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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

It's good to have you with us. Today, we're revisiting some conversations around Earth Day. Let's get to it.

Speaker: On the first flight of the day between Los Angeles and San Francisco, an oil company executive exchanged pleasantries with a fellow passenger in the window seat. Glancing down at the oil rigs dotting the Santa Barbara channel, the passenger remarked something looked strange at Union Oil's, newly erected platform A. Leaning over to look the oil man paled visibly. "Oh, my God," he murmured. What he saw was the start of the Santa Barbara Royals spill.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening here to a 1984 documentary produced by Eric Werbalowsky. The film was part of a large conference hosted by the University of California to examine the effects of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill. That 35-mile-long spill released more than 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific, killing birds, fish, and sea animals.

Responding to the disaster, the junior senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, established Earth Day in 1970. The senator's goal was to focus the country's attention on our responsibilities to protect the resources of the natural world. Here's legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite reporting on the very first Earth Day.

Walter Cronkite: Good evening. A unique day in American history is ending. A day set aside for a nationwide outpouring of mankind seeking its own survival.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: If you think environmentalism began in 1970, led by white male Midwestern advocates, well, then you haven't been paying attention.

Nick Estes: Hello, my name is Nick Estes. I'm a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, and I was born and raised in South Dakota. I'm also a professor and a writer.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In his most recent book, Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes reframes environmentalism, revealing that its roots lie not in the five decades of official government concern, but in centuries of Indigenous resistance to violence, land theft, resource extraction, and settler colonialism.

Nick Estes: In our culture, we have the Lakota way of living. The aspiration of the Lakota way of living is a special one that's dictated by kinship relationships with our human relatives as well as our non-human relatives, and that's how we measure time. That's how we measure what, I guess, you could consider justice and peace.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When we begin the story of Earth Day with a history and future of Indigenous nations, the story takes a new shape.

Nick Estes: If we think about the framing of an Indigenous perspective, especially like a Lakota perspective from my community, it would be more of a place-based perspective saying that we can look at this location, where we came from, where our emergent stories came from, where our history came from, and say that we can notice the changes in the land, the decimation of certain species of animals, the degradation of our sacred rivers, our sacred waterways, our mountains, and why that has taken place.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nick walked me through some of what we can learn by reframing our understanding of environmental activism on this Earth Day weekend.

Nick Estes: This notion of a water protector was inaugurated in 2016 at the Standing Rock camps against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Missouri River, a river we know as Mnišoše but that wasn't just about Indigenous people. Also, it's to say that being a water protector wasn't something that happened in 2016. Of course, we can go back in time and look at how people have protected water since time immemorial, but there was something unique about 2016 that I think really shaped and changed the consciousness around environmental issues, especially Indigenous-led movements, but it wasn't an exclusively Indigenous project.

Everyone who walked through those camp gates became a water protector by active, merely being there with the intention of protecting the Missouri River for the millions of people who depend on that river, for the countless non-human relations that depend on that river for life. We have people like AOC, Deb Haaland, people who have since become elected in appointed leadership within the federal government.

That's a very important thing. Now with the recent IPCC report, you have scientists who are super gluing themselves to window pans on Chase and Manhattan Banks urging us to take serious the science and I don't think we would have the same level of consciousness had it not been for Indigenous-led movements. It's not just an intangible, psychological factor here in terms of raising the consciousness.

There was a report that came out last fall by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International that found Indigenous resistance or Indigenous-led resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual US and Canadian emissions. That is pretty phenomenal. There is a tangible element and a tangible success that Indigenous-led movements in the era of the water protector can point to.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Remind people about 2016 and water protection and what that movement looked like and what it was doing.

Nick Estes: You saw the coming together of the Oceti Sakowin, the reuniting of the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota people, the nation that I come from. Like any Indigenous form of sovereignty, unlike Western forms of sovereignty, it's not exclusive to just Indigenous people. Our diversity, our multiplicity is our strength, not our exclusivity as a singular nation or, "race of people," as you would find in the Western notions of nation.

