Awaken
and Unify

Close the camps

(an XRSFBay affinity group)

This affinity group is focused on the issue of climate change and immigration, with specific emphasis focused on the travesty happening at our southern border. It reframes the four XR demands to speak to the intersection of climate change and immigration/migration, and addresses the issue from the bottom-up. That is, CCAG centers – in its actions as well as framing - the experiences of those who are most affected and most burdened in order to speak to the intersecting systems of domination at work.

Read the full document,or continue reading below. If you're ready to join the affinity group, please email us and let us know you're ready to get involved!

Climate change was manufactured in a crucible of inequality, for it is a product of the industrial and fossil-fuel eras, historical forces powered by exploitation, colonialism, and nearly limitless instrumental use of ‘nature.’
—Chris J. Cuomo.

Looking for more information on how you can assist migrants at the border?

Download a guide:

Learn more about Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, TX.

Check out what's happening at El Comedor Kitchen Tijuana.

Donate to El Comedor to help them keep paying their rent and utilites.

Month of Momentum: 30 Days of Action to Close the Camps (ICE SF)

A month of actions every single day during August. Connect with others 12-1pm everyday at 630 Sansome St. in San Francisco.

More info on Facebook!


Close the camps AG in detail

Below is a suggested narrative by which to ground the work of the Close the Camps affinity group.

XR DEMANDS

  1. Tell the truth

    Migration from Central America is driven by a number of factors, not the least of which is climate change. As Ben Enrenreich notes in Open Borders Must Be Part of Any Response to the Climate Crisis, "severe drought in Central America has been pushing Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans north through Mexico to the United States." Our government must tell the truth about the causes of migration, instead of fomenting xenophobia and racism in response to this crisis.

  2. Net Zero by 2025

    If we are going to achieve net zero emissions by 2025, we must support and help to create a global green new deal—which means we must look beyond, if not eschew altogether, a nationalist framework. We cannot achieve net zero emissions thinking that the master’s tools will dismantle the master’s house, i.e., that the “prevailing paradigm” which “perpetually constructs a hyperreality of divisions, borders, and boundaries around projected externalisations of the ‘Other’” will save us (as Nafeez Ahmed observes).

  3. People’s Assembly

    The government’s action on climate change must be overseen by the people. This means that the government must submit to the people’s oversight of immigration policy (especially asylum), the government’s treatment of migrants, and the government’s foreign policy actions in Central America and beyond.

  4. Just Transition

    Climate change reparations and a just transition must involve a transformation of our nation’s militarized, national security framework – a framework that falls most heavily on the nations of the global south. We recognize the climate debt we owe as well as the proxy war debt that has created instability throughout the global south.

Our Mission

It is not enough simply to talk about the intersections of climate change and immigration. We must organize like it matters, and in ways that create relationships with people in our communities who are already working on this issue and that build capacity within XR to address this issue powerfully on an ongoing basis. To this end, we will:

  1. determine who in the community is working on immigration/border/ surveillance, etc.
  2. investigate/become conversant on immigration/border/ surveillance, etc.
  3. investigate/become conversant in how immigration/migration and climate change intersect
  4. produce literature, flyers, etc. that explain the intersection
  5. conduct internal XR trainings
  6. reach out to those already working on immigration/border/ surveillance, etc., in order to dialogue on the work that they are doing, on what they need and how we can help, on the ways the issue intersects with climate change, on the possibility of doing collaborative events/actions together in ways that a) support the work they are doing, b) educate the community on the intersection, and 3) create solutions.
  7. participate in and support actions created by those who have been working on the issue.

Here's a handy flowchart detailing how white/male/species supremacy are all prerequisites for the success of the capitalist system.

Climate justice IS social justice.

Click to expand.

Many thanks to Rupa Marya, MD for providing us with this radical flowchart!

Hear her band,
Rupa & the April Fishes,
and plant their new album
Growing Upward!


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