Aura Bogado | The Nation

On the heels of 40,000 people taking to the streets of DC in the largest climate change mobilization in US history, the pressure on President Obama is building to take decisive action to curb carbon emissions. However, what’s often missing from the US climate change movement are conversations about those people who are already most harmed by carbon emissions, and a historical understanding about how we got to this point. Along with Crystal Lameman (Beaver Lake Cree) and Ellen Dorsey, I was asked to give a keynote address at the Power Up! Divest Fossil Fuels: Student Convergence on February 23, 2013, at Swarthmore College. In my speech, I talked about why the climate justice movement would do well to also think about immigrant justice. The full transcript of my speech is below.

Mbaé’chepa.

Steven Jonhson, 3, joins Los Angeles community members to protest the death of Trayvon Martin, March 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman one year ago today. It wasn’t the first time a young black man was killed despite being unarmed and posing no threat to his killer. At first, there was little public outcry, and it seemed as if Trayvon’s death would be swept under the rug. But within three weeks, #Trayvon was trending on Twitter, and less than a month after the shooting, the local police chief was forced to step down. It was far from the first and it certainly wasn’t the last time a young black man was killed under those circumstances. But those deaths don’t trend on social media, and police departments are running business as usual. Everyone seems to have forgotten about Trayvon and about the avoidable deaths of so many others. And that’s troubling.

(Flickr/CC 2.0)

It’s getting hard to keep up with immigration news updates. Just last week, the White House’s reform proposal was leaked—prompting Republican outrage over a lack of focus on border security. The White House responded that it was simply a backup plan and that President Obama reached out to GOP lawmakers working on their own immigration bill. Now that everyone in Capital Hill has made nice, Senator McCain, who has flip-flopped on immigration for years, found himself squabbling with anti-immigrant Arizona constituents.

President Barack Obama waves before giving his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Feb. 12, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool)

President Obama mentioned immigration several times during his State of the Union address this evening—perhaps most poignantly when he altered the citizenship narrative that closed his remarks to include a definition “that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status.”