We invited all allies, including non-Indigenous peoples and movements that all came to the camps north of Standing Rock, at the confluence of the Cannonball on Missouri Rivers. It was quite a historic event. I remember being there, I think, it was around the time of Thanksgiving and just seeing an endless stream of headlights flowing into the camps. As much as it was very perilous in the sense that we were completely surrounded by over 70 different law enforcement jurisdictions, including federal agencies.

The National Guard had set up checkpoints. There was a constant stream of helicopters flying above, taking aerial photography. There were constant clashes with the police. There was macing, there was clubbing. There was all kinds of police violence being directed toward water protectors who had gathered in prayer. It sincerely was a prayerful act. It was an act that is almost indescribable if you hadn't been there.

I had seen things that had never seen in my entire lifetime, and anywhere you went in the country, you could tell somebody about Indigenous struggles because Standing Rock was going on and they understood it. They had an image in their mind for better or worse of native people, native water protectors being brutalized by police. It was almost as if it was the image of the colonization of this country and the state that we were entering into in terms of the backlash against the Obama era and the rise of Trump.

All of these factors were playing into this moment in time, and it was the only sustained resistance movement against the incoming Trump administration. It encapsulated a lot of hope and a lot of optimism. As we saw with Trump, and I would say even continuing into the Biden administration, the promises that a lot of these elected officials and the so-called elite leadership in this country really failed to materialize an alternative vision to the status quo.

We can see that now with the mass federal leasing of lands for oil and gas development. The new push by the Biden administration to increase oil production and flooding the markets with oil and gas, thus locking us further and further into carbon emissions. We're really not headed in a good place right now.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's going to be hard to talk about climate change and not feel simply horror. Where can our current movements for climate justice and environmental justice connect to hope in this moment of horror?

Nick Estes: That's a good question, and I am not feeling incredibly optimistic right now with our leadership, I should say. I do feel incredibly optimistic about the tangible successes of frontline struggles against a variety of fossil fuel projects across all stages of fossil fuel infrastructure that have happened in recent years. At least, the last decade, an Indigenous-led movement ended the Keystone XL Pipeline. Indigenous-led movements have challenged key fossil fuel infrastructure.

We've also lost some short-term battles against the Dakota Access Pipeline. It was built. It went forward despite the Obama administration's feeble attempts to set up roadblocks. The Line 3 pipeline, which goes through the northern part of Minnesota, went through under Democratic leadership at the state level as well as the federal level. That pipeline alone, which is essentially a reroute from the Keystone XL Pipeline, it's transporting Parson's Oil to the Gulf of Mexico. It has a carbon footprint twice the amount of the entire state of Minnesota.

I do think if we are to get serious about a viable and livable future, a lot of the people, and it's nothing, again, I'm not trying to be ageist here, but a lot of the people who are being incredibly detrimental to our, not only our present, but our future are those who will not have to live with the effects of climate change. One thing that gives me hope that water protectors have taught us is that they are trying to be good ancestors to future generations of people.

Not just Indigenous people, but future generations of people in a specific place. The Water Protectors from Giniw Collective to Camp Migizi and northern part of Minnesota are preserving Mahnomen for future generations. Wild rice for future generations. They're preserving fresh water for future generations, so too were my relatives, my Lakota, Dakota relatives at Standing Rock, they were preserving fresh water for future generations.

Not just Indigenous people, but it's important that these movements are tied to these specific places because that's where the values and that's where the knowledge comes from. We've tried this by trying to win elite politicians over in this country. That we are human, that we have rights, essentially. Deb Haaland, God bless her, went into the Department of Interior, the first Indigenous woman to sit at a cabinet-level position in this country, went in and said that she was going to stop oil and gas leasing on federal lands.

We have seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the refusal of the oil and gas industry to lower prices into pump more oil. We see somebody like Deb Haaland, who was at the Standing Rock camps, going back on her word. That to me is a very dire sign. It shows the limitations of that kind of politics. It's not to say that it's hopeless, and I know deep down inside her heart, I'm sure that Deb Haaland is against this decision.

