AC Discussion | Environmental Justice
On Thursday, August 20th, Dawaune Lamont Hayes, Mayte Aldrett, Mary Lawson, and Jordan Weber sat down for a virtual discussion about creative activist practices that respond to conditions created by environmental racism through intervention or public demonstration.
Tracing the history of local and federal policy decisions like redlining, racially restrictive zoning ordinances, and racial covenants, panelists illustrated conditions that persist in the shadow of segregation which continue to disproportionately impact Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. Extreme heat, food deserts, and inequitable employment conditions all arose as examples of critical environmental justice issues, exacerbated by the climate crisis. Panelists went on to discuss the risks and rewards of centering activism in creative practice while acknowledging that working to promote environmental justice takes many hands, many minds, and a lot of heart.
Watch the full conversation, or read through the transcript below to find links to additional articles, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Transcription
Moderator: Dawaune Lamont Hayes, Founder and Director of NOISE
Panelist 1: Mayte Aldrett, Community Organizer and Activist
Panelist 2: Mary Lawson, Program Coordinator at the Union for Contemporary Art
Panelist 3: Jordan Weber, Artist
Date of Discussion: August 20, 2020
List of Acronyms: [DLH] = Dawaune Lamont Hayes; [MA] = Mayte Aldrett; [ML] = Mary Lawson; [JW] = Jordan Weber
[DLH] Good evening everyone. My name is Dawaune Lamont Hayes. I am an artist and a journalist here based here in Omaha. I'm also a member of the Alternate Currents Working Group cohort and it's an honor to be here with you. This is a subject really close to my heart. First, I'll start by asking the panelists to introduce themselves and then, we'll jump into some of these questions. Mayte, would you actually start for us please?
[MA] Sure! My name is Mayte Aldrett. I use she/her/hers pronouns and I just moved out of Omaha. I'm currently in Chicago but I lived in Omaha for the past year as a Weitz Fellow under the Weitz Family Foundation. I spent some time working at Girls Inc. and then I worked with Civic Nebraska. Before I left [Omaha], I got to do a lot of work with Culture House.
I am really interested in environmental justice--that's my whole thing, specifically because of where I grew up, which is in East Houston, the industrial side. I've seen a lot of what I grew up with replicated both in North and South Omaha and here in South and Southeast Chicago. That's where I'm coming from.
[DLH] Jordan?
[JW] I'm Jordan Weber. I'm joining you from Des Moines, Iowa. My background in environmental justice comes from things that are happening in Des Moines and in Iowa. Iowa is the number one most altered land mass in the entire US. We have less than 2% of our indigenous plant life left. With that, much like Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we are consistently top five in mass incarceration rates of Black males. So those two things are inseparable for me: violence on the land and violence on the Black and Brown body.
That's what brought me to Omaha with a pretty large project at the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation that has been in the works for about 6 years now. We're still working on it and will speak more on that, I'm sure, in the panel.
[DLH] And Mary?
[ML] Hi everyone. I'm Mary Lawson. I am living here in Omaha, Nebraska. I am currently the Program Coordinator at the Union for Contemporary Art but for tonight's panel, I'm showing up as myself, as an individual aside from my workspace. So, hello!
I am an artist and musician. I'm very interested in the Black experience and Black liberation and learning more and understanding what racial justice looks like and in learning more and reading more about environmental racism. Those two things go hand in hand. Environmental racism and the climate crisis and racial justice are all one fight. I'm excited to be here today sharing in conversation with everyone.
[DLH] Thank you so much, Mary. Your last point leads into our first question. We often hear we are products of our environment and we understand that much of what goes into our bodies comes from outside of our bodies. My first question is, what is environmental racism and how does it connect to climate change. I have a few definitions here that I can share and then I will open it to you to you all to come through.
Environmental racism can be described as racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, and other exclusionary policies. Along those lines, what are some ways that you have seen, or perhaps experienced, environmental racism and how do you believe it connects to climate change? Jordan, we'll have you go first.
[JW] I can i can kick it off by talking about Eric Garner's murder in Staten Island, [NY] and connecting violence upon the body with over policing Black communities in Staten Island and places like Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. What obsesses me about that case specifically that Eric Garner was obese because of a lack of access to healthy food. Eric Garner was also highly asthmatic. He grew up in a community in Staten Island called Tompkinsville. It's a highly industrialized neighborhood. What obsesses me about this is the question whether Eric Garner could have survived the attack by police if he was not exposed to environmental racism as as a youth. Would he have had extreme asthma and obesity if he was not ghettoized in an area that did not sustain his body?
