A Message from Dr. Marcus M. ComerThis year, Earth Day was celebrated unlike it has ever been observed before. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we interact with one another. Social distancing has turned us into teleconferencing gurus. Frivolous shopping has been curtailed as we seek essential items we need to live. All restaurants have become drive-by dining and everyone delivers. Although these changes can be stressful, let us celebrate the positive outcomes of this pandemic. People are walking more and reconnecting with nature, connecting with locally grown food sources, reduction in greenhouse gasses and other air, water, and land pollution, and the time to reflect and reconnect with family.
As we mark 50 years of Earth Day, let us celebrate our collective accomplishments and look to the future of how to use the upside of the COVID-19 pandemic to educate and fight for sustainable environmental policies. However, this year’s celebrations will not be large social gatherings of people doing plantings, clean-ups, and other large-scale events. Let us utilize social media to encourage people to plant a seed, tree, or garden right where they are. We at Black Family Land Trust (BFLT) would like to remind our friends and family that Humanity is interconnected and interdependent on nature; as stewards, we care for the earth and the earth sustains us. For Earth Day, go out and plant something and take the time to reset, reflect and reevaluate the things you take for granted and what changes you can make to your lifestyle, habits and routines to sustain the upsides of this crisis. |
“I would not know how to be human, how to think as a human being, how to walk as a human being, how to talk or how to eat as a human being except by learning from other human beings. I learn to be human by associating with other human beings. We are thus, according to the Bible, made for family. We're made for community, we're made for togetherness, we're made for friendship. We're made to live in a delicate network of interdependence, for we are made for complementary. I have gifts you don't have. And you have gifts that I don't have. Thus we are made different so that we can know our need of one another. And this is a fundamental law of our being.” Bishop Desmond Tutu (excerpt from the The Green Bible)
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