Racial Justice and Climate Change: Building a Multiracial Environmental Justice Movement
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Jul. 12 9:00 AM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Jul. 12 10:00 AM (Eastern)
The Green New Deal has breathed new life into the climate debate and positioned climate change as a top Democratic priority heading into the primaries. The resolution elucidated that climate change is a justice issue and that Democratic responses to the crisis must center center jobs, infrastructure and equity. The environmental movement in the U.S. has been historically rooted in histories of racism and exclusion. Despite momentum behind the proposal, significant work remains to build a multiracial climate and environmental justice movement.
Moderator
Julian Noisecat
Julian Brave NoiseCat is Director of Green New Deal Strategy for Data for Progress, a think tank, and Narrative Change Director with the Natural History Museum, an artist and activist collective. He is also a correspondent for Real America with Jorge Ramos and contributing editor with Canadian Geographic.
Panelists
Jade Begay
Jade is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and a digital and communications strategist. Jade’s work explores Indigenous futurism, decolonization, Indigenous representation in the media landscape. Jade has partnered with organizations like Resource Media, United Nations Universal Access Project, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, Sierra Club, Bioneers, Indigenous Climate Action, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, Allied Media Project, and Tribal Nations from the Arctic to the Amazon to develop strategies, digital storytelling campaigns, and original content to mobilize and create more engagement around the most urgent issues of our time. Currently, Jade is the Creative Director at NDN Collective and is developing a VR/AR series in partnership with Google VR and is producing and directing films independently.
Other sessions: Communicating Climate Action at the Intersections: Perspectives in Storytelling and Narrative
Alexa Ross and Carol White
Since 2015, Alexa and Ms Carol have joined together with other local residents to build Philly Thrive, a grassroots organization focused on winning back the Right to Breathe from the largest oil refinery on the east coast. Ms Carol has been a community leader in South Philadelphia for decades, and she’s grown as a staunch advocate for environmental justice watching family members & neighbors pass away from the refinery’s pollution spewing in her backyard. Alexa has been organizing for climate justice for nine years, getting her start campaigning for fossil fuel divestment at Swarthmore College and growing politically as a member of the Maypop Collective. The two met when Alexa knocked on Ms Carol’s door, and since have been cultivating a multiracial, cross-class organization contesting politically for a just transition from fossil fuels in Philadelphia.
Thanu Yakupitiyage
Thanu Yakupitiyage is the head of U.S Communications at 350.org. 350.org is an international climate campaign organization that has coordinated over 20,000 climate rallies in more than 180 countries, helped lead the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, spearheaded the growing fossil fuel divestment campaign, and co-organized the largest climate march in history, the People’s Climate March. In addition to work on climate justice, Thanu is a long-time immigrant rights activist, media professional, and cultural organizer based in New York City. Originally from Sri Lanka, she grew up in Thailand and has lived in Brooklyn for ten years. She has a MA in Communications from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a BA from Hampshire College.
Other sessions: Communicating Climate Action at the Intersections: Perspectives in Storytelling and Narrative