Excerpt from NCRonline.org Earthbeat, June 5, 2020
In a webinar on Thursday, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, a Boston-based advocate for social and ecological justice, took part in a discussion pegged to the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment.
She said the relationship between racial and climate justice “really aligns with the spirit of Laudato Si’,” adding: “What I think really deeply resonated with people is that the pope made a connection between the deep injustice we see in how we treat teach other and the deep injustice of how we treat all of the rest of the living and present beings in our planet…
“We are just not living in right relationship. And that’s the bottom line of all of it. It is only when you have extremely unhealthy relationships that one human could put their knee into the neck of another human and keep it there as their life literally flows away. And that other humans could sit there and watch that happen…
“If you’re a society that produces people that do that, then it’s really not hard to understand why we would be so short-sighted in the way we live with all the rest of the creatures on this planet.”
The webinar, which also included NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters, was sponsored by the Woods Hole Research Center. Rev. White-Hammond’s comments begin at approximately 16:30 and Winters at 21:56.
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