Today on Sojourner Truth:
We bring you a special on the interrelationship between economic and environmental justice in the time of COVID-19. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, we've seen vulnerable communities around the world " both in the Global North and the Global South " suffer the most. There have been over 329,000 reported deaths and at least 5 million reported cases, according to The Washington Post. Most of those impacted have been poor people, elderly people, communities of color and people who live in polluted and environmentally-devastated areas. Before COVID-19 began wreaking havoc on the world, the effects of environmental devastation and poverty meant that billions of people were already experiencing untold hardships.
Now, as the pandemic impacts all corners of the planet, it has become more obvious that those who are most vulnerable bear the heaviest burden. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and reinforced the cruelty of our current system, which is pushing billions of people into poverty and is destroying Mother Earth as we speak. In light of this, there are growing demands from grassroots movements around the world for a systemic change. Among these demands are the call for a Global Green New Deal, which its proponents say will move us from crisis to justice for people and the planet. In the coming weeks, groups like The Leap and The War on Want will be launching a call to action for a Global Green New Deal. Their three core demands are: 1) End global inequality by uplifting workers rights, 2) Reclaim and redistribute the global commons, 3) Rebuild global finance and trade regimes.
Today, you will hear audio from a recent webinar titled, A Global Green New Deal: Into the Portal, Leave No one Behind. The webinar, hosted by Haymarket Books, featured discussions by Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein. Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things, published in 1997, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes. She recently published an article titled, The Pandemic Is a Portal, in which she discusses how COVID-19 threatens the world and what we should do next.
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, filmmaker and professor. She is best known for her books No Logo (1999), The Shock Doctrine (2007) and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014). The conversation, moderated by Asad Rehman, focused on how we move from crisis to justice and build a Global Green New Deal.
