Six Environmental Justice Lessons from Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
By Jessica Xiao
Last winter I spoke with Kim Wasserman, executive director of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), based in Chicago, Illinois.
Kim Wasserman and LVEJO (pronounced “ell-VAY-ho,”) have spent nearly two decades fighting the bad in Chicago’s predominantly immigrant community of Little Village, engaging in a 12-year campaign to shut down two coal plants that ranked as the top three for most polluted in the US and contributed to some of the highest asthma rates in the country.
Environmental Justice communities with a Just Transition lens often talk…
A Primer by the Climate Justice Alliance
Principles of Mutual Aid
If you’ve been following how people are responding to the pandemic, you may have seen the words “mutual aid” show up in the news and across communities. That’s because “mutual aid networks” are springing up from the quick work of organizers trying to make sure their neighbors have access to what they need to survive given the failures of our government to provide an intact social safety net.
While folks from neighborhoods that have faced social and environmental injustices or climate disasters may already be quite familiar with mutual aid, for some of us, this is a new term.
Mutual…
Taking Action to Resist Racist Systems of Oppression and to Build a Better World for All
by Jessica Xiao
Change the Story Communications Fellow, Climate Justice Alliance
“I have bodily pain that can’t be treated. An injury to the tailbone. I get anxious if I sit too long.”
“I’m sorry that I’m asking you to tell me about the police violence you experienced,” I said.
“It’s okay — I have to practice telling it in court anyway,” Sherrie-Anne André told me.
In August 2018, Sherrie-Anne André (they/their/them) and three other activists were arrested for protesting outside of Bristol County Jail in neighboring New Bedford, Massachusetts, as part of an ongoing #ShutDownICE Campaign.
and why this work is a matter of self-transformation
by Jessica Xiao
Change the Story Communications Fellow, Climate Justice Alliance
“This is not what you were expecting, was it?” Angela, the executive director, asked me by the snack table, as we took a short break during the staff retreat in Indianapolis, hosted by CJA member the Kheprw Institute (which does awesome community work there, check them out).
It was my fourth day into my role as a communications fellow at the Climate Justice Alliance, and here I was, in an immersive full-week staff retreat meeting colleagues (and kindred spirits, as I would now describe them) who work together from…
Takeaways from the peoples’ climate movements in Santiago, Chile, and Madrid, Spain
“We are the white blood cells in the cancer of capitalism” — Monẽka de Oro, Micronesia Climate Change Alliance
This past December, Climate Justice Alliance members from organizations working in frontline communities across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam, came together in Santiago, Chile, and in Madrid, Spain, as part of the It Takes Roots delegation (and others) to put pressure on the United Nations’ climate talks and more importantly, to be in community with climate activists around the world.
(It Takes Roots is an alliance made up of Grassroots Global Justice, Climate Justice Alliance, Right to the City…
The Climate Crisis is Not Irreversible, But We Must Act Now
Christopher Flavelle recently wrote an article for Bloomberg BusinessWeek entitled “Climate Change Will Get Worse. These Investors are Betting On it.” He exposes what many of us in the environmental and social justice movements have known for decades: increased profits are a justification for any undertaking regardless of the human and now planetary cost.
Whether these investors exacerbate misery for millions along the way, including the destruction of the very Earth we live on, is inconsequential compared to their pursuit of economic growth. After all, they say, they are…
Thousands of families and communities in North Carolina are still reeling from the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Florence. Those hardest hit by the storm are dealing with threats to their immediate and long-term survival. As North Carolinians and co-conveners of the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective, we’ve been partnering with frontline communities across our state and know their leadership is key to ensuring that recovery moves beyond quick fixes and media sound bites. Our Gulf South allies introduced us to a term they coined during post Hurricane Harvey coordinating calls convened by Bryan Parras; the term is…
My mother crossed the river with my brother and I, who were 5 years and 6 months old at the time, with nothing more than a couple of napkins in her pocket. She was fleeing domestic violence and a civil war (known as the war on drugs) in Colombia. Like many of the families and children risking their lives to exercise their right to apply for asylum or seek refuge in another country today, my story is too common and is now being criminalized. It doesn’t have to be this way. …
Climate Justice Alliance
CJA is a national alliance of grassroots communities advancing Just Transition solutions, moving from extreme energy to locally-rooted economies.
