The Universe Story, Race, and Justice, with Carl Anthony

March 22, 2021 — Sam Mickey — Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

This week’s episode of Spotlights features Carl Anthony, an architect, regional planner, and social and environmental justice activist. He discusses some of the many facets of his work, including  a project of which he is the co-founder and co-director (with Dr. Paloma Pavel), Breakthrough Communities, dedicated to building multiracial leadership for sustainable communities in California & the nation. He also discusses his book, The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race, which is a memoir that integrates urban history, racial justice, and cosmology with personal experiences as an architect/planner, environmentalist, and Black American, connecting the struggles for social and racial justice to the universe story. Along with Paloma Pavel, Carl Anthony is the 2021 recipient of the Thomas Berry Award.

Here’s a word from social change innovator and news commentator Van Jones, who wrote one of the forewords for Carl’s book. Van also has an important new book, Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together.”

From the CIIS Religion and Ecology Summit (March 2018) program description:

Climate change disproportionately affects women, especially women in the Global South, women of color, and women in poor communities. In addition, recent research shows that environmental practices are considered emasculating to men. Together in this one-day conference, we explore the various ways that gender intersects with the field of religion and ecology.

The third annual Religion and Ecology Summit will showcase scholars, practitioners, environmentalists, and religious leaders to address the topic of gender at the intersection of religion and ecology. The goal of this conference will be to provide opportunities for networking, learning, building alliances, and sharing research. With recent natural disasters and the re-emergence of the women’s movement, we hope this year’s conference will become a resource for building solidarity and sharing strength and strategies of resistance with one another.

On February 19, 2018, Carl and Paloma were interviewed by Michael Krasny on PBS station KQED in San Francisco, for his show, Forum. The topic was the intersection of race and urbanism. They discussed questions of urban democratization and sustainability raised in the book, shifting social norms and changing environmental realities, Carl’s life’s work, and strategies for enhancing equity in a changing world. 
Listen and learn how struggles for environmental justice, racial justice, and economic equality must be integrated to provide long-term solutions and how the Universe Story can help us move forward equitably. 

The Laura Flanders and Chris Hedges interviews were taped in November when Carl was  in New York for the East Coast Book launch. They were broadcast in early February.

Laura Flanders spoke with Carl and activist Ashley Dawson, author of Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change, about How Cities Respond to Climate Change. In this 19-minute program they discussed the confluence of economic and racial inequality and new forms of extreme weather. They concluded that in the urbanscape more inequality equals less resilience against climate disaster.

Visit the Laura Flanders Show‘s website to view more great content and find ways to support its development.

2018:  Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges interviewed Carl on the topic of “Architecture as a Form of Oppression”  for his weekly show, On Contact.

In this 27-minute video interview Carl asserted that modern city planning typically caters to the rich and ignores the neediest people. He explained how the enslavement of African Americans persists in architecture, forming another chapter in the long history of environmental exploitation and urban disinvestment. Carl and Chris discussed how architecture functions as a tool of oppression.   Chris’s summary: “Architecture was manipulated to reinforce white supremacy.”

On Dec. 3 Carl and Paloma were interviewed by Malihe Razazan on the KALW program”Your Call,”as part of its One Planet series. 

http://kalw.org/post/your-calls-one-planet-series-carl-anthony-race-urban-inequality-and-environmental-justice

Carl’s interview by Sonali Kolhatkar on Rising Up with Sonali was broadcast on a multitude of radio stations and on FreeSpeech TV and Vimeo. http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/the-earth-the-city-and-the-hidden-narrative-of-race/.
You can download an MP3 file for the video version.    

On This Is Hell, a popular radio show on WNUR-FM Chicago and online, host Chuck Mertz talks with Carl about spatial apartheid, city planning, and the book. https://thisishell.com/interviews/977-carl-anthony

Listen to Carl on KPFA-FM  radio discussing his life, work, and book, “The Earth, The City, and The Hidden Narrative of Race” : 
With Kris Welch on The Talkies, https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-october-17-2017/ (begins at 39:14);