As the executive board of the Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group (HDGC-SG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), we stand in solidarity with our colleagues and students, the Black Geographies Specialty Group, and protestors speaking out against the current and historic systems of racism that underpin police and state violence against Black people in the United States. This statement was sparked by the horrifying police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the death of Ahmaud Arbery, and follow the deaths of too many other Black people at the hands of police, particularly women and trans people whose deaths do not garner such attention. We recognize and appreciate similar statements made by other AAG specialty groups, universities, and other higher education organizations, and add our voice to these statements of solidarity and calls for an end to police violence against communities of color.
Members of the HDGC-SG explore the relationship and feedback between biophysical changes and socio-economic processes in diverse communities around the world. These explorations include recognizing the ways that political systems, economic drivers, and demographics shape our physical environment, as well as the disproportionate negative effects of climate change on communities of color that intersect with countless social, economic, racial, and gender-based injustices. As a collective, we condemn all discrimination and systems of injustice, and we stand with people of color in their battle for rights to safety, access, recognition, livelihood, and future.
We must not only denounce racism wherever we encounter it but also take positive and sustained action to facilitate structural changes to address inequalities and to dismantle systems that maintain and enable racism. We will do this through a combination of short-term actions and ongoing longer-term processes of engagement and re-learning. For example, at next year's AAG annual meeting, we will hold a workshop to create bylaws for our specialty group that explicitly address increasing diversity and inclusion of our HDGC community and beyond. We are exploring the creation of a student award to support anti-racist scholarship and to provide financial support for BIPOC students to attend an AAG meeting of their choice. We will partner with other specialty groups to pursue larger anti-racist AAG efforts. We will be sending out a survey to both solicit your thoughts and ideas and to better understand the diversity of our HDGC community. We welcome other suggestions via this survey.
As educators, mentors, and leaders in our field, we must consider what steps we can take to promote diversity and combat racism in our higher education systems and disciplines. Some suggestions include: donating to an organization working against racism, such as the NAACP, The Movement for Black Lives, or the Bill Anderson Fund to support diversity in disasters science education; signing a petition, writing, or speaking to political representatives and university leaders about defunding both community and campus police; encouraging your departments and research groups to have conversations about race and racism and organizing anti-racism and diversity trainings; and continuing to educate ourselves about how to be effective allies and accomplices. Resources for ongoing education include the Black Geographies Reading List, the Decolonising Science Reading List, and the An Antiracist Reading List. We encourage members to share other resources or steps that we as a specialty group can collectively take.
In addition to the suggestions above, let us check in on our neighbors, colleagues, friends and families. Let's make sure they know they are seen, safe, supported, that their voices are elevated, and their experiences are heard and trusted. We will no longer turn a blind eye. We vow to be more receptive to the needs of our members and communities in the hope that we can continue learning with and from each other about how to resist all forms of oppression and to actively create a more just world. We are committed to creating a specialty group that aspires to be actively anti-racist, that supports BIPOC scholars and activists, and which promotes diversity, inclusivity and equity in the scholarship and community of the HDGC specialty group.
In solidarity,
Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group Board