I don't know who needs to hear this, but ...

Dismantling structures that enable racism, or environmental degradation, or climate change has a second part that's lost on too many on left:

Replacing them with new structures.

This is not a metaphor. I mean stuff that gets built.

"Structural" racism is not just "people saying and doing mean things to Black people."

The causes of climate change are not concepts like "capitalism" or "corporatism."

The physical environment - the built environment - underpins racism. And it directly causes climate change.

Highways are among the most famous "structures" of racism. We should replace them with not-racist modes of transport. Take your pick, I don't care (cars can't qualify), but it requires construction. Concrete. Steel. Trains. Bicycle highways. Bus lanes, batteries, catenaries ...

We also need people to build housing. A lot of it. And it needs to be in our cities - not over there, down by the contaminated shipyard, but right here -- in walking/biking/rapid bus distance of All. The. Things.

Carpenters, electricians, glazers, roofers, bricklayers.

Similarly, climate change will not be "solved" by malthusianism or "anti-capitalism." We need trillions of dollars in new, zero-carbon infrastructure. We need ways to generate the money, and then pay people who build stuff to build it.

Too many on the left can't get wrap their heads around the fact that the "structures" that are impeding racial AND climate justice aren't ideas. At one point they were!! Someone had to think, "Hey if we build a highway through the Black neighborhood, we can win at racism!"

But now, these things are physical objects, the REAL statues and monuments to racism and white supremacy.

No, it is not remotely a coincidence that the Venn diagram of the structures of racism has substantial overlap with the structures of climate destruction.

We have always relied on dumping our pollution on the disenfranchised and disempowered.

We have always taken for granted that our conveniences come at the expense of human suffering that is deliberately hidden from us.

These structures stand directly between us, and justice.

Tear down these monuments to fear and oppression and racism.

But then, replace them with actual, built things that say - not in words, but in physical, tangible space - "Never again."