News Archive
Indiana NAACP Climate Justice Chair Speaks at IU McKinney
09/28/2018
In a September 20 lecture at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indiana NAACP Climate Justice Chair Denise Abdul-Rahman repeated what the late civil rights leader Julian Bond once told her. “If you don’t speak, no one can hear you,” he said.
Abdul-Rahman spoke on “Climate Justice” and discussed with students what the NAACP is doing in the area of environmental injustice, including the proliferation of climate change.
Air, water and soil pollution have a disproportionate impact on communities of color and low income communities in the United States and around the world. The NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program was created to support community leadership in addressing this human and civil rights issue, Abdul-Rahman said.
The NAACP’s Indiana Environmental Climate Justice Program looks at issues from a local, state, regional, national, and even global perspective, she said. In her role, Abdul-Rahman advocates on behalf of Indiana communities that are affected by environmental climate injustice. She works to develop research, educate and engage communities and leaders to influence the shaping of public policy that is imperative to support equitable, just and sustainable communities.
In Indiana, the organization has had some victories—such as lobbying Indianapolis Power & Light to retire a coal-fired power plant in 2016—and mixed results on others. But it’s important that the NAACP continue to “be in the spaces” where decisions are made in order to “negotiate equity” on behalf of all citizens, especially as climate change impacts the future, Abdul-Rahman said.
“We need to create equity so our society can move forward,” she said. “We have to re-imagine and reset all of our systems.”
Abdul-Rahman (in the photo above, center, with IU McKinney Law student Taylor Carpenter representing the Environmental Law Society, Vice Dean and Professor Michael J. Pitts, Professor Carlton Waterhouse, and McKinney law student and ELS representative Cayla Irlbeck) also received the first “Environmental Protector Award” from the IU McKinney Law Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law Program for “sustained, extraordinary advocacy in the service of Indiana residents, and the environment where they live, work, and play, in addition to exceptional advocacy in the protection of the global climate.”
Professor Carlton Waterhouse, director of the EENR Program, called Abdul-Rahman an “advocate on the ground,” applauding her role as a “tireless worker” on behalf of environmental justice.
