A movement: from a pipeline to justice in Memphis
On September 21st we welcomed Justin J. Pearson to the Climate Cafe Multifaith. Justin J. Pearson is co-founder of MCAP, Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, a community group founded to organize in South Memphis neighborhoods in order to stop the construction of the Byhalia Connector oil pipeline through Shelby County, Tennessee. MCAP prevailed against the pipeline July 2021, but the effort to restore health and opportunity to the community continues. Over the decades, polluting projects such as refineries, chemical plants, and incinerators were built and continue to harm the people who live in South Memphis neighborhoods, and beyond. The fight to stop the pipeline proved to be a catalyst for the local people to demand answers and actions on the larger questions of how and why so many industrial projects are sited and built in predominantly black, often poor areas—not just in Tennessee, but across the country.
Scroll for the story, presentation video, and a Q&A conversation with Justin J. Pearson.
The Valero Memphis Refinery is only one industrial behemoth in a slew of gas and chemical companies in Tennessee where McKellar Lake washes into the Mississippi River, past predominantly black and low income neighborhoods, and along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park. If you picnic or jog or take the family, you will find yourself adjacent to a number of chemical companies, including Harcros Chemicals Inc., Nexeo Solutions, Vertex Chemical, Cone Solvents, Delta Foremost Chemical Corp., Buckman, Drexel Chemical Co., and more.
Photo: Valero Refinery from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Memphis, TN, by Thomas R Machnitzki (thomasmachnitzki.com), CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons 2013.
The Byhalia fight is a story of people, people impacted by not only by the proposed Byhalia Connector Pipeline, but by decades of environmental policy that paired industrial projects with communities that have been systemically denied the resources to fight back. Underemployment, lack of economic opportunity and education, and redlining are just a few of the contributors to the Boxtown and South Memphis neighborhoods where people of worth and dignity live, work, raise families, and dream of a better future for themselves and their children.
“The future is an opportunity to embrace life differently.”
The Byhalia Connector Pipeline proposal arrived as communities around the country have galvanized to push pipelines back, these movements gaining traction in a time of climate change to protect water, food resources, and our very planet. Not only has this time become a time of reckoning for oil and gas projects, but it has also become a time of truth telling around the hard and terrible truths of environmental racism, deliberate disenfranchisement and dispossession in order to ‘power the future’ and achieve global economic dominance.
Many, seeing the destruction and harm from coast to coast to coast, are calling for repentance on a global scale. But many also know that each one of these efforts must be and is grounded in the values and determination of the local people. This work is done one pipeline at a time. And of those globally lifting their time and talents —Justin J. Pearson is among them. Pearson co-founded the organization Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) and got to work. He tells his story in this video below, From Pipelines to Community, Launching a Movement for Environmental Justice in Memphis, Tennessee:
The Memphis community won their battle against the pipeline on July 2nd, 2021. The pullout not only prevented yet more degradation to neighborhoods, but also was vital to protecting the unique and precious sand aquifer that supplies water to over a million people.
The crisis over pipelines didn’t start in Memphis and if Pearson has his way, it won’t stay there. People in the US and Canada are engaging in some of the most important conversations of our time. Pipeline struggles have highlighted the longstanding environmental crisis of climate change, and alongside that, an environmental justice crisis that demands our moral attention The Dakota Access Pipeline battle brought native and indigenous movements to a wider, more mainstream audience. White communities raised the Olagata Sioux prayer “Mní wičhóni,” water is life, and many chose allyship in support of the effort. Other battles rose up, some fiercely ongoing such as Enbridge Line 3 and Trans Mountain Pipelines. The Land Back movement called moral and civil powers to acknowledge the genocide and forced removal of native peoples as the US settlers moved in, settled down, settled in, and pushed economic interests far ahead of moral or relational ones.
Pearson wants to bring the moral energy of truth telling, and a turn of heart, to benefit the historically marginalized people of the South.
“Look, this isn’t tenable. The way we are existing now as a society is not sustainable. The more excellent way, that people of faith believe in, it is the only way.”
—Justin J. Pearson
We stand at the point of reckoning with it now. It is a conversation for our churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams and other worship spaces. We are putting together pieces of the puzzle long held apart, and creating conversations about racism, climate change, justice, and faith. We risk sitting in our hands—or in our pews—cocooning while already it is too late to save land, people and nations, such as the people of Kiribati.
