{"id":12945,"date":"2024-07-11T15:33:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T15:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=12945"},"modified":"2024-07-11T15:33:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T15:33:51","slug":"nature-is-for-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/11\/nature-is-for-all-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature is For ALL of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ben Jealous<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Ben Jealous<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Black people face enough barriers to enjoying the outdoors. Self-defeating stereotypes should not be one of them.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Rodney Smith\u2019s uncle invited him to go to Sedona for a hike, Rodney, who is Black, said to himself, \u201cHiking? That sounds like something white people do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodney went on the hike. And it changed his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved everything about it. I loved the scenery. I loved being outdoors. I had that wonderment of a kid\u2026 I said, \u2018this is my new thing,\u2019 and I got out and started hiking on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was following Rodney\u2019s release from prison in October 2021, after serving 9 years on a 12-year sentence. Rodney says, \u201cI was forced to reconsider everything about my life, about my thinking, about the man I was and the man I wanted to become. I realized that a lot of what I had been doing was because it was expected, and it was what everyone else was doing. I hadn\u2019t really figured out who I was and when I got out, I told myself I was going to start trying new things.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did start trying new things. In addition to taking up hiking, he started eating a plant-based diet \u2013 partially inspired by the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Bible, who \u201clooked healthier and better nourished\u201d after 10 days of eating only vegetables than any of the young men who ate from the king\u2019s table. On his ninth day of eating vegan, Rodney was on line at a store describing to someone how he felt \u201cbrighter and more energized\u201d from his diet.<\/p>\n

A woman overheard and invited him to a community garden in South Phoenix, where Rodney is from.<\/p>\n

Again, Rodney thought to himself, \u201cthis couldn\u2019t be for me.\u201d He says, \u201cgardening seemed like something for Martha Stewart\u2026 a suburban soccer mom activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when he arrived at the garden, he was immediately overwhelmed by the beauty and the connection he felt.<\/p>\n

When Rodney received his prison sentence, he did not cry. When he was inside and his father and both his grandmothers passed away, he did not cry. When he opened himself up to the connection with nature he felt in the garden, run by Phoenix\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>Tiger Mountain Foundation<\/a>, he finally cried.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard, \u2018if you\u2019re not crying, you\u2019re not healing\u2019 \u2026 I found a lot of healing in the garden. That feeling of connection made me say, \u2018oh my gosh, I feel like this is exactly where I\u2019m supposed to be.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Rodney does community outreach for the Tiger Mountain Foundation, which works to empower communities through shared-use community gardens and other cultivated “spaces of opportunity.” And he volunteers with his church\u2019s Adventurers Club, part of the church\u2019s youth ministry.<\/p>\n

When Rodney left prison, he felt like he could not go back home to South Phoenix, a particularly under-resourced part of the city, because there was nothing good there for him. Now he says, \u201cwith the garden spaces I work in, I don\u2019t leave South Phoenix \u2026 and I am one of the community leaders helping to provide resources and opportunity to people who are like I was. I see people come to the garden and shed those tears just like I did. I see people struggling with anxiety and depression and addiction, they come to the garden and they find tranquility and peace. People find their sobriety in the garden; people find their purpose in the garden.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know that many people of color, and especially Black people, face unique barriers to enjoying nature. We often have less access to parks and green spaces due to where we live. And we face discrimination. You might recall the story of\u00a0<\/a>Christian Cooper, the Black bird watcher<\/a>\u00a0who had the police called on him for simply requesting that a white woman leash her dog \u2013 which she was legally required to do \u2013 in New York\u2019s Central Park. The gravity of that racist incident, in which the woman who called the police lied and said Cooper was threatening her, was driven home by George Floyd\u2019s murder at the hands of the police in Minnesota later that same day, Memorial Day 2020.<\/p>\n

For all the barriers Black people face, we should not let social stigmas and stereotypes infect our own minds and keep us from the benefits of nature and being outdoors. That is one reason Rodney Smith\u2019s story is so important. It not only speaks to the healing power of nature, but to the power of challenging absurd stereotypes about where different kinds of people \u201cbelong.\u201d Rodney Smith stepped outside his comfort zone to challenge stereotypes that said nature and outdoor activities were not for people like him.<\/p>\n

There are opportunities to connect with nature everywhere in the country, even in big cities. For example, the\u00a0<\/a>Chicago Park District\u2019s Outdoor and Environmental Education Unit<\/a>\u00a0has nature programs for all ages that include camping, fishing, and gardening. Its Nature Oasis program provides outdoor experiences and environmental education to nearly 18,000 city residents a year. Another option might be finding a local community organization like Phoenix\u2019s Tiger Mountain Foundation or connecting with an outings group through your Sierra Club state chapter or other environmental organizations. And thanks to important federal initiatives, like the US Department of Agriculture\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>$1 billion urban forestry investment<\/a>\u00a0to expand access to trees and green spaces (made possible by President Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act), even more opportunities could be on the way.<\/p>\n

Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, former President and CEO of the NAACP and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Jealous \u00a0Black people face enough barriers to enjoying the outdoors. Self-defeating stereotypes should not be one of them. When Rodney Smith\u2019s uncle invited him to go to Sedona for a hike, Rodney, who is Black, said to himself, \u201cHiking? That sounds like something white people do.\u201d Rodney went on the hike. And it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[238],"class_list":["post-12945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12946,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12945\/revisions\/12946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12945"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=12945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}