What elites consider hard political choices are, at the end of the day, questions of existential importance to the rest of the planet. That I think the only sane people who are operating right now, or living on this planet right now, are those who are doing everything in their power to curb emissions, dismantle the fossil fuel project, essentially provide an alternative for life on this planet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Nick Estes: Thank you so much for having me on, Melissa.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're revisiting my conversations from 2022 in celebration of Earth Day weekend. Let's turn to environmental justice. An approach to environmental activism, which puts the community's most affected by pollution and climate change at the center of creating environmental solutions. Environmental justice documents the disproportionate effects of climate harm on communities of color. It insists that these communities must be the key decision-makers as we find solutions.

For example, we know that climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of natural disasters. In the 2018 study from researchers at Rice University and the University of Pittsburgh found that these disasters actually increase the racial wealth gap. Why? Because racially inequitable reinvestment following disasters leaves Black and Latinx communities poorer while making white households and communities more wealthy.

It's a stark reminder of why those most affected must be the most empowered to make decisions about climate resilience. Wawa Gatheru is a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford, an environmental justice advocate, and the Founder of Black Girl Environmentalist. When we sat down, Wawa started by telling me what it means to be a Black Girl Environmentalist.

Wawa Gatheru: Being a Black girl that unapologetically loves the planet, loves people, and is working towards ensuring that we have a just climate future for all of us.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I must admit, as a Black old lady environmentalist, it took me a little while to get here, and I really was pushed by the girls, by my students, by the young women in my classes who kept reframing what felt to me initially like a movement that had little to do with me. How did you first become interested in environmental activism?

Wawa Gatheru: It's so interesting to hear you say that because that quite literally has been my experience, but the inverse. It's been the older women in my life that have really reframed climate environmentalism for me and have really led me to finding my voice as a Black Girl Environmentalist and even founding the organization that I did. Growing up, I grew up in rural Connecticut. I grew up surrounded by green space. I spent a lot of my time outside and I always had this deep love for the planet.

I argue that everybody truly does care about clean air, clean water because it's what we have to have to survive. Even though I knew I love these things, environmentalism to me, and the way that it was presented and packaged to me definitely did not feel as though it included me. I felt as though environmentalism was this very top-shelf white issue for wealthy people that went hiking and camping and spent a lot of times outside of their leisure.

Even though I did that, so many things like camping and hiking just weren't necessarily things that my family would do together. The folks that I saw engaged in those activities, or the folks that I saw doing environmental work looked nothing like me. It wasn't until I literally stumbled into this environmental science class, my junior year of high school, I essentially had this big aha moment of whoa.

Environmentalism actually has everything to do with me, especially as a Black person, especially as the daughter of two Kenyan immigrants, especially as someone that comes from the Horn of Africa. At 16, I had this big-- I was quite dramatic, I still am, but I essentially went to my room one day and I prayed and I said, "I'm dedicating my life to environmental justice." I guess I've been on track to do that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Who are the people in this community and why is it necessary to build it with such explicit purpose?

Wawa Gatheru: Women in general experience climate change with disproportionate severity because gender inequality around the world reduces our physical and economic mobility, our voice, and opportunity in many places making us amongst the most vulnerable to environmental stressors. We also know that Black girls and Black women, in particular, bear an even heavier burden from the impacts of the climate crisis because of the historic impacts of racism and colonialism and equality, so due to this proximity, we have this unique role to play as indispensable leaders in creating just an effective climate solutions because we're at the forefront of this issue and are already creating solutions as a means of survival.

Whoever the American Green Workforce is amongst the least diverse of any sector. When you have this really interesting situation of folks of color, especially Black girls and Black women are experiencing the climate crisis, environmental injustices first and worst, yet we are simultaneously not represented in the movement that is tasked with solving our biggest crisis.

Experiencing that as a Black girl now, a Black young woman in the environmental space, going into environmental meetings, going into environmental organizations and looking around and being like, "Whoa, where are we?" In experiencing a lot of these dynamics and really wanting to facilitate a very unique community and inclusive and intentional community that is meant to serve as a safe space for this next generation of folks that might be just like me when I was 15, 16 years old of, "Whoa, I want to get involved, but where do I go?

Where are people going to understand me? Where is my life going to be centered in these conceptualizations of a just future?" That's what we're really trying to do. We're trying to build out this community and really work amongst ourselves to really ideate a just future that actually takes our lives, our vitality into account.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wawa, what is next for you?