Organizers like Pearson are asking people of faith to get involved. The work is just beginning, and in addition to the necessary policy changes and city council meetings, this movement at this time must be one of repentance, restoration and hope.
Pearson himself speaks to the depth of necessary change, not just to law, but to hearts and human relationships. He is informed, honest and generous in speaking to a legacy of race relations in the US that has dealt deep harms. He speaks to the process of learning new language to talk together about a problem that has destroyed lives and communities, and may well now destroy the planet.
“Had we been paying attention, then we would not be suffering from the climate crisis as we are now. It was our collectively callous attitude toward people of color—black and indigenous who would be suffering—that allowed these industries to be sited in those locations. And now, all of us are suffering more.”
—Justin J. Pearson
Past, present and future all come together around each pipeline fight. Community after community across the country are grappling with a conversation about environmental racism and climate change that for some of us is brand new, while for others they are telling the stories of their great, great, great grandparents. Those of us who study holy books understand the power of these ancient stories, that they don’t just speak to something ‘in the past,’ but name enduring mindsets, relationships, traumas, hopes, and are the very moral and spiritual fabric of community.
And all of us, now, will be telling this next story to our children. It is up to us together what this story now will be.
“My hope for the community is for people to be at peace, right? Like, actual peace…where people aren’t concerned about the next pipeline project.”
—Justin J. Pearson
View the majority of our shared Q&A conversation following the presentation, here:
One hope in inviting Pearson to talk with us at the Climate Cafe Multifaith was to gain a richer understanding as to how people of faith can better see and respond to the challenges faced by our communities and neighboring communities, as well as what role people of faith might have, and what we can do.
There are there main ways to ‘do something about it’:
First, people of faith need to learn. There is so much to learn! Scroll down to see links to statements and resources from many different faith traditions addressing environmental racism.
Second, amplification and resourcing is needed. If this is indeed to be the next great moral awakening—of our neighbor, planet, and restoration—we need to sing about it, pray about it, and, in an age of information and social media, click the ‘like’ ‘share’ ‘retweet’ and ‘comment’ buttons when we see an opportunity to amplify the voices of those who have spent their lives and cut their teeth on the very questions we must now seek to answer. Adding to this, resourcing is important. Movements generally involve people on the ground, everyday people who have stood tall when the call to act came upon them. These folks need support, but also money for all the necessaries. Donate to grassroots groups when you can, and look for grants and other ways you can help connect their movement to needed resources.
And lastly, people of faith must act. We must take our place in support of and alongside those leading this work, praying for them—practicing kindness, leaning into justice—and using our hands and feet to restore the places of harm, save lives, and save the planet.
If you somehow still doubt the urgency we face, read the Faiths4Future blog on the IPCC Report.
You can find Justin J. Pearson and support the movement in South Memphis via the MCAP facebook and webpage. Follow Pearson @Justinjpearson and MCAP @MemphisCAP_org on Twitter.
Further Reading
Big Oil Comes to Boxtown. A summation of the situation the Boxtown community faced, and what was at stake.
‘A victory for us’: Southwest Memphis residents elated as developers drop Byhalia Pipeline project. Reporting on the elation following the withdrawal of the pipeline project.
People of Color Breathe More Unhealthy Air from Nearly All Polluting Sources. A data-sourced report explained.
Asthma Disparities in America from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Justin J. Pearson brings fight against oil pipeline from his Memphis neighborhood to the nation. Local Memphis news story.
Group hopes to build on successful Byhalia Pipeline opposition; pushes city and county leaders. Local News follow up.
Environmental Racism, What it is and how you can fight it. The Climate Reality Project with links to more resources.
Some Resources from Faith Traditions:
Environmental Racism: An Ecumenical Study Guide (PDF). From the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA)
Environmental Racism: What you need to know. United Church of Christ (UCC) Tradition.
Exploring the Intersection Between Faith and Environmental Justice. An Interfaith Conversation from the Columbia Climate School and Center for Earth Ethics.
What is Environmental Justice? From Earth Beat, a Catholic Publication.
Environmental Justice in the US. From the Book of Resolutions, 2016. United Methodist Church (UMC).
Black Churches Join a Green Movement.
ELCA, Partners Make ‘Good Trouble’ for Environmental Justice. Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)
In Pursuit of Environmental Justice. Disciples of Christ.
Buddhists and Racial Justice: A History. Tricycle. The Buddhist Review.
Environmental Justice and Religion. The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development.
Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Climate with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future.