When Mary says these things are tied into one--violence on the land and violence on the Black body--that's a perfect example of what we are talking about. When you think of environmental apartheid, environmental racism, environmental justice can all be [viewed through the lens of Eric Garner’s death] in multiple ways.
[DLH] Thank you for that. Mayte, you referenced earlier you grew up in Houston and the experience of living in an industrialized area. There's a strong parallel between the example we just received from Jordan and what we've been seeing in Omaha and in Chicago. Could you explore your original experience in Houston and how you see those parallels connect to where you are now?
[MA] Sure. I grew up on the Eastside of Houston. My particular neighborhood is Port Houston. It's home to one of the largest ports in the world. My entire street is lined with auto repair shops specifically for diesel 18 wheelers. The entire canal behind my neighborhood is lined with refineries, specifically petrochemicals. That's where all the plastics are made, where oil is refined and ultimately distributed across the country.
So of course me and my sister grew up with skin problems like eczema and asthma issues. That was our first visit to the hospital before we were 3, for each of us. I've learned growing up that all my friends, all my family, because we all grew up in the same area, have those same respiratory and skin conditions. This last year, I lost a cousin to a brain cancer before she turned 19. She lived next to the three biggest refineries in the city and I strongly believe it is because of where she grew up. That's where she was born and raised. Of course, the uncertainty and the science is held against us. ‘Well, how can you prove this?’
I went to college in Minnesota, a very rural small town and it was crazy the physical differences that I experienced. Then, moving to Omaha and working at Girls Inc with girls predominantly in North Omaha, I learned a lot. I would kind of heckle them [and ask], “What do you see growing up? What looks wrong to you growing up?” They immediately understood and could connect [seeing dead fish in a lake to environmental pollution].
Coming to Chicago, again I am in communities that are predominantly Black and Brown and again, I am surrounded by people with asthma, with respiratory issues, with skin issues. It's replicated throughout the country and that is exactly what I studied, what touched me most when I was in undergrad. It confirmed that I was in the right space and doing the right thing.
I was reading about environmental justice and my literal street, my little ass neighborhood in Houston came up as one of the Superfund research sites. To be in Minnesota and read about my street, it just blew my mind that there are people just talking about this behind closed doors but all of us are growing up unaware of the conditions that we're growing up in and why we have those ailments.
[DLH] That's really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. Mary, can you tell us about your migration to Omaha and maybe some of the similarities and differences in the environments that you grew up in and any connections you can draw?
[ML] Sure. I've been in Omaha for about two years now. I grew up in southern Utah. Utah is a predominantly white state and my family and I grew up in a part of St. George, Utah that was made up of mostly LatinX families and Indigenous folks. I think maybe we were one of a handful of other Black people in the community. In learning more about redlining, I feel like I was able to see a thread in that. Redlining was this government-funded policy that was put into practice in the 1930s through the New Deal that racially segregated cities and withheld funds from certain communities. These were Black and Brown communities.
I'm sure Dawaune, you can speak more to redlining and the history of redlining here in Omaha, but I think learning more about redlining in the last year and a half, I was able to see that within my own experience. Although [St. George, UT] was a predominantly white state and city, it was also separated, racially segregated and disinvested in. Housing options were minimal because we were a Black family. That's just how it was across the country for Black and Brown people. If we're thinking about where investment is going and how [redlining has historically disenfranchised] Black and Brown communities, we also have to take into consideration that… I'm sorry, I'm losing my train of thought so I'm going to stop there.
[DLH] No, that's all right. I can actually help draw that line. I'm born and raised here in North Omaha. Nebraska's tattooed on my side. I care about this place very deeply but growing up, I recognized that there was some type of separation. I recognized that this part of town is different from the others, but never quite understood why. It wasn't until after graduating from college that I came to really know and understand through learning the history of redlining, talking to elders, and seeing maps [of redlining].
If you [lived west of] 40th Street, that meant you made it. That meant you were out of the redlined area, the box that was drawn and shaded red, given the letter “D”, and labeled dangerous. The fact that you were able to live beyond that space meant more access to opportunities, more access to jobs and food
Our second question asks how municipal policy decisions within city planning, energy production, and public works influence conditions that negatively impact the health and quality of life in these communities. If an area is labeled dangerous, then either there will not be investment there by the city, by real estate developers, by private businesses or they will place assets there that are considered undesirable. A good example is just north on the river in Florence. You have the coal-fired power plant and you have the water treatment plant just a few blocks away from it. Most people don't want to live next to those things, yet it's tucked away right on the river and that has a direct impact on our water quality. I would love to hear from the three of you: what are some other examples of city planning, energy production, public works projects, or infrastructural decisions that you've seen in your communities, or that you’ve learned about, that affect the health and quality of life in communities? Jordan, would you mind?
