California Ocean & Climate Justice Summit

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The Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV) and Save Our Shores invite you to join us from 4-6pm on June 10th for TRUTH + JUSTICE = HOPE, a California Ocean and Climate Justice Summit that will amplify the stories of emerging BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) environmental justice leaders. 

California’s powerful cultural influence—from Hollywood to Silicon Valley—has played an enormous role in shaping our current reality—how people in the U.S. and throughout the world live, work, play, and impact the planet for better and worse.

At this pivotal juncture for humanity when we are running out of time to implement the transformational systemic changes needed to prevent irreversible impacts from the escalating climate crisis, the plastic pandemic, and other global environmental challenges, we must look with humility at the ways California industry is both helping and harming people and the planet here in our state and around the world so that we can reinvent our relationship with planet Earth, carefully curate a healthy way forward, and refocus the startup mindset putting people and the planet before profit. 

To do this, we must face the TRUTH about how profit-driven industry depends on environmental racism and sacrifice zones (mostly low-income and minority communities whose land, water, and air have been poisoned by impacts from extraction, manufacturing, pollution, etc.) in California, the U.S., and abroad and center BIPOC voices—especially those from frontline communities.

BIPOC individuals and communities carry untapped historical wisdom from having suffered under the weight of the same oppressive systems that are destroying the planet. Throughout history, most humanitarian, democratic, social, political, and economic progress has been driven by oppressed people and communities demonstrating to bring attention to how they have been harmed by unjust systems. It’s time to evolve beyond the white savior philanthropic approach that has failed to untangle the roots of our fundamentally flawed systems and has allowed sacrifice zones to continue harming communities and our climate. 

To protect our children’s shared future, we must finally level the playing field giving the people who have been most harmed by today’s broken systems positions of power and influence so that they can share their wisdom in time to help humanity make essential course corrections. 

The Ocean Week Ocean & Climate Justice summit will serve as a catalyst for an ongoing community of practice aimed at cultivating and nurturing the transformation needed in our region and California as part of a global transition to a thriving future we can work together to bring to life. We hope you will join us for this inspiring FREE virtual event.  

Reserve your FREE tickets and check back for updates at bit.ly/CAEJsummit

Matthew Swinnerton