Cops plus climate change equals...?

What do climate change refugees and the CHOP have in common?

An essay in Dissent magazine says police violence will be the common element. As the writer put it, “[I]t’s a simple question of whom and what the political system chooses to protect” during a crisis.

Protester demands on the boarded-up SPD east precinct building, June 2020

Remember the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest area (CHOP)? Activists protesting police violence and George Floyd’s murder occupied the streets around the east precinct, demanding that the Seattle Police Department be defunded. One reason for the demand: police pose a deadly threat to Black lives, not a source of aid.

Police face Black Lives Matter supporters on May 30, 2020. Credit: Kelly Kline/Flickr

Considering this violent history, writer Olufemi O. Taiwo predicts “climate apartheid” will increase. Police will leave refugees to risk death during future climate disasters, while officers protect the powerful.

National Guard troops, Seattle police and protesters on June 3, 2020. Credit: Bruce Englehardt/Wikimedia Commons

At first I thought this argument was kind of a stretch, but then I realized my collage “TODAY, America. Today,” tells a similar narrative. I pointed out people of color usually suffer the most in a catastrophe — citizens as well as migrants.

I wish I could be more optimistic: please, please, please let me and this essay be wrong. But knowing our response to Hurricane Katrina (and before that, the Great Mississippi Flood), that essay writer in Dissent sounds more like Cassandra than Chicken Little.