Ancestral Solidarities

Timothy R. Eberhart

24 March 2023

Among the many pressing questions raised in this time of multiple planetary crises caused by an economic system powered by the exploitation of both human and more-than-human labor is the question of where we are to look for alternatives. Beginning early in my theological formation, while a divinity and then doctoral student at Vanderbilt, one of the most generative answers for me came from the wisdom of Womanist, Mujerista, Asian-American, and related theological and ethical perspectives: look to the stories of suffering, resistance, and liberative alternatives within your own familial and ancestral histories.

As the son of two United Methodist clergy and the grandson of four Evangelical United Brethren grandparents from rural communities in North and South Dakota, and as an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church myself, I have found a depth of inspiration within the Wesleyan, Methodist, Radical Pietist, and related holiness and communitarian traditions of my ancestors in the faith. In my doctoral dissertation, which became my first book, I drew upon the egalitarian and democratic impulses of these traditions to provide a theological critique of the social and ecological violence bound up in our global food economy. Growing up in South Dakota, and then serving as a licensed local pastor in my early twenties in two rural communities, I experienced firsthand the devastating impacts of the farm crises in our rural areas: widespread farm foreclosures caused by indebtedness, the degradation of soil, air, water, and wildlife, and increasing rates of impoverishment, addictions, disease, and domestic abuse — all tied to an agroeconomic model governed by profit-driven agribusiness corporations. By centering these concerns in my research, I was inspired to find in my family’s faith traditions not only generic calls to love God and neighbor but also concrete models of love-enfleshed-through-democratic-community that are still relevant today: like farmer cooperatives, prairie populist political organizing, Christian socialism, and community-based land ownership. I was also excited to learn through my mother that my grandfather, as a young man, had helped to organize farmers in North Dakota to join rural electric coops.

More recently, as my work as an ecological theologian and practitioner has turned to the spiritual, cosmological, and earth-based wisdom of Indigenous peoples, I have again found inspiration by searching even deeper into ancestral roots. I was challenged to take up this work several years ago by a Lakota organizer, Carla Marshall, following a panel we were on in Rapid City, SD as part of an interfaith gathering on creation justice. In the midst of our conversation, one in which I would first learn about the efforts that would lead to the resistance at Standing Rock, she said to me: “You white people need to deal with your own intergenerational traumas. Our people are doing this work. But you European-Americans, you too were cut off from your old traditions. You too lost sacred relationship with the land. There’s so much violence in your histories. And until you find healing for your people, and peace with the land, your people are going to continue to do harm to us others and to the earth.”

My grandparents had always said we were Swabians, originally from central and southern Germany. What I’ve learned is that the Suebi – meaning “our people” – were first mentioned by Julius Caesar as a particularly fierce tribe because of their resistance against Roman military incursion. According to Tacitus, the Germanic tribes of this region lived in kinship groups, with decisions made by the whole community rather than a single chieftain. As in many Indigenous societies, their lands were held in common, women shared equal status with men, and they worshipped not in buildings but outside, in sacred groves, on mountain peaks, or near bodies of water. Tacitus notes that the Suebi were distinguished by their worship of Nerthus, or Mother Earth, and believed that She intervenes in and moves among human affairs. In learning more about the Suebi, as well as other pre-Christian Native European cultures, I have been pleased to discover that the eco-feminist, anti-hierarchical, animistic, and communitarian-socialist sensibilities of my adult years happen to run very, very deep!

Of course, the search for liberative alternatives within our religious and ancestral traditions needs to be approached with care, and this is especially true for a Euro-American Protestant like me. Uncritical attempts to secure an unstable present and an uncertain future by fixating upon a supposed pristine past, “once upon a time,” inevitably fail in the face of honest historical examination. More dangerously, such attempts can just as easily contribute to fundamentalist and reactionary theo-political responses than to liberative ones. Many within global Methodism today are seeking revival by fixing narrow and anachronistic parameters around what constitutes the one, true Wesleyan faith. The story of my family in the rural Dakotas is not just one of hard-working pioneers who sacrificed for future generations: “Den Ersten der Tod, den Zweiten die Not, den Dritten das Brot” (To the first generation death; to the second hardship; to the third sustenance). It’s also the story of European immigrants who directly benefited from the genocidal displacement and colonial removal of the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota peoples whose lands they settled. And valorization of the old mythologies of the Germanic and Nordic peoples is as prominent today among white nationalist groups as it was for Nazi ideologues, who used Tacitus’s Germania to claim Aryan racial superiority in executing their murderous vision of “Blut und Boden” (Blood and Soil).