[JW] I can take that one. I wanted to speak on the coal plant also. Through the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation and the greenhouse project that we executed on that site, A Blade of Grass, which is a grant agency out of New York, did a documentary on that project and the first place I took them was to that coal plant. It was on a Saturday and it's like two miles north of the Union. Am I right on that? There was a peewee football league happening in the shadows of the smokestacks and it was a predominantly Black and Brown peewee football league. I don't know if it's still going but I asked a couple people about that peewee football league and they said the coal plant sees that peewee football league happening on their land as community outreach or a philanthropic endeavor. It was so wild to me. I have video of these kids you know from 5- to 11-, 12-years-old inhaling this pollution from the smokestacks in North Omaha and nobody seems to be the wiser
Right now I'm doing a project in North Minneapolis on redlining. Racial mapping covenants in Minneapolis have the Black and Brown and Indigenous community and North Minneapolis stuck up against a large shingle factory and a extremely large metal factory, which actually just got shut down by environmental justice activists because it was found that they were cheating on air pollution testing, In that region specifically, in North Minneapolis, there's a 330 percent higher death rate from lung disease in those Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
You can strip down the covenants, the racial covenants, and the mapping done by the University of Minnesota, and you can see, over time, how ghettos are built up around these industrial spaces that had tax exemptions.
Then you see the affluent white communities. If anybody knows Minneapolis, you know they’re around the lakes and anywhere where there's recreation and you know all the shit that White people get to do. You can see this huge difference in quality of life based just on where you live because of racial mapping and and [racially restrictive] covenants.
Not to ramble on too long, but the covenants for anybody who doesn't know what that is, it was a term used before redlining. Covenants disallowed homeowners to sell their property to anybody of color for the next hundred years. So, if you look at people's documentation of [house sales], you'll see the history of these covenant agreements and contracts. [In redlining maps], you can clearly see where industry is and how close [Black and Brown communities exist in proximity to industrial development] in every single city across the US.
[DLH] That's really important. We have those racial covenants here in Omaha as well. I [live] off of North 24th Street near Florence Boulevard. Many of the homes along Florence Boulevard had those racial covenants for a very long time. Black families, who own those homes, have been able to see like the original deeds of the 120 years ago that say ‘this house will not be sold to Negros, Indians, etc.’ That guided much of North Omaha’s [development].
That was also where the Jewish community was forced to live. Any type of religious, ethnic, racial minority was subjected to [finding housing] in areas that were considered undesirable. Then, when those areas were built up because people who were forced to live decided to make the best of it, they were targeted to be dismantled [to prevent an accretion of political and economic power within these communities].
What are some daily examples of environmental racism that you see in Omaha or the region? Mary, would you like to comment on that?
[ML] Sure. I won't speak too long, but I think of transportation and access to quality transportation that gets us Black and Brown folks from our communities to where we work, school, etc. I also think about um grocery stores and quality food--having access to quality grocery stores and healthy food. Riffing off of redlining and how big of a monster redlining is and these racial maps that were produced from redlining, I think about urban renewal and how Highway 75 is a perfect example of how urban renewal [negatively impacts communities of color].
I'm just reading off a note that I took. Urban renewal deals with these big projects that were produced from redlining. We're looking at highways, housing projects, and other [infrastructure] projects. Highway 75 was used as a tool to cut through the fabric of North Omaha and cut off proper transportation for Black folks in North Omaha. I'll leave it at that.
[DLH] Mayte, would you have some input about daily occurrences [of environmental racism]? things
[MA] Omaha was very small to me compared to Houston. It felt like everything was much more obvious. Presently, with the COVID-19 case clusters, they literally overshadow or lie on top of the cancer clusters that existed here already. I remember looking at EPA maps of Superfund sites and cancer rates and how, of course, all the red zones are in North Omaha and South Omaha, particularly around the meatpacking plants. We see the same thing with COVID-19 cases. So people already predisposed to respiratory illnesses are the ones being forced to work and the ones once again being put at risk for everyone else's benefit.
I did the same thing (because I really enjoy looking at the EPA maps) with my home back in Houston. It was the same thing. All the cancer clusters existed around the refinery communities, which like Jordan mentioned, were seen as philanthropic institutions [that provided employment opportunities], so we can't speak bad about them. They give money to the little events that we want to throw in our community and so they're seen and painted as good.
Again, I saw the COVID-19 cases, and I have a bunch of family that work in refineries, and they're just like, “well, I can't take time off,” so they're both predisposed to respiratory illness and now to the virus.
