Advance Praise
The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights challenge of our time. The most devastating effects are visited on the poor, those with no involvement in creating the problem. A deep injustice. Among its many treasures, this book offers solutions that lead with equity for the benefit of all.
—Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus, Cape Town, South Africa
Carl Anthony has been ahead of the curve for decades, and, as this book makes clear, that’s exactly where he remains. If you want to understand why today’s intersections between environment, race, and class are so crucial, then this is the book to read. And if you want to learn how to make change, then it’s the book to dog-ear and underline!
—Bill McKibben, Cofounder, 350.org; author, End of Nature
The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race is a profound memoir that captures and grapples with some of the most critical issues of our time. Truly essential reading.
—john a. powell, JD, Director, Haas Institute for a Fair & Inclusive Society; Professor of Law, African American & Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley
No one has done more to bring forth the conjunction of cosmology, ecology, and justice than Carl Anthony. This book lights the path forward in remarkable ways. We are all in his debt.
—Mary Evelyn Tucker, PhD, Yale University Forum on Religion and Ecology; coauthor, Journey of the Universe
Carl Anthony combines two qualities rarely found in one person. He has been an extraordinary visionary and he is a pragmatic, unflinching realist. He has been constantly ahead of his time, virtually coining the concept of environmental justice, and then brilliantly acting upon injustice throughout his life. You will find answers here to questions you may not have even considered and insights that will vividly display the roots, causes, and antidotes to our endemic racism. Most importantly, you will see the world through the eyes of one of the most wonderful men you will ever know or meet. This is a tutorial. By all means, take the class.
—Paul Hawken, environmentalist, entrepreneur; author, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Carl Anthony has devoted his life’s work to finding and connecting the dots that link environment, race, cities, and justice. This new work, The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race, collects his decades of research, on-the-ground experience, collaborations with others, and lessons learned into a compendium that is at once history, analysis, and tool kit for advancing an agenda for equity and justice. Carl Anthony’s wisdom, voice, and experience are gifts to activists and advocates for racial, economic, and environmental justice. Read this book, discuss its content, and take action.
—Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO, PolicyLink
Carl Anthony has long been a pioneer in the fields of environmental justice, urban design, and regional equity—and so, it is little surprise that he pioneers once again in offering a compelling new way to tell a powerful tale of change and transformation. Gracefully flipping between personal experience, intellectual ruminations, and play-by-play accounts of building new social movements, he offers a remarkably wise book that grips and engages you at every turn. His humble telling of his own remarkable story reminds us that a life worth lived is one that contributes to uncovering a new narrative of hope—and his evident commitment to social justice, concern for the life of the planet, and sense of the long sweep of time will inspire others to find new allies and new narratives in the struggle for sustainability.
—Manuel Pastor, Professor, Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California; Director, USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
The epic journey through what Carl Anthony calls “deep time” starts with the “flaring forth” of the Big Bang, weaves across millennia of achievements and traumas of human civilization, chronicles his own awakening in the civil rights movement and shaping the environmental justice movement, and continues to illuminate the existential challenges of our time. What he terms the “hidden narrative of race” is not so much invisible, as so finely encoded into the very essence of the human experience that it can defy human perception. We are blessed that Carl has applied his unique and magnificent cosmovision to not only reinterpret this Universe Story, but to reinspire all of our dedication to the Great Work of achieving social and environmental justice.
—Jonathan K. London, PhD, Director, Center for Regional Change, University of California, Davis; Chair, Community Development Graduate Group
This book maps the life of an extraordinary man. It weaves together a journey of self-discovery, a search for the roots of racial injustice, and an education in the shaping of cities. Along the way, Anthony makes the unprecedented leap of grasping the urban environment as a crucial dimension of the black experience and the struggle for liberation. Early on, Anthony realized the importance of creating a new story about people and places that could inspire struggles at every scale, from the neighborhood to the nation to the world; and what he came up with was revolutionary—a unified vision of the struggles for racial justice, equitable cities, and saving the earth.
—Richard Walker, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley; author, The Country in the City
Carl Anthony has for many years been working on how to integrate a range of sources, from his own personal experience to the history of the universe. Now, he shares with us his carefully considered analysis of how we can transform our understandings of the earth and the cities in which we live, better achieve climate and environmental justice, and foster the full participation of people of all races in a sustainable society.
—Lowell Gustafson, PhD, President, International Big History Association; Professor, Political Science, Villanova University
I have been inspired by Carl Anthony ever since I encountered his work and, later, him in the late 1990s. The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race culminates and weaves together the interconnected strands of African American history, environmental justice, the city, and the collective revisioning of the great work of healing relationship to Earth and one another. This book contains a priceless narrative needed for any ecological and/or social justice activist, practitioner, urban planner, or scholar seeking a bigger story to restoration.
—Jeanine M. Canty, PhD, Professor and Chair, Environmental Studies and Environmental/Resilient Leadership, Naropa University
In The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race, Carl Anthony crafts a powerfully expansive evolutionary journey and vision. His is a story rooted in the transformative rethinking and revisioning of identity and place.
—Belvie Rooks, producer, The House on Coco Road
Carl Anthony’s clarity and vision is here at last for us to drawn upon, and it’s not a moment too soon. We’ve long needed a new story of race and place, and that’s what The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race gives us. Hallelujah! Carl Anthony offers us a lifetime of visionary leadership and wisdom from a multiracial viewpoint, the only way we can understand our world now, much less our place in it. A must read for anyone who cares about our fragile future!
—China Galland, author, Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves
I have followed Carl Anthony’s significant contribution and leadership for many years. I know him as a tireless champion of the cause of racial and environmental justice, always with a recognition of the challenge and necessity to create a world that works for all irrespective of racial, ethnic, or religious identity. This book is the story of his extraordinary life and work.
—David Korten, Cofounder, YES! Magazine; author, When Corporations Rule the World
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