Marjchaos

“There’s a great word for this, which is called “primary emergency.” Years ago, I used to do a lot of interviews [around environmental issues] for the magazine The Sun, and I ended up doing a lot more interviews with white males than with women, men of color, women of color, and it’s not because I’m, you know, overtly racist. I kept trying to figure out why that was. And then, I realized that (actually, someone told me, a woman of color told me) that it’s because quite often when somebody becomes an activist, the first thing they do is work around their primary emergency. And so, if you are an African American woman [or man,] the first thing you might work on…might be the fact that one third of all African American males between the ages of 18 and 35 are under criminal justice supervision in this country, the massive racism in the criminal justice system in this country. And you might not have the “luxury” to work on lynx habitat or, you know, salmon restoration. And, if you’re a woman, your primary emergency might be men’s violence against women.”