Teju is a Jamaican-American writer, geographer and poet. She is a political, racial, and environmental justice activist voicing the importance of sustainable and ecological futures. Whether consulting with progressive organizations, supporting community initiatives, or conducting equity training, Teju centers her work on mapping and documenting the Black experience. To learn more about her work, visit Teju’s website and Instagram. Every activist has their origin story, what ignited your will and drive to a life of political, racial and environmental justice? My grandmother on my mother’s side was an activist in her own right, though she would never describe herself that way. My parents are both activists, too. My mother is a writer and cultural activist. My father is an anthropologist, and activist. And so I was raised in a pro-Black, globalist, Afrocentric household, where my parents were in a lot of activist and artist communities in Oakland, California, where I spent most of my life as a child. One thing that’s telling about the Black experience, in particular, is the experience instilled in us by our parents at an early age. Why is it important for the Black community to empower one another through honest discussions of vulnerability and community initiatives? As much as we are resilient and resistant, we also have a lot of trauma and certain pathologies from being colonized. Especially within the Black community, not only empowering each other to heal and to reconnect to the land and nature, it’s especially important because the history of enslavement has made that relationship sometimes negative and exploitative. Connecting to nature is one way to empower ourselves within the Black community. It’s also really important to talk about intergenerational trauma. As much as my grandmother was an activist, there was a trauma that she passed down through the generations. And I think my mom tried really hard to combat that, but there’s only so much you can do because you’re also trying to keep your child safe in white America. When I think about empowerment in the Black community, I think about how we continue to survive and be safe, but also heal and try our best not to pass down traumas. How do we think about colorism, family abuse, and gentrification—holding onto our houses, and understanding financial stability and security, which have all been taken away from us continually over the last centuries. This past April, you spoke on For The Wild discussing how gentrification is a result of white supremacist values. What are your thoughts on a housing movement based on a rejection of the construct that any one person should own this earth’s land? Gentrification is a global issue. It’s not just happening here in Oakland. It’s also happening in Brooklyn. It’s also happening in Cartagena, Columbia. It’s also happening in Brixton, which is a historically Caribbean neighborhood in London. And it’s also happening in Matonge, which is an African quarter in Brussels. It’s wherever there are people of color, or just working class people that live in a certain area that has been devalued and divested from for decades, and then purchased for cheap, and built up. And then those same people are displaced and pushed out for more middle class, usually more white people. So “housing is a human right” is not only relevant as a pretense to combating gentrification, but just the fact that residential segregation has been designed in this country from its inception. The dispossession of land from Black people has happened over and over again to make sure that Black people are not able to build power. When you don’t have housing, when you don’t have a safe place to sleep, when you don’t have a safe place to eat, you can’t build power, and you can’t really organize. I cannot agree with you more. And I think another extension of social justice is the impact of learning. You touched on how intergenerational trauma is the root of suffering for Black people throughout the centuries. This is a time where we need to let our people know that every single one of us are entitled to these rights we deserve. So in addition to you being an activist, you’re also a dedicated poet. In your poem, “Invisible Hands”, you wrote a verse that reads: we have an opportunity to refashion our existence I mean redistribute our ignorance into resilience I mean reimagine sustainable futures, expand our consciousness I mean, we, the people, are only a few steps away from liberation We, the people, here and now can wipe the tears of the next generation I believe this is a momentous opportunity, for Black people especially, to unlearn certain conscious ways of thinking that have been instilled in our people. If you are comfortable sharing, what ignorances are you unlearning in an effort to reimagine sustainable futures? I did my masters in Europe and I was talking to one of the other people in my program, who was from the Netherlands. We were talking about social housing, and I sort of said, “social housing should be for people who are low income, who can’t afford to pay for housing.” And he said that in the Netherlands social housing was supposed to be for everyone because if everyone benefits from it, then people who pay taxes (which is everyone) would feel like it’s important. That was a really important reframing for me—something like social housing, or even social welfare, which we heavily identify with poor people, and specifically poor Black people in this country, even though the people who use welfare the most are white people, usually poor white mothers. The idea that social housing is a public good for everyone, and that everyone should invest in it because we all benefit from it was a quick way that I changed my perspective of housing. Housing as not just being important for low income people, but housing as a human right for all. A lot of my learning has to do with making sure that I’m reading people from different countries, cultural backgrounds, contexts, and disciplines. I read biologists, and geologists. These perspectives helped me to unlearn some of the things that I don’t even realize were decided in my mind until I read something or two sentences and I’m like, “Oh right. It doesn’t have to be that way.” Housing as not just being important for low income people, but housing as a human right for all. I’m kind of guilty of that myself. I’m trying to be more deliberate in unlearning the ethnocentric ways instilled in me by society, so I appreciate you saying that for my own encouragement to continue learning and unlearning. You also wrote a very poignant essay in your The Black Urbanist Blog highlighting Black people’s resiliency during crisis and our right to take up space, “even when pushed out of the places our ancestors made.” What would you want white people to take away from your writing? I want people who identify as white to understand that all of the systems of racism, ableism, sexism and patriarchy that exist in this country are not new. They have been formed by design for them. When I write about the experiences of Black people, specifically about how Black geographies and the way that Black people relate to space, there’s no way I can do that without having a historic perspective about the ways space has been designed to continue to displace us. Dispossess us. Subjugate us by power. My hope is that when white people read my writing, they recognize that Blackness is a historical legacy and lineage of resistance that has been happening. And so how do we bend this linear notion of time to recognize the different ways that they’ve designed a society that is not sustainable? A society that is anti-Black. That should help us realize that we can design a society that is sustainable. A society where Black liberation can prevail and be present. Black liberation is, I think, one of the only ways this country will transition and transform into a just, equitable society. Especially because Black liberation is intertwined with environmental regeneration. Black bodies being degraded and enslaved was happening while the environment was being degraded and exploited during plantation slavery; so these are not separate things. I encourage people to educate themselves, go out into the streets, organize, and ask black activists and artists, what they need for support. Make sure you’re connecting these dots and articulating these injustices.