Wawa Gatheru: What is next? Graduation is next. [chuckles] I'm very excited to get it over with. I'm very excited to really finish my dissertation and continue to throw myself into this work. After I graduate, I know that I want to continue to cultivate a community that is Black Girl Environmentalists and work alongside other folks that are vested in crafting this truly just climate movement that is made in the image of all of us and working towards shifting narratives, making sure that we're all seen and heard, and therefore, really facilitating a movement that is truly just.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are you going to take a nap at any point during any of that? [chuckles]

Wawa Gatheru: Oh, don't worry. I am a big proponent of nap ministry.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, good.

Wawa Gatheru: I take naps all the time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I am smiling here as I listen to you because you do give me a sense of hope about what is possible in our future. Thank you for your analysis, for your passion, for your commitment. Thank you for joining The Takeaway.

Wawa Gatheru: Thank you so much for your work, thank you for inviting me, and thank you for inspiring young Black girls like me to be unapologetic in our work.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wawa Gatheru is a Rhode Scholar at the University of Oxford, an environmental justice advocate, and the Founder of Black Girl Environmentalist.

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This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. It's Earth Day weekend. Let's talk about penguins. During the past decade, the intricate patterns of community and family created by these adorable little tuxedo birds has been the subject of multiple documentaries, streaming series of blockbuster animation. Getting the public to love penguins seems like a great way to encourage conservation. Adore the penguins, save their habitats, but then some in America's right-wing movements begin to claim that penguins are evidence of a natural order of monogamy and heteronormativity. One mom, one dad, one precious egg to protect.

Apparently, they'd never met Skipper and Ping, Ronnie and Reggie, or Elmer and Lima, all bonded, loving same-sex penguin couples. Elmer and Lima even became the proud parents of a fostered hatchling in February at a zoo in Syracuse, New York. So much for heterosexuality as the only natural order. For more on queer ecology, let's revisit a conversation I had with Nicole Seymour, Associate Professor of English and Graduate Advisor of Environmental Studies at Cal State Fullerton. She's author of several books, including Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination. Now, I ask Nicole, what is queer ecology?

Nicole Seymour: It basically just refers to a way of thinking that sees connections between environmental issues and issues of gender and sexuality, but more specifically, queer ecology allows us to see that strict norms around gender and sexuality can be quite harmful to the non-human world, not just to humans. An example I always give to my students is we look at the recent rise in mega truck purchases in the US.

Consumer reports has found a huge leap in truck weight and size over the past 20 years. Those types of trucks are often an expression of traditional heterosexual masculinity, and those vehicles kill pedestrians at a much higher rate than other vehicles, and of course, are killing the planet with their massive fossil fuel consumption. It's almost the literal definition of toxic masculinity. That's a place I often start with people as an example.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Walk me through the politics around calling something natural or also the politics of calling something unnatural.

Nicole Seymour: I think I got into queer ecology colleges because I was always bothered by the fact that, let's just say a certain side of the political spectrum has tended to call gay people or transgender people unnatural when that side has not otherwise seemed to care very much about nature at all. I always thought that was a funny contradiction there, and actually started researching this in graduate school.

I found many studies that show how LGBTQ+ folks are actually more environmentally concerned and active than straight folks. I found all sorts of interesting examples of how such folks have cared for or connected to the land. Everything from rural lesbian [unintelligible 00:23:42] in the 1970s to drag queens such as a person named Pattie Gonia. Pattie Gonia, get it-

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes.

Nicole Seymour: -who draw attention to environmental issues. I think what I've tried to show actually over the past couple of decades is that queer people actually connect to nature and the natural in a lot of ways that we just haven't recognized because of that association of queerness and the unnatural. There's a whole world of environmentalism out there that we just haven't paid attention to very much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned in, in your first response that this does harm both two humans and to the non-human living world. Help us to understand that with maybe a grounded example. What is something that we maybe even just use in our discourse or frame and our understanding that does harm in both ways?

Nicole Seymour: One good example is how there's been a lot of heterosexual bias in science historically. The assumption that heterosexuality is always the default has led scientists in the past to really downplay evidence of homosexual and believe it or not, there's transsexual behavior amongst non-human animals. There's fish called the parrotfish that can change from male to female. What that means is we've just had this really incomplete and biased view of the natural world until recently. We've assumed that animals only engage in heterosexual reproductive behavior when that's simply not the case.

