Check out what I Am Green's CEO & COO have to say on this week's Community Care Wednesdays.
 What does our community need to come together and THRIVE not just survive? Let's have some conversations! Join the conversation!
​Leave a comment below. 

So many ancestral questions are being asked of me as of late.

Has this been happening for anyone else? 

I have been asked on more than one occasion in the last month, what has brought me to this work, my journey. 
​
​My mother is always at the forefront of my mind when I think of my work and what I do. 

Who she was, who she is, and who she is becoming.

Even as she nears 80 years old, and her movements are slower, her activities lessening, and her memory fading, she is still becoming. 

During this pandemic and paradigm shift, many of our parents and grandparents have joined our ancestors.

​
This means we have had to deal with grief in the most unusual ways, have had to adapt to new customs in saying goodbye, and forging ahead in this new normal, in many cases, untethered and unsure. 

So, believe me when I say I sit in gratitude for having both my parents still with me in this realm, even though the dynamics of our relationships are changing. 

I know, at this point, you may be asking, "Sister Maria, what does this have to do with sustainability? Being green?"

Well, the very foundation of what I do and why I do it is because of relationships—my relationship with the Planet and my relationships with the people around me. 

The relationship that is shaping much of what my life is going to look like for the foreseeable future is the relationship with my mother. 

Reaching in the past, at how my mother parented me, and how she showed up in the world independent of who she was to me, my siblings, and her spouse is intriguing. ​

I Am Green Founders talk about the Red, Black, and Green New Deal and what's going on in I Am Green's neck of the woods. If you like to see it in its entirety, check it out on our Facebook Page 

​The Red, Black, & Green New Deal is a bold, uncompromising stance on the current Climate Crisis...
​Black folks have always been a part of this fight and the Movement for Black Lives launching an initiative to put forward a Black Climate Agenda that prioritizes Black Lives and guarantees a green future for Black families.

When I attended the Black to the Future Action Fund's Climate Justice is Racial Justice Event I was beside myself with delight. We are talking about phenomenal black women who are talking my talk! 
Do yourself a favor, and watch this fact filled hour of unapologetic black power. #Thankmelater

The Climate Justice is Racial Justice Event was absolutely one of THEE highlights of my "Earth month."

What resonated with you Sister Maria, you ask?
Structural & Systemic Environmental Racism
Collective Responsibility
Land

Have you all downloaded the new report by Greenpeace USA, Movement for Black Lives, and Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy.  This is the most comprehensive analysis to date of fossil fuel racism and how fossil fuel production is creating a public health crisis for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities.

But if you haven't, here's the gist...

​I asked the above question on Facebook and received an overwhelming response from my friends and family.

Thus, Black as Coal was born.  One of my soul sister's suggested I use what is meant to be derogatory and dehumanizing, Black as Coal, a slur used toward black people with a darker hue, and embrace it, take away its power to destroy, and use it to build.
Because I am blackety, black, black, mind, body, and soul this is right up my alley. 

I know you may ask, "what in the same hale does this have to do with Sustainability?"

Well, a lot.  It is difficult navigating through this world that thrives on a white supremacist ideology.
If you are black and reading this, I do NOT have to regale all of the aggressions we have to endure just trying to live. 

So imagine me, navigating all my super blackness in a field, a mission, a calling that has been so incredibly white washed it is not even funny.  No really, it's not funny. 

​So here I am, Black as Coal, gleefully  so, using a  moniker that was meant to destroy to build a community. 

Isn't that what we have always had to do as black people?

Take every bit of manure life throws at us and make something beautiful grow from it? 

That's what my grandmother has done, my grandfather, my mother, my father, my ancestors, and their ancestors.

The strange fruit, still here, taking isht, yet, still building.

And it's certainly not lost on me that I am choosing this title in the sustainability space where coal should be frowned upon.