by Kristen Minogue
After nearly three decades in television, Fred Tutman left filmmaking to found the Patuxent Riverkeeper in 2004. For 16 years, the Patuxent Riverkeeper organization has empowered citizens to advocate for their right to a healthy environment. Today he’s also lending his leadership skills as a Director’s Circle volunteer with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centeer, and spoke on environmental justice this April at the Smithsonian’s Earth Optimism digital summit. Learn more about some of the Patuxent Riverkeepers’ greatest environmental wins, and how the green movement can evolve to meet the needs of a diverse future. Edited for brevity and clarity.
Fred Tutman (Credit: Audobon Naturalist Society)
What motivated you to be involved in conservation?
I thought that my future was going to be in radio, television, media communications. As an activist, because I’d always been an activist, I thought that was the best portal for me to change my corner of the world. And, you know, I did that for 27 years…But I was bored and didn’t feel like I was making a difference in all of these awful problems in the world we were making films about…
So I decided to go to law school, because I knew nobody who knew me thought I could do that, just because I hadn’t done that sort of thing before….It was a different world, a different life for me. It was really hard to reboot. I literally had to change my friends. Not because people were hostile to the work. They didn’t understand how it fit into my past endeavors. And so people were baffled by it. A midlife crisis, I think someone accused me of that.
How has being the Patuxent Riverkeeper fulfilled that for you?
I feel like I have my hands on the political, legislative and policy machinery of something hugely important in human endeavors—our water supply and how it not only connects us in practical ways, it connects us in some very spiritual and some very powerful ways that are well beyond the mechanics of, you know, plumbing….Water is pretty powerful juju. It’s amazing stuff in terms of how people feel about it, want to talk about it, want to express themselves in various ways about it and through it. Not just water, but I think our connections to the Earth in general. So that to me is much more exciting than making films about stuff that will be interspersed with commercials.
Do you have a favorite success story?
If you want to get your case in front of a judge and it’s an environmental case where you have a recreational interest in the outcome, you can now possibly get standing in a court of law because of our case, Patuxent Riverkeeper v. Maryland Department of Environment.
We fought that battle to show that you don’t just have to have a financial interest or be adjacent to a problem to have your constitutional rights to redress brought into play. But you in turn can be just connected to the recreational joy of paddling down that river. And if that is endangered, you get, at least potentially, standing in a State court to defend your interest. Before, just having kayaked on that river didn’t get you anything in the way of “rights” to defend that privilege or right. It meant you were a bystander with little or no capacity to defend that right …If you can imagine the range of potential plaintiffs that emerge when people can defend their recreational interest in something, that’s an extraordinary step toward more justice, fairness and accountability.
What are you most proud of working with the Patuxent Riverkeeper?
I think I’ve attracted people from the African American community and from other minority communities that say, You know what? We can be environmental leaders. We can be change agents. We don’t have to be followers. You don’t have to be, quote, “diversity.” You can start a movement too, and I think that’s pretty validating. That also gives me a lot of hope. I find people of color fired up in all kinds of neighborhoods about this stuff, and that’s exciting. I feel like to them, I’m their Riverkeeper. Not just the Patuxent Riverkeeper, but their Riverkeeper in ways that are far more representative of their needs. So yeah, that gives me hope. That makes me feel like I’ve got the wind at my back.
You’re speaking about environmental justice at the Earth Optimism summit. How is environmental justice transforming the environmental movement today?
I was raised an African American (obviously), and I think that’s important because of my lens. We don’t all see the same stuff. I know for a fact that it’s very hard for me to make the Murie family [conservation benefactors] or Jay Ding Darling [National Wildlife Federation founder] or Rachel Carson relevant in a black community struggling with stormwater problems. Those founders and pioneers may not be the icons I’m likely to want to use to inspire people. Not because of the color of their skin, but because of the context of their work.
I don’t see those people in the same modern-day context struggling to deal with human and civil rights problems that are common in over-burdened communities. They dealt with different problems, and those are important problems too. But I think in those communities I’m describing, the environmental problems are also fused with the social justice ones. They’re inseparable. You can’t fight one of those fights without fighting the other one, right? Practically speaking, you can’t upgrade the environmental standards without lifting the economic condition of the community.
How does the environmental movement need to change, to embrace the needs of more diverse communities?
From working with black, Hispanic, Native American and economically challenged communities and others, that sensibility is really important. Because usually environmental organizations with funding come to see those communities and usually want something from them. They didn’t come to bring help. They came because they wanted some signatures on a petition or they wanted to recruit new members, or they wanted to speak on behalf of them on a particular issue. And that’s feedback I get also a lot from the communities we work with. Like, these outside groups don’t really want to help us. They want us to help them with their issues. The flow is completely inverted. And yet, these are communities that face some of the worst environmental burdens there are, and yet they’re really an afterthought in these broader movements that want to save all the familiar and really nice places first and foremost.
We’re not saying the Bay is unimportant. That’s absurd. That’s not it at all. But the Bay may not be where you want to start the conversation with some folks that have no context for it and think that’s something for white folks.
Is there someone that inspires you to stay hopeful despite the doom-and-gloom rhetoric?
Oh, all kinds of folks. I mean Johnny Appleseed incidentally was my childhood environmental hero just because I thought, there’s somebody that really has a long view, right? They’re planting trees they’ll never be alive to see, you know, at maturity. And I think that spirit has to be embedded, right? We’re all Johnny Appleseed. We’re all planting something, growing something, nurturing something if we’re doing the right stuff.
On the other end of the spectrum, Wangari Maathai, someone not as well known I think in Europe or in America. She was an African activist who was the mother of so much of conservation and greening and a philosopher. I did find a quote by Wangari Maathai. It is, “The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price.” That’s the problem. And Wangari’s gone. She passed away too young. And she’s also someone that’s very inspirational. Very galvanizing. Because she was an activist and a conservationist, and I think that’s the key combination.
What are you looking forward to the most at the 2020 Earth Optimism Summit?
I’m looking forward to some sense of exchange, because every time I talk to a group of people I haven’t met or connected with before, something fantastic comes back at me in terms of knowledge, information, a poignant story. You know, the thing about being a Riverkeeper is, people want to tell you their river stories. And people have all kinds of heartfelt connections to this particular river. And so I might get that.
Or I get hecklers. I’ve had lots of hecklers over the years. You know, I’ve talked to fairly large venues sometimes, and I look forward to the heckling, because that’s telling too in the sense that it helps me improve my outreach skills and my understanding of what other people see and know.
What’s the source of your optimism?
Music and nature generally, but especially Gino Vannelli.…actually, I think he was the first white person to ever get on Soul Train, if that’s a credential for being multicultural. Gino Vannelli is just this hairy Italian/Canadian who has an amazing voice and he’s got these lyrics that are so compelling. You know, John Prine, who passed away recently, also affected people that way too. So sorry to see John Prine gone. But to me Vannelli, Prine, these are guys who were balladeers. They tell stories about people’s lives and about the world with their music. And so that’s who inspires me.
Where do you envision as the future for your work?
This is the hardest, most challenging work I’ve ever tackled. And I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface in some ways. And yet the journey is winding down out of necessity, right? I’m 60 something. I just don’t know how much longer is feasible, but it is work that has required the most I could give. There’s never day when I’m not excited to go to work and challenged to go to work. And I can’t say that about the television work. Frankly, that involved getting up much earlier usually too. I hated getting up before sunrise for a shoot!
