Points of Unity

Energy, science, and technology are fundamentally political.

The idea of “progress” is not neutral, and the direction of dominant technology is usually shaped by those with inherent power and privilege. We must be critical of who is designing technology and energy systems, what sociopolitical forces influence their decisions, and how they impact people. 

Climate justice is social justice; the only just way to address the climate crisis is to address colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and the other systems underpinning it.

MIT’s very existence depends on violence, theft, and displacement. MIT sits on stolen Wôpanâak land (as well as the land of eighty-one other Indigenous Nations), acts as a major gentrifier in the area, proliferates the military-industrial-academic complex, and takes hundreds of millions of dollars for defense and fossil fuel projects. The past and present of the so-called United States are ones of genocide through European colonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and ecological destruction. It is impossible to fight for climate justice without materially addressing these systems of oppression. We must push for full divestment and dissociation from industries of destruction. We call for the abolition of the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the prison system, and the police state. We want the entire settler colony of the so-called United States to be dismantled, Land Back to all Indigenous Nations, and reparations for centuries of slavery and genocide. 

Nothing is inevitable. We have the power to create a future that uplifts everyone, and we refuse to let corporations control the bounds of our imagination.

We can imagine a world without the expansion of data centers, militaries, and oil infrastructure. We must resist false solutions and technodeterminism, centering our politics on the real structural drivers behind climate collapse. 

Transparent decision-making is a necessary tool in holding institutions accountable.

Time and time again at MIT, we've seen the administration make promises with regards to divestment and funding and then either contort or walk back on them entirely. We’ve seen professors and labs take funding without reporting it to the MIT community, hiding their complicity. The more information available to us, the more accurately we are able to fight against climate injustice.

Climate justice must center the most impacted.

We must acknowledge our role as MIT students and ground our work in the broader climate justice movement of the area. We work to address the inequitable distribution between responsibility for and consequences of climate change. As students, we often uphold the violent machinery of MIT. It is our responsibility to contribute to the ongoing struggle against MIT’s violence and follow the lead of local communities.