Rev. Mariama White-Hammond at MIT
Hancock Church
Sunday, September 9th
Climate Justice Service
10 AM
Climate Justice Conversation 11 AM
1912 Massachusetts Avenue
Lexington, MAAll are welcome!
Rev. Mariama White-Hammond serves as the Minister for Ecological Justice at Bethel AME Church in Boston and as a fellow with the Green Justice Coalition, a partnership of environmental justice groups. Recently, she served as master of ceremonies for the Boston Women’s March, which was attended by over 175,000 people.
Rev. Mariama is an inspiring speaker who is active in the fight against climate change.
She asks the questions “What kind of people are we? What kind of people do we want to be?”
And affirms what is possible, “We are so much better than who we are being right now.”
She asks us to consider how our addiction to fossil fuels might be affecting the health of our society, in the same way an addict might deny they have a problem, while destroying everything of value in their lives. She has suggested that perhaps we need to approach this problem as we would in helping someone with an addiction… and that both faith and healing are required.
Rev. Mariama works to help people of color and white folks get to know each other so they can begin working together on the intersecting issues of climate and environmental justice.
Recent studies have found that communities of color in Massachusetts averaged 7.5 times as many hazardous waste sites and 10 times the toxic chemical exposure as white communities. That pollution hurts Black and Hispanic children in Boston who are suffering 4 to 6 times higher rates of hospitalization for asthma than white children.
“People are hungry for spiritual homes that reflect what they are feeling in this moment,” Rev. Mariama says. If you are hungry, if you are feeling it is time to begin working together on both climate and justice, please come to Hancock Church on September 9th at 10AM.