I was part of a canvassing effort in Houston called Airlines Houston where went door to door, specifically in those communities within refinery areas, as well as metal recycling plants, and most of the people who worked at those facilities, they would close the door on us right away. It was mostly the like White households that would be like, “No, we're not speaking bad on what gives us money.” It was actually with the households that were predominantly Spanish speaking who would say, “Actually yes, like I want to speak on this. I make my husband take off all of his gear before he comes into the house, otherwise we're all coughing when he steps into the house,” for example. [There were instances] like that where some people were scared to put their own income on the line because they think just speaking up about their experiences will put their [jobs at risk] or throw their whole family under the bus.
I definitely saw that replicated in the meat packing plants in Omaha. Alone, they are bad for the environment with their meat processing but they put their employees at risk with COVID-19 too. As we know, there's a huge undocumented community in those areas too, so there are layers and layers of risk where you feel closeted and you can't say anything about it.
[DLH] I think that's really important, the idea of tying people's income and what they're able to provide for even basic needs [to environmental racism]. What's ironic about that is the [reality for so many] that “Here I am going to this job to meet my basic needs, but this job directly compromises those needs on a regular basis. I'm working to feed my family, yet what I am able to feed my family [is unhealthy] because of access. If I am bringing home disease, am I really providing for my family's well-being?” Ultimately that puts the onus on to the individual. It’s like, well, it's your fault that you're not providing, when really it's the system at large and that institution they work for not being held accountable.
So another question: how can individual artists and cultural workers meaningfully contribute to this fight for environmental justice? What is the difference between making with communities and making about them? Jordan, would you have some insight there?
[JW] I mean, that's what I deal with on a daily basis. The collaborative process of these projects is really key. Going back to the financial [reality] for families: I worked construction for six years after I dropped out of college, but before I was able to do art full time. The majority of the people who work construction and are at risk for these diseases don't have other options. I think it's really important for those of us pushing ourselves into this new realm of artists as activists to ask ourselves, how do we sustain our practices, in a healthy way, with institutions with and communities that also support long-term sustainable change? That's the game right now. What spaces have been doing that?
For example, at the Pulitzer in St. Louis, we're working with them right now to collaborate on a [prison reform] project called, Close the Workhouse. The number one thing that was asked when we had an initial kickoff meeting in St. Louis last week was, “What has the Pulitzer Art Museum done in the past 20 years to collaborate with the community, versus all of a sudden jumping on this social practice bandwagon in Black and Brown communities?”
There's all sorts of pitfalls right now happening with these museums offering up a lot of money to play a part in our fight for environmental and social justice. How do we suss out the real genuine spaces that are going to, like I said before, help sustain these projects. That's a real challenge right now.
The 4 Malcolm X Greenhouse is a collaboration with the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation that’s faced with funding [issues] right now. I'm trying to get funding from Creative Capital out of New York and now, all of a sudden, I have all these other options over the past six months from funding sources to push this project. We talked earlier about finances and supporting one's family, but I really feel that artists right now can make a huge shift in how we can help communities hold institutions and their governments accountable by breaking away from structures of society that haven't been sustaining us. Food sovereignty is a huge one. Mary talked about grocery stores and urban food deserts. Are these museums gonna step up and supply mega funding to help us make projects that [respond with] direct action? I'll turn it over to whoever wants to speak on that.
[DLH] Mary, I think that's a good segue into talking about your personal work and also your work at the Union. How do we begin to respond and work with community in this fight?
[ML] I'm gonna speak for myself and the ways I feel I can politicize my voice. In doing that, I feel like I am self-advocating. I think something I'm doing and that I can encourage other artists to do is really taking time to learn more about these important issues, like environmental racism, the climate crisis, how it's impacting communities of color specifically, and how it will continue to do that. I feel like that's one thing I can put out there as an artist [is the idea that we can] take time to educate ourselves and be open to learning and growing in different areas.
The Union for Contemporary Art constantly continues to shift in beautiful ways to support our community. One of the ways that we're doing that is through our Radical Hearts initiative which is direct community support for North Omaha neighborhoods who are our stakeholders and continue to be our life force as an organization. I think that's where I'm gonna leave it.
[DLH] Thank you for sharing that. I can speak from my personal experience as someone who has grown up in [North Omaha] but lived in various parts of Omaha and has had the privilege to be able to travel outside and then come back. To be able to leave your community and come back with fresh eyes and see its nuances and their impacts and implications [is really valuable]. I recognize that we live in an urban prairie. I live right off of North 24th Street. There are a lot of vacant lots that do not have homes on them but they're not vacant. They are actually quite occupied. I think that's also a very important point to make. We live in an ecosystem and oftentimes we make so many of our decisions from a very anthropocentric perspective, very people-centered. We do not think about how our decisions, our development patterns, and our choices have direct impacts on the groundhogs, the birds, the bees, the butterflies, the native plants and the semi-native ones that have taken root here over a long period of time. How are they responding to the conditions [created by environmental racism].
