
Photos by Dianne Glave
AFAM Environmental History & Black History Month Without Carter G. Woodson?
Carter G. Woodson
February is Black History Month. Carter G. Woodson, the father of African American history, started it all in 1926 with Negro History Week.
Woodson was strategic deciding on the second week of February between Frederick Douglass’ and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays for that special week devoted to African American history. Douglass was born enslaved in Talbot County, Maryland and knew the southern environmental landscape first hand, as a forced laborer without wages. The same was true for Woodson who was enslaved in Canton, Virginia in the same geographic region of Douglass’ birth place.
As for President Lincoln, he wasn’t the savior to those enslaved. African Americans of Woodson’s generation mythologized Lincoln through much of the twentieth century. Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union at any price during the Civil War. If freeing African Americans from enslavement helped so be it. If keeping African Americans enslaved bound the North and South together, that worked too. No matter your interpretation of history, whether through the lens of expediency or largesse, Lincoln was instrumental in changing how African Americans worked the land in the shift from enslavement to sharecropping, the latter into freedom.
In the midst of Black History Month 2012 . . . in this the second week of February in which Woodson marked Negro History Week . . . always remember Woodson was one of the first historians to write African American history. I owe a debt to him because his scholarship was a precursor of African American environmental history. Many of us owe a debt from historical and contemporary perspectives.
Carter G. Woodson, thank you for The Mis-Education of the Negro and A Century of Negro Migration.
One and all, have a joyous and educational 2012 Black History Month!
Black Churches and a New Generation of Protest: New York Times Opinion Page →
Black Churches and a New Generation of Protest: New York Times Opinion Page
Saving People and the Environment
Dianne D. Glave, the pastor of Crafton United Methodist Church in Pittsburgh, Pa., is the author of “Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage” and a co-editor, with Mark Stoll, of “To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History.”
2012 Helpshop: Where Environment, Spirituality, and Health Meet
With Leanna, A Participant
The Greensburg District of the United Methodist Church (UMC) held their Helpshop on January 28, 2012 at Community Church in Irwin, Pennsylvania. The theme was “Mind, Body and Spirit” with Tanika Harris, the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) of the UMC, serving as the keynote speaker. At the GBGM, “she provides resources as well as training opportunities to communities and churches throughout the country that are engaged in community development and social justice through advocacy and youth/young adult empowerment.” (Helpshop brochure) The breakout sessions included “Healthy and Vital Congregations,” “Sexual Health and Wholeness,” and “Remodeling the Temple.
I was invited to facilitate a session titled, “Africans Americans, Religion, the Environment, and Health.” We discussed:
- Knowing one’s (environmental) history is good for you
- Nature is healthy
- Scripture and health
- Better health of (African) Americans by experiencing the outdoors
- Our Stories
- A healthy mind: environmental meditation with African American themes
With William Meekins, UMC
One participant shared her memory of the fragrance of lilacs while spending time with her grandmother; the memory of those flowers evoked a spiritual connection, a connection to God. Our meditation included scripture, deep breathing, music, the sounds of the ocean, prayer, and silence.
Many thanks to those in the Greensberg District of the Western Pennsylvania Conference, UMC who organized the Helpshop: Holly Sawyer, administrative assistant and William Meekins, District Superintendent. Of special note: Community United Methodist Church did a wonderful job hosting the event. And of course, many thanks to Rev. Kathy Barnhart, Rev. Rhea Summit and Rev. Augie Twigg for their diligence and hard work.
Photo by Dianne Glave
