In the tiny village in New York’s Hudson Valley where I reside, there are 1,135 people. The Village of Kinderhook is just one municipality out of the 16,411 self-governing communities across the U.S. with less than 10,000 residents.

Like other small municipalities, the structure of government is straightforward: a mayor, four trustees, a code-enforcement officer, a village clerk, a deputy village clerk, a department of public works, planning and zoning boards, and a historic preservation commission. In 2014, New York State rolled out a Climate Smart Communities initiative to assist large and small communities in pursuing actions to minimize the risks of climate change, reduce greenhouse gases, and commit to building a resilient, low-emission future.

To the surprise of many residents, the village’s elected officials decided that, unlike some other nearby communities at the time, it was important for the village to participate in the state’s initiative. A small group of concerned and determined Kinderhook residents stepped up. They formed a volunteer task force that would help the village contribute to the state’s ambitious goals.

To date, Kinderhook counts itself as one of 285 New York State communities to have adopted the Climate Smart Communities pledge. Those communities represent more than 8.3 million people – or 43 percent of the state’s population.

Adopting a Climate Crisis Resolution

At the village’s February 2020 board meeting, following discussions about nuts-and-bolts issues like snow removal, stop signs, and building-code violations, Kinderhook’s elected officials went a step further.  They adopted a Climate Crisis Resolution.

Knowing all five of the individuals who took this vote, I imagine that they probably didn’t see their “yes” votes as a moment of personal courage. But I saw the vote in a different light. At this critical juncture, when the environmental policies of the federal government are being driven backwards in the most dangerous and destructive manner, five elected officials—with differing viewpoints on local issues and varying political affiliations—stepped up and voted unanimously and yes, courageously, to adopt a symbolic declaration acknowledging the global climate emergency. Residents in attendance raised no objections. The moment seemed almost offhand– like a foregone conclusion. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

If one were to look back at the arc of the four-decade-long struggle for consensus on the reality of the cause-and-effect relationship between carbon emissions and global climate change, nothing in this struggle for the future has been—or still is—a foregone conclusion. In some quarters, even acknowledging the problem is still a difficult political and philosophical road to travel.

The Village of Kinderhook is only the fourth governing body in New York State (New York City, the Town of Saugerties, and Ulster County) and the seventy-eighth governing body in the U.S. to have officially passed a declaration of climate emergency. The reality is that only eight percent of Americans live in a community that has affirmed the seriousness of the climate task we’re facing.

If it is true that recognizing a problem is the first step in solving it, then the record of the world beyond our borders is more reassuring than the current record of where Americans land on the issue of climate change. Across the globe, more than 1,300 governing bodies in 25 countries—representing 809 million people—have declared a climate emergency and dedicated themselves and their governments to climate mobilization and driving down emissions to protect humanity and the natural world. The Village of Kinderhook should take pride in being counted among them.

Village of Kinderhook’s 2020 Climate Crisis Resolution

Whereas, climate change poses a real and increasing threat to our community and our way of life.

Whereas, adoption of the New York State Climate Smart Communities Pledge included a commitment to engage in an ongoing process of climate action.

Whereas, the ability to access potential funding and other resources for rapid mobilization to mitigate climate change can result in economic, environmental, and social benefit to our community.

We therefore hereby declare that a state of climate emergency exists.

[Image: Governing bodies, worldwide, that have declared a Climate Emergency. Searchable image at https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/world-map]

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Entering the contemporary art space located just a few minutes’ walk from my home in the Hudson Valley last fall, I had no idea what to expect. Gallerist Jack Shainman had just opened an exhibition by the Botswana-born artist Meleko Mokgosi. Entitled “Democratic Intuition,” Mokgosi’s opus fills all three floors of the stunning 30,000-square-foot building called The School. The artist’s massive paintings feature jarring mash-ups of people, places, objects, and animals that draw from the lives of the people of southern Africa. To write that the exhibition fills the space barely captures how the paintings burst off of the walls, confronting viewers with image overload and leaving the visitor with the challenge of coping with the unexpected discomfort the images conjure.

Mokgosi’s paintings are gorgeous, with saturated colors that sting the eyes. At least one of the pictorial pieces is paired with a canvas covered with dense, hand-written verbiage that maps the artist’s philosophical explorations. In that piece and others, Mokgosi makes visible his desire to reveal in painstaking detail his underlying thought process. But unlike the work of many other contemporary artists, Mokgosi’s powerful imagery requires no verbal explanation. In truth, Mokgosi gives the game away in a modestly scaled, straight-on self-portrait that the gallery’s curators had the wisdom to hang in a light-filled back-hall space that allows the achingly honest and unsparing self-image to stand on its own.

It is there, in the quiet of that space, that Mokgosi’s intention is laid bare. The artist’s eyes, staring straight ahead, burn into the viewers’ eyes with unblinking confrontation. Mokgosi’s expression seems to hide a complex mixture of tightly held messages. A polite invitation is not one of them. Instead, his expression signals a demand to those of us who take for granted our place in a predominantly white, privileged, first-world society to step outside our self-imposed indifference to the lives of minorities, people of color, the poor, and the disadvantaged. Mokgosi implores us to open our eyes. “We are here,” he demands. “Look at us. See us.”

Mokgosi’s paintings were still churning around in my brain when I happened upon reporting and devastating video footage from ProPublica about the tragic death of Carlos Gregoria Hernandez Vasquez. Carlos, a sixteen-year-old Guatemalan taken into custody by ICE, died of flu-related complications in the bathroom of a quarantine cell at a border station in Weslaco, Texas, in the early hours of May 20, 2019. The crime — and the shame — is that Carlos didn’t die because he was ill with a 103-degree fever. He died because he was denied proper care. He died because the guards at the facility acted as if his life was of so little value that they ignored instructions to check on his condition every few hours. He died because the border-patrol station lacked the proper facilities, personnel, and adequate funds to care for sick, quarantined children. He died because the Trump administration made the cynical and cruel decision to punish children like Carlos whose parents’ only crime was to make the heart-rending decision to send their loved ones alone on a dangerous journey to the U.S. border in a desperate bid to find a safer life.

Carlos is one of twenty-three immigrants – including two children under the age of ten — who have died in custody since the Trump administration came into office. In the end, the sad truth is that Carlos Gregoria Hernandez Vasquez and the others died because we just didn’t bother to see them.

Meleko Mokgosi’s “Democratic Intuition.” Saturdays, 11am to 6pm, until Spring 2020 at The School I Jack Shainman Gallery, 25 Broad Street, Kinderhook, New York.

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