The deep currents within our respective familial, spiritual, and ancestral histories are strong, as are longings today to secure an identity by belonging within some recognizable tradition, group, or collective. From the beginning, capitalism has disrupted older forms of belonging and then offered commodified social identities in return for those – most of us now – desperate and willing to pay the price. In the search for alternatives, amidst this time of such profound upheaval, I’m still learning how to recover and draw upon the “dangerous memories” of my particular pasts – dangerous in both revolutionary and reactionary directions – in ways that might contribute toward a more life-sustaining, radically democratic, and just future for all. Perhaps one possibility is for us to do this work together, each of us bringing an appreciative and critical lens to our respective histories, and then offering what we’ve discovered with and for one another in humility and grace. A kind of deep solidarity that unites the liberative potentials of our diverse and complex pasts, presents, and hoped-for futures as we struggle for the other worlds that might still be possible.

Timothy Reinhold Eberhart is the Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Associate Professor of Ecological Theology and Practice at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he directs the Master of Arts in Public Ministry program and the Center for Ecological Regeneration. Eberhart, who grew up in South Dakota, earned a bachelor of arts in religion from St. Olaf College, master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and doctor of philosophy from the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University. He has led numerous environmental initiatives at the seminary, including Garrett-Evangelical’s founding role in the Seminary Stewardship Alliance and the completion of a three-year Green Seminary Initiative certification as a Green Seminary. His publications include Rooted and Grounded in Love: Holy Communion for the Whole Creation (Wipf and Stock, 2017), The Economy of Salvation: Essays in Honor of M. Douglas Meeks (Wipf and Stock, 2015), and chapters on mission, ecclesiology, and ecotheology. Eberhart is an ordained elder in the Dakotas Conference of The United Methodist Church, a trained permaculturalist, UMC Earthkeeper, and an Advisory Team member of the UMC Creation Justice Movement. He, his spouse Rebecca, their three children, and six hens live in Evanston, IL, where he has been active with Citizens Greener Evanston, Environmental Justice Evanston, and the city’s Equity & Empowerment Commission.

Environmental Justice from a Cooperative Perspective

Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger

24 March 2023

It comes as no surprise that low-income and majority minority communities receive the brunt of exposure to climate-related impacts and disasters. Without job, housing, health, and wealth security, these communities are the most vulnerable in a world of rising sea-levels, increased pollution of air, water, land, and waste accumulation. 

Unfortunately, it is frequently overlooked that exploitation has played and continues to play a role in climate change and the associated environmental impacts. If we do not consider what we have learned from our history, we are most likely to repeat the mistakes of the past by ignoring that racial and class equity must be a part of solution if we do not want to increase racial and class-based divisions.

Many black, brown, and low-income individuals are forced to navigate economic and climate impacts without a safety net. The average black family, for example, has 10 times less wealth than the average white family. This is a huge factor when we consider climate change-associated heatwaves and record-breaking cold temperatures that leave many families having to decide whether to pay utility bills or put their health at risk. Financial instability also leads to income loss, job insecurity, and housing instability. However, disadvantaged communities are not just vulnerable, helpless, and without ideas. Our work as worker coop developers is based on the insight that communities can indeed drive climate and economic action!

We can imagine ways to build beyond our existing systems. And this is already happening across the world: worker cooperatives, land trusts, credit unions, community-supported agriculture, fair trade, participatory budgeting, energy democracy, and other community-controlled economic solutions are ensuring that everyday people can be a part of a democratic decision-making process that determines what we produce to meet our collective needs, how we produce these things, and what is done with the profit created. Building on these approaches, we can take charge of climate impacts and mitigation as stakeholders. Action is thus no longer in the hands of boardrooms and shareholders and their interests of increasing profits over people and planet.

Community-controlled ecological solutions are based on cooperative economic practices and their associated values—self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, solidarity, honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

The seven co-op principles build on these values and ensure that co-op enterprises are committed to them in form and function. The seven principles are: 

1.    Voluntary and open membership

2.    Democratic member control

3.    Member economic participation

4.    Autonomy and independence

5.    Education, training, information

6.    Cooperation among cooperatives

7.    Concern for community

By their very nature, cooperatives create opportunities for jobs, livelihoods, and income generation. As people-centered enterprises with social goals they contribute to social equity and justice. Cooperatives are controlled by their members, playing a leading role not only at work but also in society and local communities. And cooperatives are most resilient and effective when they are organized in networks, including faith communities.