Maybe that's not a direct physical harm, but it means that we haven't really grasped the deep diversity of our world, and we've imposed a lot of ideals on animals in the non-human world that are really inappropriate and actually limit our full understanding.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Quick break. Back with The Takeaway in just a moment.

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You're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we're continuing our conversation with Nicole Seymour, an Associate Professor of English and Graduate Advisor of Environmental Studies at Cal State Fullerton. We've been talking about queer ecology and what it can teach us about our biases in environmentalism and in understanding the natural world.

Nicole Seymour: There's a great book by a birdwatcher, a scientist named Drew Lanham, and he's African American, and he actually talks a lot about queer ecologies in that book as well, but he talks about issues of race and he actually embraces. He says, "Blackbirds are your birds." He says this to Blackbirders. He says, "Blackbirds, just like Black people have been maligned, ignored." There's also that statistic you've probably heard about black dogs are adopted much less often from animal shelters.

I think his approach is really interesting rather than denying the connection to the animal and saying, "I'm a human. I have nothing to do with animals." He actually has this really interesting progressive way of embracing not the racist animalistic thing you're talking about, but embracing these connections to animals and seeing animals are oppressed in many of the ways that humans are and seeing a connection there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Imagine the world for me a bit and talk to me about what Earth Day would be if we queered it.

Nicole Seymour: I think it would be very colorful, very fun, very playful. I talk in my work a lot about how so much environmental discourse and activism is about gloom and doom. It's very depressing. Usually, whenever there's a news report about the latest IPCC report or you want to turn off the TV just because it's so grim. I think what I've tried to do in my work a lot is to show that through drag or camp and humor, those are actually maybe the best ways to do environmentalism, to draw attention to environmental problems because those modes are more accessible, more fun, they don't make us want to change the channel. My vision of Earth Day is lots of laughter rather than grimness and depression. Definitely, some drag there as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If we do focus on human animals for a moment, are there ways that queer identities are either policed out of or discriminated out of the spaces that we often think of as the most traditional Earth Day kinds of spaces, wilderness, camping, engagement in the out of doors? I'm wondering not only in our expectations, our language, and our discourse but in lived experience, if queer communities find it more challenging to engage in, again, these may be mainline traditional aspects of environmental experience.

Nicole Seymour: I think a lot of the mainstream environmental movement has pitched itself as being very family-friendly. You see a lot of images of we have to save the planet for our children. It's very wholesome, very white, and a lot of queer people and people of color just don't relate to those kinds of appeals, which is not to say queer people don't have children, for example, but I think there is a mainstream normative vision of the family that gets propagated through a lot of environmental activism.

I think there's just not a lot of queer people and people of color who just don't feel like they belong in that mainstream movement, but the good news is there's a lot of non-mainstream versions of environmentalism. There's a group called OUT for Sustainability and their logo is that they try to mobilize the LGBTQ+ community for environmental and social action, and they really see those connections that we were talking about before.

Also, something that I think is really important to think about is there's a lot of research that shows that queer and trans people, especially those of color, are more vulnerable to climate disasters, things like food insecurity because they already suffer higher rates of poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and other sorts of compounding factors.

I think that's another reason why it's such a shame that a lot of mainstream environmental movements don't feel inclusive to queer people and people of color considering that they're the most vulnerable to environmental problems. I think this queer ecological perspective we're talking about is really crucial if we want to move toward a future of environmental justice.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nicole Seymour, thank you so much for joining us.

Nicole Seymour: Thank you.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Climate Justice is a movement recognizing the negative effects of climate change on people of color and marginalized communities and climate justice advocates fight for equitable solutions to defend our planet and the people living on it. All the people. The Climate Justice Alliance is a coalition of dozens of local environmental organizations, and in their most recent annual report, the group outlines some of the key ways organizations and climate activists have worked to influence corporations, change laws, and invest in people who are fighting for equity in our skies, our water, our land, and for our bodies.

