A unique gathering of 130 Atlanta civic, academic, and faith leaders recently gathered to explore “Our Shared Planet” at the Kendeda building on the Georgia Tech campus.
That location was intentional. The gathering on June 20 was able to see one of the greenest buildings in the country. It actually generates more energy than it uses, and it also captures more water than it consumes. In short, it’s a regenerative building — a living example of how we can address issues of climate change that we’re facing.
“We are the first generation to feel the impact of global warming,” said Munir Meghjani, event curator for the 2024 Day of Pluralism and a volunteer with the Ismaili Council for the Southeastern United States. “And we may be the last generation to be able to do something about it.”
Dr. Nadya Merchant, who also was an event curator for the 2024 Day of Pluralism and a volunteer with the Ismaili Council in the Southeast, said the hope was to unite people and implement solutions.
“This event is both an incubator for collaboration and an inspiration to create tidal waves of change for ourselves and our communities, workplaces, places of worship, and neighborhoods,” Merchant said in a statement.
It was the second “Day of Pluralism” event. The first occurred in 2019 at Atlanta’s City Hall, and then Covid happened. The 2024 event provided a broad array of speakers, musicians, artist and comedians who weighed in on the topic of the sustainability of the planet. Attendees represented leaders from multiple faiths, professions and walks of life.
As Meghjani introduced the evening, he shared a comment that Shan Arora, director of the Kendeda Building, had told him before the gathering.
“Shan reminded me that the Earth is not the one in trouble,” Meghjani said. “We are the ones in trouble.”
Arora reinforced that belief.
“Our desire to consume is insatiable,” Aurora said. “We can shift from a consumer economy to a regenerative economy.”
Other speakers included Jacqueline Echols, president of the South River Watershed Alliance, who has been seeking to protect the South River corridor from sewer spills and overdevelopment.
“The environment is my passion,” said Echols, who presented an analysis of how DeKalb County was addressing the South River, showing how policies favored cleaning the northern 30 percent of the county — whiter and richer —rather than the rest of the county where the largest concentration of Blacks live. “There’s nothing more political than the environment.”
Codi Norred, executive director of the Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, said it was time for “unparalleled action.” He said an action plan exists through Drawdown Georgia. “The beauty of pluralism is collective action,” he said.
Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, said the majority of Americans are alarmed about climate change.
“We are beyond the point of denialism,” she said. Then she described a recent trip to Germany where she found out that Germans put only 1 percent of their waste in landfills compared to Americans who put 70 percent of their waste into landfills. The difference is public policy in Germany mandates recycling and incentivizes companies to reduce the packaging of their products.
“People are more powerful than money,” McCorkle said.
After the talks and performances, the 130 leaders participated in Inclusivv Conversations, formerly Civic Dinners.
Founder Jenn Graham, founder of Inclusivv, shared a Native American proverb with attendees: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”
People seated at each table answered three questions about “our shared planet,” and their thoughts about the climate crisis. At the table I hosted, people said they felt anger, despair, frustration, hopelessness, ignorance but they also expressed hope that people would become better stewards of our shared Earth.
After the event, Meghjani shared several takeaways.
“While there is a lot of despair, there is still a lot of hope,” he said. “We need to be pluralistic in our approach in three ways: One, understanding that the Earth does not belong to us; two, we need to bring along our communities and friends along with us on this journey; and three, that there is a disproportionate impact of climate change on certain groups. Some of this is baked into our politics.”
The Ismaili Council for the Southeastern United States sponsored the Day of Pluralism, inspired by the Global Centre for Pluralism, which is based in Ottawa, Canada. It defines pluralism as an ethic of respect for diversity. It is led by the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam or spiritual leader of the global Shia Ismaili Muslim community.
“Pluralism does not mean the elimination of difference, but the embrace of difference,” Aga Khan has said. “Genuine pluralism understands that diversity does not weaken a society; it strengthens it.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I was one of several host committee members involved with the 2024 Day of Pluralism.
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