Going Green

For the past few years I have been attentively listening and observing the "green movement" and the economic and political opportunities that are asserting themselves in mainstream culture and society.

It would appear however, that people of color and especially the Spanish language comunity in the State of California or the U.S. for that matter, have not been thoroughly engaged by this "green movement". This is not to say that there have not been attempts by the movement to reach out with some success.

There are in fact people of color who are now part of this new consciousness. Many Latino-Indigenous people have been committed, working and speaking out about climate change and sustainability since the landing of Columbus. There are current many people of color also in the trenches reaching out to inform and educate their repsective communities on such topics as global warming, gardening and carbon emissions etc. However, many of these grassroots leaders have not been highlighted or recognized by this new green consciousness agenda. The reality exists that the "granolas", "tree huggers" or "greenies" are not necessarily the men with the leafblowers, fast food attendants, dishwashers and nanny's who are making minimum wage and helping sustain local economies.

Being "green" for most people of color means making more "green money"! Many of the concepts and language terms related to global warming have not trickled down or across the people of color spectrum, even though Latinos are the largest growing population in the State of California.

For many communities of color, memories of the ancestors who for thousands of years always used these "green principles", have been either discarded or forced to forget in order to promote progress in the Western paradigm. It is time now however, to retrieve and remember this ancient wisdom and get into action. The original stewards of the land have been our indigenous grandfathers and grandmothers of the world which in fact includes Europe. As I paraphrase Paul Hawken one of the world's foremost leaders in the green business world, he indicates that the green movement has three roots, Indigenous wisdom, social justice and new technology.

Therefore, those of us who are engaged in indigenous and social justice movements have now an obligation to remember and incorporate the old ways of looking at the world, environment and the universe. We as a human species will have to recapture our indigenous cosmologies and help those who have done so to remember. Now is the time.

Most recently I've been involved in creating a "green" space for community partners such as activists, politicians and the media throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to create a Spanish language "green" summit and movement. This is meant to engage the 10 million Latino, Hispanic and Indigenous people of the State of California which are present accornding to the 2000 U.S. Census.

We are embarking I believe into a new economic, social and conscioussness paradigm that will influence not only the way we live and survive in the United States but the politics of tomorrow. I am certain that this summit will engage and inspire adults, children and especially youth to goeven more green and help do individual "acts of green". This means recycle, re-use and reduce in creative ways not yet thought about.

In order to move in this direction we must indeed create the one thing that is lacking most in communities of color which is a sense of "urgency" especially in the Latino, Hispanic and Indigenous communities.

It is by creating a sense of urgency via the media that we will motivate young people to create blogs, seniors citizens to continue to recycle, children and their parents to create gardens on their apartment porches and all of the community to continue and to use public transportation not because they have to but because they want to. This is how we will change the world and save our planet.

http:www.davidescobarconsultantcy.com

I just wanted to thank all of those people who have supported my own personal development through the years. I would also like to thank all of those who have assisted me with this business endevour and all of the elders throughout Indian Country for their guidance.