They all belong to Extinction Rebellion PDX, but to each of them, the fight for environmental justice is personal
I am not an activist. I am not extreme. I am not radical. I am not one of “those” people. I am middle-of-the-road, logical, realistic. I am just like everyone else who is also not “them.” Things do and will work out just fine. Just keep your head down, and push through.
That is what I have been told and have told myself for most of my 42 years on this planet.
I am Eric. I grew up in safe, middle-class Arizona suburbia in a very loving and conservative family. I was always a “good” kid. I lived my life the way an all-American guy was “supposed” to live.
But things were not just fine.
About five years ago, visible cracks began emerging in my beliefs, forcing their way not only into how I lived and saw myself, but also necessarily into how I viewed “others.” I began a journey that now as a photographer has brought me from largely avoiding human subjects in my early pristine landscapes to actively seeking photographs of humans, especially those with whom I don’t readily identify. I want to understand “others” better. That is how I have found myself here now, putting these very words to paper. Honestly, I never saw this coming.
But this story is not about me.
Several months ago, with camera in hand, I approached the Portland chapter of Extinction Rebellion, XR PDX in common shorthand, at their first action blocking railways transporting Canadian tar sands oil. I came with a sincere request to insert my non-activist self into this environmental activist organization. They welcomed me warmly. XR is a movement that began in the United Kingdom in 2018 to halt climate change, mass biodiversity loss, and social and environmental collapse. Their initial October 2018 protests in London lasted weeks, inspiring the direct participation of thousands, causing massive economic disruption. XR’s movement quickly spread worldwide, arriving in Portland earlier this year.
XR’s explicit tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience are intended to subvert the utter lack of efficacy that traditional polite political and legal methods of activism have so far demonstrated. XR has three primary demands: that government tell the truth about climate change, simultaneously declaring a climate emergency; that government act to halt biodiversity loss and carbon emissions to net-zero by 2025; and that government organize and act under the direction of a Citizens’ Assembly to implement the necessary changes.
XR US has added a fourth demand of a just transition prioritizing vulnerable populations and Indigenous sovereignty. Timed with the United Nations’ climate meetings and other international climate strikes, XR PDX will conduct sustained mass direct actions coordinated with its member organizations worldwide beginning Sept. 20 with the Global Climate Strike.
FURTHER READING: Extinction Rebellion: Disruption and arrests can bring social change (commentary)
I have been photographing not only XR PDX’s organizational tactics, but also the personal daily lives of several of its members. During this journey, I have attended high school graduations, town fairs and parades, and activism meetings. I have shared meals and holidays, have observed work days, and have simply hung out with Ken, Sarah, Emily, Shanice, their families and their friends. All this in an attempt to begin to understand who these people are. In addition to photographing them, I posed a series of specific questions to each.
WHAT DRIVES YOU TO DO THIS WORK?
The answer to this question is rooted in believing there is not a choice, but rather an absolute necessity. Emily Carl is unwavering in her commitment to environmental activism. “There’s no question” how her energy must be spent, she said.
“I do this work because I got tired of pain being my new normal as an adult,” said Shanice Clarke, linking her own experience as an immigrant woman of color and of trauma and health issues to the destructive interaction of the environmental crisis, poverty and race.
With a long history of professional environmental activism, Ken Ward views his continued activism simply as a “natural and logical extension” of himself. He finds it odd, and I find it strikingly ironic that in his decades-long pursuit of effective climate action, he is essentially “unemployable” within his field of expertise.
“I do not, therefore, do this because I’m paid to do it. I do it because it needs doing,” he said. Ken was one of the 2016 Valve Turners, who were arrested for shutting down crude-oil pipelines into the United States.
FURTHER READING: She documented the grief that drove this Valve Turner to action
Sarah Carlberg, a mother of three, is driven by her young children.
“I do it because when I became their mother, I made a commitment to do everything in my power to protect them. I need them to know I did everything I could.”
HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR ACTIVISM TO BE VIEWED?
“I don’t want people to shy away from looking,” Shanice said, relaying the persistent and pervasive difficulty many people have in actively witnessing and compassionately responding to others’ suffering. The genuine seriousness that all four display is neither self-centered nor narcissistic. It collectively reflects a commitment to a cause beyond themselves. Sarah desires that others see her as a normal mother acting completely appropriately to address the scale and immediacy of the environmental crisis. Emily desires to inspire others to both educate themselves regarding the environmental crisis and take direct action.
Ken bluntly admits that he really does not care how his activism is viewed.
“If I did care, I would have changed what I do to fit general expectations of what is presentable, politically acceptable and, most importantly, fundable.”
