Malik Rahim’s Black Radical Environmentalism

In the popular imagination, an environmentalist is invariably an earnest, college-educated white person working for a nonprofit organization on behalf of imperiled animals or distant wilderness, seemingly removed from issues of race or class politics. [...]when the New York Times characterized the oil spill as a "rallying cry" for environmental groups, the newspaper was referring to organizations such as the Sierra Club, American Rivers, and Environment Texas, which were redirecting their fundraising, canvassing, and lobbying efforts from other issues to the Gulf disaster. More importantly, Rahim understood that decades of wetland degradation, the consequence of unrelenting oil exploration and human development, directly contributed to the city's vulnerability to devastating floods as Gulf tidal surges met ever-fewer natural impediments. Let's start taking back and reclaiming some of the marshes and some of the barrier islands and some of the wetlands that we have lost.7 When Rahim described the disaster as an "opportunity," he meant something quite different from former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who famously declared during the Great Recession of 2008, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." On the contrary, Rahim understood these moments in much the same way that the Indian writer and social activist Arundhati Roy has characterized the coviD-19 pandemic: as a "portal, a gateway between one world and the next," a possible opening toward a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.8 Not only did Rahim emphasize the possibilities for transformative change engendered by the oil spill, he imagined that his own efforts could inspire others to join the fight.