#BlackOutTuesday
Ithaca Children’s Garden stands in solidarity with those fighting for racial justice and against police violence.
We recognize that a great amount of work is needed to dismantle the systems of violence and white supremacy we live in and that ICG cannot achieve its mission of bringing nature to every child without addressing issues of racial justice and police violence. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves and our audiences on these issues and to promote the voices and work of Black people in our community and beyond.
We urge you to join us in reading, among others, the work of Dr. Corliss Outley and Dr. Harrison Pinckney whose seminal essay “Playing While Black” addresses the impact of race on the recreation of Black youth, Dr. J. Drew Lanham whose work interrogates the influence of culture on perceptions of nature and his experiences of racism and white supremacy in nature, and Dr. Carolyn Finney whose book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors unpacks the ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America.
LINKS TO WORK CITED ABOVE:
Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney.
“Playing While Black” by Harrison Pinckney IV, Corliss Outley, Aishia Brown & Daniel Theriault. Watch Dr. Pinckney and Dr. Outley here.
“9 Rules of the Black Birdwatcher” by J. Drew Lanham. Watch a video companion of the article here.
We also urge the ICG community to engage with and support Black and Brown led organizations in our community:
- The Dorothy Cotton Institute
- Latino Civic Association of Tompkins County
- Black Lives Matter – Ithaca
- Greater Ithaca Activities Center
- Southside Community Center
- Multicultural Resource Center
- Alliance of Families for Justice