I live right next to 75 North. I hear just the sound of cars. We don't often think about noise pollution as a part of the equation. As a person who has been able to live in different places and see and take note of those differences, I feel it is part of my responsibility as a journalist, as an artist, as an advocate to [talk with other residents about those things] and then figure out what we can do about it. Can we reroute 75 North tomorrow? Probably not, but we can learn about the impacts of those things and recognize those patterns.
Thinking about what Mayte pointed out earlier, [referencing] EPA Superfund sites and the impacts of cancer and and disease, just last month a report about understanding evictions in Omaha came out. [We see] the same map overlays. When we're talking about people's basic needs being met, all of these things are interconnected. Social movements and art tie into those things. As artists, we're able to utilize our connections to resources and these larger institutions with the funding to bring [data like this their attention] and say, “here are the impacts and you have the means to help.”
So what are some examples of community-informed creative work or interventions that deploy direct action or community organizing? I'll open that up to anyone who's comfortable responding.
[JW] I'll start with a couple, because there's a thousand of them happening right now. Seitu Jones, who's going to be in the bemis exhibition as well, [for one].
First though, I wanted to give a shout out to the Union for Contemporary Art, the first residency I had in the Midwest that offered me a month-long residency to research the Superfund sites in North Omaha while we set up shop to build the 4MX Greenhouse. I wanted to add that real quick.
Getting back to Seitu Jones, he's an urban gardener and architect. I think he's got a degree in water engineering. Rachel, you could probably speak more intelligently on that. He's created a whole entire food system in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul [MN], which is obviously in the Twin Cities. I can't tell you how many people go through that program and get food for free in collaboration with this massive urban garden that's also a massive art installation in the form of a green space. There's also a huge collaboration with the Indigenous Dakota and Ojibwe [people] on his farm.
That's one in the Midwest but we also talked about Rick Lowe, who's kind of the godfather of social practice in Houston. He turned an entire neighborhood into sustainable housing for single moms, for studio space, gallery space [Project Row Houses]. He's one of the [people who] kind of launched this idea of community organization pushing itself into the arts. I know there are others in Oakland [CA] that I'm leaving out as well. Every city has you know two or three really strong artists that seem to be doing really great work in this field of environmental justice within social practice and the arts in general. I'm trying to think of more in Omaha. They’re slipping my mind. I know Theaster Gates had a project in Omaha at one point in time. Maybe that's a question for you guys, for Omaha
[DLH] One example that comes to mind for me is the Sacred Seed pop-up here in Downtown Omaha, right behind the Bemis, facilitated by Taylor Keen. He’s a professor at Creighton and member of the Umóⁿhoⁿ Tribe. It's an example of Indigenous reclamation, restoration, and reintroducing native seeds and Indigenous [land use] practices in an urbanized um environment.
It’s created this little oasis on the corner of a very high traffic area. It's a smaller thing, but it's something that's grown over the last few years and there's land recognition, there's education about these seeds, and what you see is an ecosystem being built and supported. There’s also the Union's Abundance Garden. Our community is abundant in land. Why doesn't it produce food?
Mayte, as you've traveled from Houston to [other cities], what are some [creative interventions that respond to environmental racism] that you've encountered in your studies?
[MA] I would say first, something that I've come across with all my artist friends, is that the first part is just validating your own art. Your art is very much your experience other people are going to see it and see what you've experienced. Seeing artists express where they're from through their art, who they've become outside of academia. [I went to] a predominantly white institution, which is still a very fresh wound for me. [I surrounded myself with a lot of artists there] and I see what their artwork looks like once they're out of those spaces. They start imagining so much more. They start [working with] less supplies, less resources and all of a sudden so much is coming out. They stop repressing everything that they've created.
Something that I've recently seen: my friend just had a virtual talk with Delilah Martinez. She is a well-known artist in Southwest Chicago. She had organized a mural to be painted, which took three days with a bunch of community members. Overnight, [after] the completion of the mural and in less than 24 hours, someone had come and painted the entire thing white. It was obviously not done by the city. It was someone who had been waiting for the completion of the mural to do that themselves and that's very frustrating. Immediately you're silenced overnight after days of work. It was after that that so many people were like, “No, I want to do another one. I want to be a part of this.” Now she has a team with more people than she knows what to do with. She has 10 murals in the works across South Chicago. People were like, “No, I want to see this in my neighborhood every time I go through the street.” So now people want to contribute to that. And of course, the murals for George Floyd and Vanessa Guillen [prove] art and social justice [are connected]. When you silence art, people get mad. Seeing that happen in the span of two weeks was very beautiful.
