I started reading Red Cross papers and FEMA paperwork, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m a lawyer and I can’t understand this stuff. How can regular fo… - Colette Pichon Battle
" "I started reading Red Cross papers and FEMA paperwork, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m a lawyer and I can’t understand this stuff. How can regular folks understand what they’re signing? And they were signing their life away. They were signing their property. They were signing, you know, to receive dollars that then got them into lawsuits with the federal government because they didn’t spend them the right way. You know, no one’s telling them what to do, they’re just telling them to sign the paperwork. And this got to understanding what happens when you don’t invest in your education system, what happens when the rest of the nation allows for the South’s education system to go to those low levels. It means, in disaster, people don’t understand the paperwork that they’re signing or the implications behind them. And oh, by the way, neither did the lawyer. Like, I had to like, break that stuff down and read it, too.
English
Collect this quote
About Colette Pichon Battle
Colette Pichon Battle is a climate activist and lawyer, who founded the climate justice and human rights center The Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy. She was a TED speaker, and a 2019 Obama Foundation fellow. She is best known for advocating for the needs of communities of color in the face of the Climate crisis in the Gulf Coast of the United States.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Colette Pichon Battle
It was a crack in the universe to come home and see the destruction of Katrina, and it was in that moment that I said I was never leaving home again. You see that kind of destruction, and your life will change whether you want it to or not. That was my moment of career change. I was going to have to take a much different advocacy role - not standing in front of a court, pointing to particular pieces of law but instead standing in front of my community and convince them of what I knew deep in my heart, which was that climate change was going to come after all of us and that it was going to take what we love the most, which is where we're from.
Unlimited Quote Collections
Organize your favorite quotes without limits. Create themed collections for every occasion with Premium.
We must reframe our understanding of the problem. Climate change is not the problem; climate change is the most horrible symptom of an economic system that has been built for a few to extract every precious value out of this planet and its people. To survive this next phase of our human existence, we will need to restructure our social and economic systems to develop our collective resilience. We must transform from a disposable, individual society into one that sees our collective long-term humanity, or else we will not make it. We must acknowledge that the only way you're going to survive is for us to figure out how to reach a shared liberation together.
Loading...