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March 15, 2002 "Power, Environmental Racism, and our Public Lands: The Just Forest Initiative" with the Reverend Myrna Bernadel-Huey ("Public Lands: Sacred and Just") and Dr. Amahra Hicks (US Forest Service). Amahra Hicks began the forum by giving us a bit of background on the "Just Forest Initiative," which is program of the US Forest Service. The Forest Service, a section of the Department of Agriculture, did a study that revealed both that peoples of color seemed to be absent from our public lands and that people of color are severely underrepresented within the US Forest Service. This project began as an effort to make headroads into addressing the "why" behind the absence of people of color. Amahra then went on to say that if we can begin addressing and confronting institutional racism, then we will open up the opportunity for all to participate in the Forest Service, in our public lands. Likewise, these missing voices will then contribute to answering the question "what ought we do with land"; ie, these voices will contribute to policies that affect our public lands. Racism, Amahra, is more about our culture than about interpersonal relationships. It is rooted deep within our institutions. This is what the "Just Forest Initiative" is trying to combat. Myrna Bernadel-Huey then went on to answer the question of "why work with faith organizations?" One way to reach out to communities of color is through faith-based organizations. Amarha and Jeff Romm (also a member of the Just Forest Initiative crew and a professor at UC Berkeley) gave a mandate to Myrna, basically, to go and hear from different communities of color about their own relationships with the land. This proved successful because central to (especially) Christian, faith-based communities is talk of creation. Myrna visits religious communities of color to preach, and to explore what creation means to a given community. At this point in the forum we watched a video, produced by the Just Forest Initiative. Following are a few quotes from that video. If you would like to view a copy of the video please contact Myrna: justforests@nature.berkeley.edu. · African Americans have a deep, abiding sense of "This is my Fathers World"; therefore we ought to respect it. · We need to reconstruct a common story, but the forest service seems to do this without thinking of communities of color. We need to regain access to our public lands. · What if everyone had an equal opportunity to decide the future of our forests? What would public policy towards these public lands look like then? · Looking at the public lands and seeing no communities of color is an indicator of something gone wrong; much like the spotted owl is an indicator for the well-being of an overall system. · How can you buy land when it is for everyone? · We really want to learn what forests mean to ALL communities. Myrna then began talking about her experience in meeting with religious communities of color to talk about "public lands." She works to get people to talk about their own connections to the land, and to listen and record these different connections. Often times, people don't know that the forest service is not part of the park service, or even what the forest service does. Why don't communities of color know about the forest service? Less than 20% of the work force in the Forest Service are people of color. (In FY 2000, no AA women were hired in the Pacific Southwest Region. The stats for FY 2001 aren't much better. For FY 2001, the FS in this region hired 3 AA women. Since one woman had left in FY 1999, and none had been hired in FY 2000, those three women reflected a net gain of 4.5% in the total # of AA women hired from FY 2000 to FY 2001. The sad fact/reality is that, in spite of this so-called improvement, AA women still make up only 1.5% of this Region's entire workforce of 4747 people!in FY2001, zero women of African American descent were hired by the forest service). This is a problem for many reasons one being that there is no sense of personal investment in the public lands by many communities of color because they are left out of the conversation and decision-making processes. When people can own and claim something for themselves it opens up many opportunities for action and dialogue. This helps break down the psychological barriers in people's minds that don't feel like they have access to the public lands. At this point in the conversation, Ta-hina Warrick, a student of Environmental Studies at Hayward Cal, came forward to give testimony about her experience of "Commencement 2000". This is a program of the Forest Service, now discontinued, that brought underrepresented people into the national forests. It dealt with K-12 age kids, and followed them for a 10-year period. Ta-hina was paid by the Forest Service to go on different trips into the national forest. This process allowed Ta-hina to form her own, strong connections with the Earth. She is now, as mentioned earlier, a Environmental Studies student and she works with Friends of the Estuary. At the end of the forum, Amahra and Myrna announced an upcoming conference they are sponsoring in October 2002. For more information about this conference, please contact Myrna: justforests@nature.berkeley.edu This conference/symposium is designed to bring faith communities, students (both high school and college/university), artists, and activists together to talk about their own connections with the land, to address environmental justice issues, and to figure out ways to make changes so that ALL people will have access to our public lands. I want to thank Amahra and Myrna once again for such a wonderful forum. I hope that we will be able to do this again, possibly at ABSW. Sincerely, Whitney Bauman

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