In recognition of International Women’s Day (March 8, 2018), Global Justice Ecology Project’s Anne Petermann discussed the importance and impact of women in social and environmental movements on the Sojourner Truth Radio Show for this week’s Earth Minute segment. Sojourner Truth airs every week on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles and streaming around the world.
TRANSCRIPT:
March 8th is International Women’s Day, when the critical role of women in struggles for justice around the world is highlighted.
This year we remember two powerful women, Berta Caceres and Judi Bari.
Berta Caceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize for leading a campaign in Honduras that stopped a massive World Bank funded hydroelectric dam.
On March 2nd 2016 she was assassinated. On March 2nd of this year, a hydroelectric executive was arrested and accused of helping to plan her murder.
One of Berta’s favorite expressions was “They are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them.”
Judi Bari brought together workers and environmentalists to stop the unsustainable logging of ancient redwood trees. On May 24th 1990, she was severely injured by a pipe bomb. She fought back and continued to organize. She passed away on March 2, 1997.
Bari said, “A revolutionary ecology movement must also organize among poor and working people. For it is the working people who have their hands on the machinery. And only by stopping the machinery of destruction can we ever hope to stop this madness.”
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann, from Global Justice Ecology Project.
