Movement Generation: “What is a Just Transition”

Fall 2020 — Community Partnership #3

EthiCAL Apparel is proud to feature Movement Generation — Justice and Ecology Project as our third community partnership under this semester’s theme of environmental justice. A portion of our profits from 11/11/20 -11/20/20 will be donated to MG to help them amplify their message moving forward. If you would like to donate without making a purchase, you can do so on our website’s homepage during this time frame.

How often do you think about the environment, its future, and your personal impact upon it?

How often do you think about the general idea of community or your personal one?

It seems that there is a resounding global sentiment this year — hopelessness. Hopelessness against a pandemic, hopelessness within the political sphere, hopelessness toward a flurry of environmental and social disasters so destructively overwhelming and prevalent they are almost outright ignored in mass media. The individual’s impact may seem minuscule, as only one of 7 billion different actions happening every second on a global scale. It may be hard to fathom a proper way in which to address even one of these themes of social, environmental, political or economic justice, let alone all of them.

Movement Generation — Justice and Ecology Project challenges us to think about our impact not on an individual or global basis, but our impact as part of a local organized community. To Movement Generation, education, collaboration, and organization are the keys to initiating tangible change. Their various projects empower local communities of color and low-income communities to brainstorm creative solutions to issues of social justice through an environmental lens. Their motto is “Opening Eyes. Sharpening Lens. Focused on Action.” They hope to organize communities toward sustainable and socially-just economies and participatory democracy. So what does this translate toward in reality?

Since their foundation, the organization has hosted environmentally-based retreats, hands-on skills workshops, alliance building, and political efforts such as campaign development and education. All these efforts involve a collective initiative toward change through relationship building as well as an environmental focus stemming from the needs of communities that most gravely face ecological disruption.

Participants gather for an activity at Movement Generation’s March 2019 Los Angeles Retreat. Photo courtesy of Movement Generation on Flickr.

A key concept of Movement Generation is Resilience-Based Organizing (RBO), which is an emerging way for communities to self-advocate for needs steeped in values of ecological consciousness. A community takes self-governance initiative by using “collective labor to meet collective needs,” rather than asking for permission from corporations or governments. Often, community-based-initiative actions may conflict with political and social structures created to meet the needs of the powerful few rather than the collective many. Core ingredients of RBO include a community’s articulation of their vision for a sustainable and just future, using their own human labor and local resources to create such change, and asserting the righteousness of collective liberation against elite oligarchies of power.

Participants practice planting at Movement Generation’s Justice and Ecology Retreat and Field Study in the Buffalo-Niagra-Haudenoshonee Territory. Photo courtesy of Movement Generation on Flickr.

Some of the movement building Movement Generation has founded include the Black Land and Liberation Initiative, the Climate Workers formation, the Climate Justice Alliance and the Our Power Campaign, among other training workshops, retreats, and programs. The Black Land and Liberation Initiative is a collaboration with The BlackOUT Collective focused on strategy and action in land reform and reparations for Black citizens. The program hosted retreats and regional training sessions around Black self-determination rooted in ecological justice, which focused on liberation through land and resource rights. Movement Generation is also part of the larger Climate Justice Alliance, a network which seeks to address the root causes of climate change through “local living economies” with over 50+ community-based organizations. The network’s main goals include a “Just Transition” away from “extreme energy” such as fossil fuels and nuclear power toward local living economies that are self-determined and clean energy based.

A notable recent effort of Movement Generation was their bilingual four-session “Course Correction: Just Transition in the Age of Covid-19” in which the organization presented their own lens on Covid-19’s emergence, potential root causes of the pandemic, social justice movements springing up in its wake and, ultimately, opportunities for grassroots action towards just transitions and liberation during “political openings” the pandemic had fostered. This course captures some of the spirit of the organization — as it capitalized on local and contemporary resources to foster collective agency on the group’s vision. Movement Generation’s course offers a unique perspective on the virus, by shifting the lens back to an environmentally just one, which many other organizations, as well as coverage of the pandemic, has ignored.

There are so many excuses we use to put our environmental conscientiousness and compassion on the back-burner. There are so many excuses that we use to put ourselves first and push our communities aside. While all these excuses may be understandable and defendable, and while prioritizing the basic needs of the self is essential for healthy living, it is important to ask ourselves: overall, is this creating change for the better or worse?

Members of Movement Generation’s Justice and Ecology Retreat and Field Study in the Buffalo-Niagra-Haudenoshonee Territory participate in a discussion. Photo courtesy of Movement Generation on Flickr.

America is an inherently transactional society — we tend to only give when we know we will receive in return and we weigh our choices on how outcomes will benefit us individually. Movement Generation challenges this assumption of America today by challenging us to think about ourselves as part of a local collective whose choices will benefit both the individual and the community. Movement Generation gives us new tools to inspire hope in ourselves.

Here’s how to learn more about Movement Generation:

1. The Movement Generation Website
2. The organization’s Covid-19 Response Blog and Course Correction
3. MG’s Just Transition Zine on shifting to a ecologically sustainable and equitable economy
4. The North Pole comedic series produced by Movement Generation and Rosario Dawson
5. Movement Generation’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Author: Mary Ford | Editor: Serena Lowe | Graphics: Natalie Chu | Team: Social Good

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