What does this look like in practice? How is Nashville building up sustainable and resilient communities with cooperatives? Here are three real-world examples of a growing ecosystem based on the principles of worker cooperatives, developed with the support of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development:

3rd Eye Trucking 

Three formerly incarcerated African American friends who were rebuilding their lives after reentry had each turned to low-wage, exploitative call center jobs or struggled with solo entrepreneurship to support their families. They met up at cooperative entrepreneurship training and were excited to learn that employees can collectively own and democratically control businesses. During discussions of what possibilities this business model might hold for individuals but also for the community to create second chance jobs, the foundation for 3rd Eye Co-op was laid.  With this greater vision and the desire for real community impact, 3rd Eye is adamant about reducing idling times, good truck maintenance, optimized routes and logistics to avoid high traffic areas as much as possible. They are also budgeting for a green energy fleet that can be introduced as soon as possible, particularly when expanding into local freight transport.

Nashville Foodscapes

A recent conversion to worker ownership, this landscaping company with six worker owners is transforming the way conventional urban yards are used. Because of the negative environmental impacts pesticides, fertilizers, water (over)usage, soil depletion, runoff, and erosion have had on our communities, Foodscapes is offering new holistic visions of yards with an abundance of seeds, fruits, and vegetables for human and animal consumption. In their designs they use sustainably sourced materials, local compost, and native plants. The co-op has also elected to do pro bono work to support community-led gardening projects.

Wolf Solar

A new community solar energy co-op is being formed to design and build a large-scale solar farm pilot project that will initially generate enough electricity for 150 households. This contrasts with many traditional utility companies (and co-ops), which are in the business of creating electricity with non-renewable resources or focus on nuclear energy as a seemingly safe and efficient choice. This cooperative’s mission is to make the development and construction of solar farms accessible for all communities, empowering low-income communities and rural areas to create sustainable alternatives to the utility monopolies that are prevalent.

Cooperatives, land trusts, energy democracy, and other community-controlled economic solutions propose fundamentally different logics and possibilities than their capitalist counterparts, but they cannot guarantee conditions and practices beyond the dominant paradigm. Unfortunately, we cannot co-op our way out of capitalism, although alternatives to capitalism and their networks are increasingly making a difference.

In sum, environmental justice must include concrete steps to reduce climate impacts along lines of race while also reducing existing wealth, health, and community power disparities. Another world is possible, and it is already in the making.

Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger is a community organizer, author, lecturer, and a co-founder of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development. She has been involved with worker rights advocacy as the community engagement coordinator with the Dallas AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and director of Texas New ERA Center/Jobs with Justice. Before working in nonprofit and cooperative development, Rosemarie worked in biotech research for many years and was a Montessori educator. She holds an M.S. degree from Eberhard Karls University (Germany) and an M.Ed. degree from Loyola University Maryland.

More Than Teamsters and Turtles: Organizing for a Livable Future

Francisco J. García Jr.

April 6, 2023

At the turn of the millennium, when I was 20 years old, I became enamored with the “Battle of Seattle,” a series of mass direct action protests lasting close to a week from November 28-Dec 3, 1999, focused on a meeting of the World Trade Organization. The L.A. Times described it as “a phantasamagorical mix of tens of thousands of demonstrators--husky red-jacketed steelworkers marching alongside costumed sea turtle impersonators, environmentalists and miners, human rights activists and family farmers--stood against the WTO, delaying its opening sessions and thrusting the once-obscure issue of fair trade onto the political center stage.” The Battle of Seattle coincided with my transition from activist to organizer, when I began to understand that creating tangible and lasting justice required more than a few rallies or marches—it required sustained collective action, and building collective power in order to shape long-haul alternatives. The ability of this coalition of seemingly different organizations to effectively shut down the deliberations of the WTO over global trade issues was significant. The images of labor unions, environment justice, and other groups united in common opposition to global trade policies that benefitted multinational corporations at the expense of people and the planet were powerful. This moment was captured beautifully and succinctly in a hand-made sign at one of the protests that read “Teamsters and Turtles Together at Last.”

The lasting impact of the protests in Seattle were significant for both social movements as well as governmental and corporate entities that were the focus of attention for their global trade policies affecting the environment and working people. In the eyes of movement organizers, new possibilities for channeling the international attention garnered in Seattle into local and national organizing connecting environmental-ecological and labor justice concerns were imagined. But where are we with this now over 20 years later?

