PHOTOS/VALERIE JEAN
Editor’s note: Below are excerpts from a speech by Michelle Martinez, statewide coordinator of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, at the Dec. 6 Global Climate strike in Detroit.
“Close your eyes and imagine it’s 2040 and we’ve averted the climate crisis and we have an active and alive democracy. No one’s heat is shut off. We can walk to school without being afraid of violence. We can go to a job that pays us money to support us. There is no debt. Our grandparents are loved, cared for and need nothing. Trees are blowing in a soft wind and we treat each other with loving kindness. We’ve melted down the AKs and made them into statues of civil rights warriors and indigenous rights activists. We have a wonderful partnership with sovereign nations all over the Americas. We have the right of migration for people who need sustenance, a home and a place.
“These are the futures we’re fighting for. It’s a fight because fascist governments, the rich, the greedy take from us the work, money, blood, sweat, [and] tears … [it’s] the 6AM alarm clocks, the long bus rides. They take every minute of our lives [to] put it in the stock exchange and trade it amongst themselves while we toil 12, 14, 18 hours a day to be put further in debt.
“How many in this city don’t have heat and have to decide whether they’re going to buy Grandma their medicine or pay the DTE bill to keep their lights on. We’re paying for a natural gas, fracked gas, built out in the Marcellus Shale. We’re digging pipelines up to pay DTE Energy shareholders to build Nexus, a 50% holding company with Enbridge, to put them under the Great Lakes. We know [it’s a lie that] they’re promising us clean energy in a net zero future. [Ask] them how … and they say, well, ‘We don’t know, but it’s a great media tagline.’
“That’s what we’re fighting … so we don’t have to pay for another generation of red gas because one more well in the ground is too many … we don’t need more science. We need solutions and we need it now. Put our people to work to renovate Grandma’s home so the heat is not going out the window. Put our people to work putting up solar panels on this building and that building…
“And I want [it] to be owned by us … it’s our energy. It’s our time. And if we don’t take it back, we don’t have a future. So take it back…
“So when I close my eyes, I imagine a parade of roses … [you’re] walking down 4th Street from the Ambassador Bridge to Marathon and we’re dancing in the street. We have kids running down the street because guess what? Marathon Oil is closing. And every person walking out of that facility has a job, a home, their kids have an education. And food is on the table every day …we’re regenerating our lands, giving our farmers and urban agriculturalists and people who make our art and culture a living wage to be that, not to produce for someone on the other side of the world who’s bombing somebody with our tax dollars. That’s what we’re marching for.”
