Sangha Means Community

Dear Friends,

Just a few months ago I wrote how we will continue to focus on our conservation work – work that takes time to yield results and requires us to have faith that our environmental plight will improve for the better. (If you haven’t already, you can read it here). Now I feel compelled to write a more forthright piece. I’m generally loath to write explicitly about politics, but I feel that I have a duty to our community, and to myself, to express honestly my fears and my anger at what has amounted to a coup of our nation. 

Our Sangha, our community, is made up of a tremendously diverse group of people: people of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities, immigration status, sexuality and gender identity, those with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and experiences and backgrounds. I’m enormously proud that in any given month we can work with several different faith groups, students of all ages, and volunteers, some of whom are novices and some who are experts in their own right. Many of our volunteers are currently or are retired from public service careers at the federal, state, or local level. This diversity has made the Sangha what it is today: a critical resource for local ecological restoration and plant conservation in the DC area and abroad.

We couldn’t do what we do without this extended community of volunteers, students, colleagues in the public sector, and of course our own staff. But we cannot effectively go about protecting habitat and conserving native plants with constant attacks against our wider community. Specifically I’m referencing attempts to round up and deport families, attacks on trans youth and adults, wholesale demolition of federal agencies and attacks on public servants, rampant climate change denial, the demolition of data and information from federal websites that we used to guide our work (including environmental justice tools we use to for our Plant Grants), and tariffs will undoubtedly make our work more expensive and harder to accomplish. I am equal parts furious and terrified of what the future may hold.

I’m not inclined towards catastrophizing, but I’m afraid for my own safety as a publicly-out trans woman. I worry that my friends and colleagues at EPA, USAID, NOAA and elsewhere won’t have jobs anymore – or that those very agencies may no longer exist. I’m devastated for the students who have volunteered with us who have discussed their LGBTQ+ identities or immigration status and what the future holds for them.

But this isn’t just about me and my feelings. Already the attacks on conservation work have begun. Climate change data is being lost. The Department of Interior is exploring undoing hundreds of square miles of protected lands by rescinding National Monument declarations. Federal grant money, such as funding from the Inflation Reduction Act is, apparently, being frozen. If we are going to address the challenges that conservation faces in the near future, we must stand together in solidarity as a community.

For that, we’re definitely up for the challenge – I have infinite faith in the staff and volunteers here! But we cannot do it alone. And it’s not fair to expect that we ask others for help if we’re not first willing to provide help for our own community. To whatever extent we can, I promise that the Earth Sangha will always be a refuge for anyone concerned about our planet and its natural areas, regardless of disability status, skin color, ethnicity or nationality, sexuality, gender identity, age, or background. We will not comply with any discriminatory orders, and we will endeavor – as we always have – to treat everyone with dignity and respect as we focus on taking care of each other and the planet we all call home.

Please stay safe and know that you always have a place with us, with your Sangha.

-Maddie Bright

Executive Director

Earth Sangha