In terms of environmental justice, I see a lot of that in traditional art [forms], just like traditional knowledge being passed down. For example, I see my grandmother's backyard as art. It's beautiful. It has hammocks; it has papaya trees; it has chili trees; orange trees; and I've never seen anything like it. I realized she's replicating where she came from and she’s bringing that traditional knowledge back and showing it to everyone else. Now, she has a beautiful place where people are even like manufacturing their backyards after hers. I see the impact that it has by visually passing [along information]. I think there's a huge impact when people let their art be seen to begin with. I hope my artist friends see this and hear this too.
[DLH] Thank you for sharing that. That's incredibly inspiring and I think, if we're products of our environment, if our environment is alive, fruitful, abundant, green, lush and full of life, then our behavior reflects that. I think of growing up in an urban environment. If you aren't taught to recognize that as beautiful, [it can be difficult]. As someone who grew up like in the city, it wasn't until I had the opportunity to go on field trips to Fontenelle Forest and Neale Woods, outside of my community, and spend time in nature [that I realized I don't have to be afraid] when a bug lands on me.
I have a last question for the panel and then I'd love to open it up to the audience. I'm sure everyone has their minds stimulated. What are some of the risks and rewards of centering activism in a creative practice? That's a really general question but I'm interested to hear what you all have to say.
[ML] I think one of the risks is that you might lose a lot of support. You might gain it. It depends on where you are and how you're positioning yourself. I think that that can be a risk but it's absolutely worth taking. I think that the reward is trusting that when you are using activism within your creative practice, that is the reward. The reward is as much as the risk, I guess.
[JW] I think a huge risk in my specific practice is going into communities that you're not from and making sure that you are, for one wanted, and for two, that you're going through the right steps. I think 9 times out of 10, that takes years. Going through the right steps to be inclusive in your practice, so the project you're doing in somebody else's community isn't a ‘Jordan Weber’ project, it's a community project that you built with the community [is important].
I think it was in Oakland, [CA] where we had funding that came from a local source. This was probably seven or eight years ago. That funding that we got from local sources was literally taking away funding from local artists. I think that's a very valid thing that happens, especially when you get these big names in different cities and they have a two or three hundred thousand dollar budget and it takes you know a quarter to half of the budget away from the artists that are living in that community. Being aware of those pitfalls can save you a lot of pain and suffering and not take away from the very community that you're trying to help.
[DLH] Yeah. Something I think a lot about is if we are going to bring artists from outside of the community, then we [have to find] ways to either have an equitable share of that same [budget] amount for the community, or an additional funding, source rather than cutting our local programming to bring in this big name. [In that case], it becomes far more about the institution and its notoriety rather than support. I think the Union does a really great job of balancing that. If they're bringing someone in, it's because there's a significant something to be learned and there's a benefit and it's balanced.
Jordan, when you were here, I got to meet you and spend time with you and learn about process. There was an [exchange] and shared understanding of experiences. I think that is so valuable. When we give artists big budgets to do something fancy, we should also say, “Hey, let's let's share, let's learn, let's build each other up.”
[JW] And we got to pay a local cat from North Omaha to perform at the exhibition as well, who is a local firefighter. I think that's always key--bringing people into the art space that might not have thought of themselves as artists. Then being a collaborative performance artist within a piece, it’s really exciting to see people transform themselves into something they had no idea that they had in them.
[DLH] I would love to turn it over to the audience and maybe hear some questions that folks might have. I didn't see any in the chat but everyone has the opportunity to unmute themselves. Are there any questions for the panelists or maybe some thoughts? Let's start with questions first and then we'll go into comments.
[Question from Rachel Adams] I'll ask a question to sort of break the ice. Jordan do you want to maybe talk about how the 4MX Greenhouse came about? What was your inspiration to create that piece?
[JW] Yeah. Can you throw up the image of 4MX Greenhouse for people who haven't seen it or been to the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation? That piece, like I said before, was a collaboration between myself and the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, and specifically JoAnna LeFlore, who's been a really close friend of mine since 2012. That project came from our interactions over the course of the first 5 years of knowing each other and speaking to a lot of people in North Omaha like Nicole Caruth who was at the Union at one point in time, and centers her practice in food justice, and Leo who's the now the president of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation board, to activate the 7 acres of land that 4MX Greenhouse sits on.
Essentially, we thought about a way to activate that landscape that would allow people to visit Malcolm X's birth home, which used to sit on that side, and reflect and decompress in their own environment, instead of having to go outside of their environment to have access to green space. That was really key to that project for me. In my practice, and in totality, is [the drive] to give Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks, who are pushed into these urban concrete jungles, a space to simply breathe and recalibrate from the stresses of being in urban, poverty-stricken neighborhoods--that and the food desert scenario that is so prevalent in North Omaha.