In many ways, the landscape has transformed significantly when it comes to bridging environmental and economic justice concerns. The Sunrise Movement in particular has been instrumental in organizing around the Green New Deal, a major legislative-policy effort of the last 5 years to make a “just transition” away from fossil fuels and towards 100% renewable energy in a way that supports living wage jobs and sustainable development. While the Green New Deal legislation has not passed as proposed, it has shifted the local and national conversation and practices so that discussions about just transitions to clean energy are now more common. In August of 2022 Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which incorporated elements of the Green New Deal. In addition, local Green New Deal policies have taken off in cities across the country. One of the most ambitious local organizing plans taking place at the moment is the El Paso Climate Charter, which would create one the most progressive and comprehensive climate policies for any city in the United States, emphasizing public ownership of utilities, local living wage jobs, and a concrete commitment to renewal energy.

But is it enough? Is this a sign that “Teamsters and Turtles” are organizing together again? In the state of Tennessee, labor, environmental, faith, and community groups are beginning to see the need for organizing together against the corporate forces and the political leaders that have been bought out to support policies that attack workers and contribute to environmental destruction. There is also a growing recognition that for climate justice to truly be climate justice, it must be intersectional—it must also be racial, economic, and gender justice. It must take into account the experiences of the most marginalized in any given local context and at a regional, national, and global level.

Environmental justice and labor leaders in Tennessee are taking this seriously and have begun to collaborate on local projects. For instance, with the news that Tennessee will be a hub for the manufacturing of electric vehicles (with electric vehicle-related plants slated to open in Lebanon; near Memphis, and in Spring Hill), there’s a possibility that these plants can be a source of good-paying, unionized jobs in the region. While electric vehicles are not a climate justice panacea, they are an important step in the just transition process. And yet, we must demand more from our economic and political systems, and from ourselves, in order to build alternatives that can get us out of production and consumption patterns that are inherently exploitative and extractive.

Marquita Bradshaw, the Environmental Justice Chair of the TN Sierra Club, and Vonda McDaniel, the President of the Nashville/Middle TN Central Labor Council, offer that an essential principle of just transition is that “the most impacted communities must be at the forefront of the change” in order to not repeat past patterns allowing fossil fuel industry to make record profits while the health and welfare of already vulnerable communities and much of the planet is in peril. In this spirit, McDaniel, Bradshaw, and an emerging coalition called Tennessee for All are working with local environmental activists, labor leaders, and community members in Mason, a majority Black town near the Ford’s “Blue Oval City,” the 4,000 plus acre site where electric vehicle manufacturing will take place by 2025. A reported 5.6 billion dollars are being invested in this project alone. If the lessons of the Battle of Seattle are to remain with us, then we must remember that a growing segment of global capital is adjusting to the calls for renewal energy and a fossil free future; and anywhere that global capital is present, organized people are required to counter-balance the strength of capital to ensure that just outcomes for local communities and ecosystems are taken seriously. This is where the lessons of longer term organizing around community benefit agreements also come into play, in order to ensure that the local community benefits from local source hiring, organizing agreements with pathways to union jobs, affordable housing, and environmental mitigation plans for the development site.

Bradshaw and McDaniel state it well: “Our collective liberation lies in a livable planet and strong workers’ rights. We must put people first as we move forward with climate solutions.” If we are to find our way to a truly just ecological and economic future for people and planet, then everything must change. It’s going to take more than Teamsters and Turtles. Organizing is the lifeblood to make this happen and to build strong coalitions that bridge labor, environmental, faith, and community partners together. We must leverage everything at our disposal – our theological, economic, political, and social imaginations, accompanied with collective praxis, in order to make the just transition truly just.

Francisco García is a PhD Student in Theological Studies, with a minor in Ethics and Action at Vanderbilt University in the Graduate Department of Religion. He's also a Graduate Research Fellow at the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and serves part-time as an Assistant Chaplain at St. Augustine's Episcopal Chapel in Nashville. Francisco comes to Vanderbilt from Los Angeles, California, and grew up in a working-class, Roman Catholic, Mexican immigrant household. Francisco attended UCLA where he received a BA in Latin American Studies and Public Policy, and concurrent Masters degrees in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies. Francisco found his way to the Episcopal Church as a young adult, where he discerned a call in community to ordained ministry. He completed his M.Div. from the joint program at the Claremont School of Theology and the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, and was ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in June 2013. Prior to ordination, Francisco worked in the labor movement in various organizing, negotiating, and leadership capacities with workers in both the public and private sectors.