To Our EGA Community,
This Earth Day we are full of grief, rage, and exhaustion. The turmoil that our planet and communities have experienced over the past year is overwhelming, and we perpetually feel heartbroken by the systemic racism and deep inequality that has resulted in senseless violence against Black and Brown communities. We are fueled by anger as we are driven to action to seek accountability and honor the lives of Ma’Khia Bryant, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Breonna Taylor, and too many others lost to the hands of white supremacist violence.
Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed our members and peers across philanthropy and people in community relying on one another to remain mutually accountable for the sake of our collective health and well-being. We have seen philanthropy start to take steps to center the need to address unequal impacts on those most marginalized by our current systems and practices.
With this vision central to our work, EGA is debuting our organizational Racial Equity Point of View to continue to hold ourselves accountable to advancing equity in our efforts to support a just, sustainable future for all. Passed by the EGA Board in March of 2021, this document is an affirmation of our collective commitment as a Board, staff, membership, and institution. In sharing this Point of View document, we understand we will experience clear milestones in our work to address the historic and systemic imbalance of power, and plan for this Point of View to continually evolve, shift, and expand as we engage more deeply. We encourage you to view the document and join us in this journey to continue to expand our work to hold equity and the environment at its intersection.
Hearing the tragedy of Daunte Wright brought those of us from the Bay Area immediately back to January 2009 and the murder of Oscar Grant. The story of an officer’s gun being confused for a taser was all too familiar. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza has said that Oscar Grant sparked the BLM movement. The systematic racism that killed Oscar Grant has not changed.
As so many leaders have reminded us in the past 48 hours, if our systems were truly just, we would not be surprised by the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. If our systems were truly just, George Floyd would still be with us today. And if our systems were truly just, we would not be grieving the life of Ma’Khia Bryant just moments after the trial had concluded. We are constantly re-committing to the importance of continuing to fight for racial justice at every moment.
This week Dr. Taylor hosted her New Horizons in Conservation Conference and I saw the future of the environmental movement. There is still so much deep work and reckoning that is required of us, but at EGA we are pledging to listen, learn, and try. We look forward to gathering for the Fall Retreat this October to learn about, acknowledge, and address the history of structural racism in the fiber of our society and the origins of the environmental movement, rooted by the significance of gathering centering Montgomery, Alabama.
In community,
Franny and the EGA Team