Taylor Keen was [another] initial collaborator, but he had too many gardens [projects happening] when I reached out to him in 2014 to be a part of this project. He's the kind of the one that put me on the indigenous corn species game. The idea of the Greenhouse is to grow seedlings inside of it as well and then transfer them to two large gardens that are located at the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation’s site, the [Betty Shabazz Community Garden]. That was really an organic five or six years of figuring out what was needed or wanted on that site and then it was a matter of getting funding from A Blade of Grass out of New York to build it. Like I said before, there's a lot of things that we want to do to collaborate with Sioux and Umóⁿhoⁿ Tribe members at the site that we have not done yet, so it's still a work in progress, it's in flux. I know JoAnna just had her wedding at that space. You know, these spaces aren't meant to be one thing. I give them birth in my mind but then the collaboration with the community turns them into a completely different entity, whatever they see is needed or fits in the circumstance. That's kind of that project’s origin story and where it's going. How much funding we get in the future has yet to be identified. It's kind of a stressful process. We're still in flux with it.
[DLH] Thanks for sharing that, Jordan. I've been to the site and it's really powerful that Malcolm X was born here, that his family was chased out by the KKK, and that their home was firebombed. The fact that this is a way of reclaiming that space to literally, and metaphorically, grow seeds that are then planted on the land is a really powerful thing.
I see in the chat here that there are two really great questions. I'll go with the most recent because I think it might inform the second. Molly says, “I have met several climate refugees from Puerto Rico here in Omaha. What do you think is the most important resource in Omaha for climate refugees who have lost everything? How can we do better for them?
I have some thoughts but I'd love to hear from Mary or Mayte, based on your impressions of living here in Omaha and also you know sharing Latino heritage. What do you think is really important in cultivating [space for climate refugees]?
[MA] I actually met quite a few climate refugees as well and I learned a lot from them. I think one thing that we would all benefit from is getting their stories out, or at least hearing their stories first and letting them share those stories, [to learn more about] what brought them here, what they left behind, and what they found when they came here. One of the first climate refugees [I met] was at Girls Inc. She couldn't speak to anyone because she was the only Spanish speaking person. I was the only one who was able to communicate with her, so I invited her to my environmental justice club that I started with the teens. Everyone was talking about Omaha and she was able to speak on that topic immediately. I didn't have to explain or define anything for her, I just translated it and she opened up immediately. No one had ever heard her speak so much. When I translated what she said to the class, people were like, “Wow, she saw that. We've heard of it but she lived it. That's why she's here.” People saw her in a different way immediately after. They wanted me to ask her questions the whole environment changed just by getting one person to share where they're coming from.
I think an important resource right now for [climate refugees] is finding each other first and realizing that their community here will be very interconnected. Omaha is very interconnected. That's what I really loved about Omaha. There were [already established] communities that they could come to. It wasn't as if they had to start from zero. They don't have to build a new foundation. Even if [people arrived] fairly recently, they heard each other and realized [they were] here for very similar reasons and [were] going through very similar things. I would hear them talk about what's going on in high school and not understanding what anybody's saying and then just realize, the next day at school, they could find each other and talk about it and maybe do something about it after that. I think initially, if you meet people who aren't from [Omaha], who had to come here, hearing that and getting the details or their story and [helping them find] community that [already exists is the most important].
[DLH] That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
Another question [from Maria]: “What roles can local elected officials play to help build restorative justice and respond to these stories?”
[We noted earlier that a lot of these issues] are policy based and have been informed by maps that are drawn and laws that are passed. What are some ideas or ways that our elected officials can play a larger role in this?
[ML] What comes to mind for me is I think we need to give them models of what this looks like. I don't think that has happened yet. I think along with giving them models of what restorative justice looks like within the community, inviting them in and giving them an opportunity to learn [is important]. I think of the Undesign the Redline exhibit we have in space at the Union. I know we've definitely invited our elected officials, and they've been slow in showing up, but I think that's a part of the struggle and the fight. We have to continue to invite them in, as excruciating as it is. We still have to continue to invite them in.
[DLH] That's a good point. I love the idea of [modeling] because oftentimes if these ideas are new to someone or if they’ve haven’t been impacted] or met someone who's [been impacted], they may not even think it matters.
Something I'm really excited to do with the Alternate Currents Working Group is work together on building our exhibition and pulling together these through lines. One of the most consistent things we've been coming back to is water. Everyone needs water; water is life. [We take water for granted]. We go to the tap and turn it on and expect it to come out clear. But how does it get there? What's in it? Where does it come from? What are the threats to it? Our EPA is being dismantled. There are higher rates of pollution in [disenfranchised neighborhoods] that directly impact these communities. How is that affecting the water that we drink and who has access to [clean water]?
