As politicians, diplomats, and corporate representatives gathered in Paris Wednesday in the second week of United Nations-brokered COP21 climate talks, grassroots groups from the frontlines of environmental destruction set their sights on a different audience: people imprisoned at a migrant detention center nearby.
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Bearing a message of solidarity, and denunciation of xenophobia and racism, Indigenous, migrant, and black communities from the Americas joined with migrant and refugee justice groups from France to rally at the facility—near the Hippodrome de Vincennes in the east of Paris—singing, drumming, and chanting within earshot of those locked up.
“We are here to show that when the Northern countries do all they can to raise physical and mental border[s], we the people from all over the world—from Jackson, Mississippi to Fresnes in Ile-de-France—we stand for climate and social justice and against xenophobia, Islamophobia and negrophobia,” declared Almamy Kanouté, a French grassroots activist, in a statement released Wednesday.
The demonstration stems from an international civil society push at COP21 to expose the links between racism, global inequality, war, and climate change—and highlight the critical role that the people most impacted must play in creating a better world.
What’s more, Wednesday’s rally comes at a time when European and U.S. governments are further restricting their borders and criminalizing people fleeing war and poverty while, at the same time, driving the militarism and climate change that many argue is fueling this displacement.
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