We know that forest fires are going to become even more common in our world as drought combined with bad development decisions create the perfect conditions for massive fires. We have watched fires rip through California this summer and the Edmonton fires that these fire fighters came to address were so serious that they required support from around the world.
As a person of African descent there was something particularly powerful about seeing so many Black firefighters. In Boston our fire department has had a history of being on the wrong side of race relations and they continue to have significant diversity challenges.
The sound of bag pipes played by firefighters has come to be a sacred moment for me. I have fond memories of sitting on the front porch with my firefighter neighbor listening to him play Amazing Grace. Something about the connection between sacred music and those who face the death of fire is powerful. So seeing these firefighters sing and dance with joy as they prepare to face dangerous flames really humbled me.
I thought about this being the response I want to see us bring to the climate crisis. We will have to face fires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods with spiritual resolve to cultivate gratitude in the face of destruction. We will need this spirit to not only reside in the four walls of our religious buildings but to be embodied by firefighters, health care workers, police makers and police officers. When I watched this video I saw people who embodied the spirit that pushes back against death and destruction.
This moment was so powerful that I decided to take a break from my other writing to write this blog.
And then in the background another YouTube video began to play. It chronicled the deeper story behind this video. It showed how international issue of economic justice remain powerful forces to destroy the best of what we can be. This video chronicled the ways that the Alberta government welcomed the South African firefighters at such low salaries that they were being paid less per day than other firefighters were making in an hour. The Alberta government had turned down offers from other developed countries which would have required standard firefighter wages, to pay these South African fire fighters cheaper wages.
What became clear to me is that the powerful society I dream of cannot co-exist with the corrupt system that we have right now. We cannot have a system that devalues peoples lives to protect profits and think that we are going to save the human race from impending disaster. If we are going to build the strong and interdependent society that will allow us to break our addiction to fossil fuels, reverse trends of gross economic inequity and avert the current and coming disasters of the climate crisis - we have to move ourselves in a different direction. We have to start by rejecting any systems that try to bargain with the value of human life and human dignity.
This is not just an indictment of the Alberta government or politicians in general or even economic bigwigs who defend low wages, this is also a critique of liberals and others who say they care about low income people. I am a climate activist so my critism begins there. Folks who make their living on fossil fuels are going to continue to block climate work until the climate movement demonstrates a serious commitment to their lives and finding a future for them.
There a brothers and sisters of every race sitting at home when they would much rather the be working at the factory that abandoned their town. There are formerly incarcerated folks who got into trouble often because they also couldn't find work. There are folks fighting cancer because they got an extra dose of environmental pollution and don't have adequate health care to get the treatment they need. There are residents of Kiribati who are watching their island be eroded by sea level rise while the world argues about whose responsibility it is to resettle climate refugees. There are South Africans who fought to tranform their society and are not struggling to survive in the wake of ongoing poverty and lack of resource redistribution. I want to be standing arm and arm with these folks signing and dancing and preparing to take on the task of pushing back a deadly crisis. I want to be in solidarity with them and I want to make sure that we we get in the trenches I have not cooperated with a system that pays $50/ day while I make up to $200 for the same work. If we are going to face the crisis before us we need spirit, we need unity and we need just equitable resource distribution for all of us who are willing to fight the fire.