Sometimes information is scattered. Bringing it into a concise place and form, that's something that artists have a really great ability to do. Here are all these large ideas and experiences that are super dynamic. [Now let’s figure out] how to encapsulate them and put them in a gallery setting. I don't think that they always need to be in the gallery, because there are things that are intrinsically racist and separatist in those [spaces], but there is something effective about being concise and precise when [presenting] information.
Jordan, what are your thoughts on that?
[JW] I might be the wrong one to ask at a certain level, in terms of city collaboration. I'm a firm reader and student of Pedagogy of the Oppressed [by Paulo Freire] and not working with the oppressor because you run the risk of becoming the oppressor. It's been generation after generation after generation of us waiting for this collaboration to happen and inviting a lot of city officials who aren't from our communities, who move from small towns and get elected to positions of power. I'm of the more militant mind frame that if there's a vacant lot next to your house--like the tornado that tore through Omaha, or more recently in North Minneapolis that took out at least three dozen houses leaving the city to buy up all the vacant lots and abandoned structures--I'm more of a mind frame of collaborating with your neighbor and planting seeds in these vacant lots and really empowering yourself in your own space, rather than having these city officials come in and and try to have a seat at the table that we've been trying to get them at for generations. I'm the wrong one to ask [about] a collaborative entity with city officials.
In Des Moines, [you have historical examples of] redlining and Minutemen collaborating with local police departments [in the 1960s] to bomb the Black Panther headquarters. My family was around that. Now we see Center Street being completely decimated. It was a Black street in Des Moines, with a lot of Black owned businesses that were destroyed because of redlining and the interstate. My people have taught me to organize with my neighbors. I can go on and on about that. Yeah, I'm the wrong one to ask, I think.
[ML] I gotta jump in here because I hear you 100 percent. I wanted to say, I think an invitation is necessary but I absolutely stand with you. I don't think that there's an order to the process in which we collaborate with these city officials. I think that it's important to hold space for that opportunity, for that invitation to happen. If that doesn't happen, and most times it doesn't, unfortunately, then we demand the space and we create the space with our neighbors.
[DLH] Mayte, you have a comment?
[MA] I was also gonna add that a lot of that of energy could be reinvested somewhere else, versus trying to get elected officials on the same page. They've done what they've done to get to where they are. We can collaborate amongst ourselves, within a community. In my short time in Omaha, North Omaha showed me so much and they're capable of [effective community organizing]. Everything we have and everything we need, we will find right here. It's the moment we start asking officials for help that they start putting us away. They start saying, “Oh, you shouldn't have been doing this to begin with and this is illegal now.”
You have everything you need and [the things that are] lacking were taken away from something already established. You can build upon that by connecting with people. I think Omaha has a huge advantage in that way, despite the historical and present conditions that have led to the divisions of segregation, Omaha is very small. If you've lived in Omaha, when you go somewhere, you bump into someone you know and that's a huge advantage. People will maybe complain about it but I've never experienced it before, not here in Chicago, not in Houston, not in Minneapolis. That's something I've never seen or experienced. The fact that North Omaha is an entire community, is a huge advantage. We can find everything we need when we realize community has already been established and it's very, very strong. I have lots of love for Omaha, honestly. Y'all really taught me a lot.
[DLH] That just warmed my heart. I believe in that as. Something I say is that Omaha's one degree of separation. I feel like anyone from here will resonate with that. I feel like we do have that being in the center, being in the middle, being the heartland, being at the intersection of I-80, Union Pacific, the Missouri River, Eppley Airfield. We are in this place that receives all of this information at this intersection in the middle and there is something that is really powerful about that we can leverage as a community in order to make change. I've been telling people to pay attention to Omaha because things aren't happening here and we're having a change of heart and that's going to affect the rest of the country.
I did want to comment quickly [and ask] one more question. I think a lot of our conversation has alluded to the idea of [community] reinvestment and working with local artists and being accountable, but I really wanted to make sure that we’re asking how arts organizations, or any organization, committed to anti-racism can shift their priorities, resources, and internal structures to acknowledge and address their role in upholding environmental racism as a function of white supremacy. That's a loaded question but something to leave with. Ask yourself that question in your daily practices and of your employer and the spaces you work in. If we believe that Black lives matter, if we believe that we are products of our environment, how are we actively working to shift those things to the benefit and improvement of our conditions? That's loaded but I needed y'all to see that.
*This transcript has been edited for clarity.