In the time I spent with Ken, I sensed that he cared deeply.
HOW DO YOU THINK YOUR ACTIVISM IS VIEWED BY SOCIETY?
Ken sees two primary camps within society. One views environmental activists as delusional at best or terroristic at worst. The other sees them as “well-intentioned, but naive and unnecessarily disruptive.”
Those who stand in solidarity with environmental activists, Emily said, are sufficiently “educated and knowledgeable and aware of where we’re headed as a planet.”
Knowledge and education can be and often are insufficient, however. Real-world, visceral experience matters to convert simple knowledge to a personal connection to and responsibility for the environment.
Climate change “becomes real when you visit a loved one in a neighborhood so polluted it is nicknamed the ‘Cancer Corridor,’” Shanice said.
The word “sacrifice” comes up more than once. Emily said she thinks that “any person can understand sacrifice, and most want to understand the reason. Once they understand that, they’re halfway there to becoming activists themselves.”
WHAT ARE YOUR HOPES REGARDING YOUR ACTIVISM?
Hope is a somewhat controversial term and concept within this group and, I suspect, within the activist community in general. To some within these communities, hope is unreliable, fleeting and consequently ineffective.
“I work hard to avoid hope,” Ken said. He believes that those who demand hope as fundamental to their actions as activists risk inaction when they lose it.
Sarah, Shanice and Emily view hope differently. It is a positive force for their activism. Hope sustains them and their activism in the face of the overwhelming challenges the environmental activist faces.
“That little bit of hope,” Sarah said, “(is) enough to move me from my paralyzed state.”
HOW HAS YOUR ACTIVISM ALTERED YOUR LIFE? HAS YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCE INFLUENCED YOUR ACTIVISM?
Although all four individuals express an overarching tension within their activism, they all resoundingly report an ultimate deepening of close personal relationships and personal awareness.
“It’s built a network of love in my life,” Shanice said.
Ken points to his “close-knit circle of friends and family” as being in some ways enabled by and reinforced of his activism.
“I have grown more as a person in my short time as an activist than I ever could have imagined,” Sarah said. “It makes me a better partner, parent and friend.”
Ken, Shanice, Emily and Sarah all report having to cope with significant grief in the course of their activism. After learning of the International Panel on Climate Change report’s dire environmental predictions in late 2018, followed in rapid succession by the destruction of a childhood friend’s home by the massive wildfires in Paradise, Calif., and resulting respiratory difficulties of her children as the wildfire smoke drifted north, Sarah fell into a deep depression.
“I was crying all the time,” she said.
Feelings of significant isolation and time away from loved ones outside the movement are shared experiences among all four. Ken said he’s lost many personal relationships over the years due to his activism. That their actions might follow them and their loved ones back home is a conscious risk they all face. Activism has become a significant portion of their life experience. For Ken, the oldest of the four and an environmental activist since high school, his experience as a father has made his activism even more deeply personal.
“Suddenly, we weren’t fucking over the world in general,” he said. “We are fucking up the world my son and his friends have to live in.”
WHAT ARE YOUR FRUSTRATIONS OR FEARS REGARDING YOUR ACTIVISM?
All four expressed frustration in fighting the uphill battle, in being the minority. I gather that each of them would choose not to be activists if each of them actually felt it was a choice. Environmental activists risk, among other things, social isolation, disrespect, violence, arrest and economic uncertainty. They face massive resistance to systemic change and mass collective denial of global issues that stare them blatantly in the face.
Environmental activists are not “brash extremists made of harder, sharper stuff,” Sarah said. While the doubts and fears stemming from their work as environmental activists vary, they share one unstated, yet overwhelmingly obvious fear. That is the fear of inaction. These four have been able to process and work through their fears and doubts. They do not know if their activism will succeed in the end. They do, however, know that inaction will result in ever-increasing mass ecological and societal collapse.
•••
As a photographer, you are ultimately photographing yourself every time you press the camera shutter. Your photos intimately and necessarily reflect your view of and connection to yourself and the outside world. My photo documentation of these activists is no exception.
These individuals are infinitely more like me than they are not. They, too, recognize that things are not “just fine.” They actively acknowledge that we cannot simply keep our heads down. They are willing to invest their time and energy for a cause larger than themselves without any guarantee of success.
If I was once like everyone else who was also not “them,” it stands to reason that everyone else is now them. Perhaps this story is about me.
I am an activist. My photos are my evidence.
Learn more about the upcoming Global Climate Strike week of action, starting Sept. 20, at climatestrikeoregon.org.
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