In the past year, that work included preventing the repowering of a gas plant in New York City and pushing for legislation in Massachusetts to inhibit fossil fuel projects and create clean energy employment opportunities. We spoke with climate justice activist Elizabeth Yeampierre, who is the Executive Director of Uprose, Brooklyn's oldest Puerto Rican community-based organization. Elizabeth is also co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.

Elizabeth Yeampierre: We know that frontline communities embody the deep and long impacts of environmental racism, and we often say that as descendants of colonialism and slave men and extraction, that we can easily connect the dots between the root causes of climate change and the impacts on our body and our local environment, and also the visionary systemic change that's required to move us away from the extractive economy.

We don't think that you can talk about climate change without talking about justice, without talking about racial justice and centering it. Literally, we're talking about takings extractions, both of our body and of our land. Climate change is the angry child of that long history of abuse.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yet, for so long, perhaps even on many radio shows, although not this one on Earth Day, people will in fact talk about climate justice without mentioning or discussing in any centering way issues of race and racial injustice.

Elizabeth Yeampierre: The truth is that those that are going to be most impacted are the ones least responsible for creating climate change and that the biggest challenge to addressing climate change, in my view, is privilege. We are literally saying that decision-making that we don't lead a solutions that are not led by the frontline are literally an example of racism. We're going to be the majority by 2042.

The majority of the children being born right now are children that are Black, Indigenous children of color. We are now facing recurrent extreme weather events, and it is our communities that are being desperately impacted and you saw that with Hurricane Katrina. You saw it Hurricane Maria, with Super Storm Sandy, Andrew. We can go through a long list of how all of this extreme weather is impacting our communities harder than anyone else.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What can you tell us about the most recent report issued by the Climate Justice Alliance?

Elizabeth Yeampierre: The Climate Justice Alliance is this gathering of frontline leaders from Puerto Rico to Guam and Brooklyn to the [unintelligible 00:33:14]. It's all of the folks in our communities in Detroit, in New Orleans, in Indian country, California, that are really working towards a just transition. What's beautiful about the report is it really captures how we are firmly rooted in reparations, repatriation, and ecological regeneration.

It showcases examples of all of our groups all over the country that are doing transformative work. The work is complex and it's rooted in deep democracy and community, and it is happening all over the country. The report really showcases what is possible and how we're holding that space, and how in addition to doing that, moving away from fossil fuel extraction, rejecting false solutions, we're also accountable to the frontline. We come from there, we live there and we're accountable to each other and to our community.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As we think about transformation rather than resilience. Not just bouncing back, but bouncing forward, what would an April 22nd day look like for you in 50 more years? What would Earth Day have been transformed into?

Elizabeth Yeampierre: Well, we say that Earth Day is a day, and for us, this is life. This is what we're living every day. Our body's literally the, the recipients of all these, of this long history of toxic exposure. I can tell you that in Brooklyn where I'm based, that there is what's called a significant maritime industrial area. It is an industrial sector that historically has been responsible for asthma, upper respiratory disease.

A lot of the health disparities that our communities have. These industrial zones are the same all over the country. From an urban perspective, from a densely urban perspective, these now become the opportunity for building, for climate adaptation, mitigation, and that word resilience. There are places where we could see the emergence of renewable energy, food sovereignty, and we learned from covid that food was going to be an issue.

We were able to feed each other, but we never thought about what happens when the food supply is disrupted as a result of recurrent extreme weather events. Food sovereignty becomes a major issue for that. How do we use space so that we could create local livable economies of different scales so that people don't only survive, but that they thrive and that looks different in different places. We know how in an industrial working waterfront community in Brooklyn, what that could look like.

We have mapped the entire neighborhood so that we have a plan for decarbonization right down to people's backyards and how they can connect them so that they can share and [unintelligible 00:36:15] food, how they can use their rooftops, what different blocks can look like. That's what it looks like in an urban community like ours. If you're talking about Kentucky and West Virginia, or you're out in the Southwest, those solutions look different. The people who live there and who are impacted and who have been historically exposed to all of these e environmental abuses, they know what needs to happen and what their priorities are.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Elizabeth Yeampierre is Executive Director of Uprose. Thank you for joining us today.

Elizabeth Yeampierre: Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honor being in the space with you. Thank you so much.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, April is also National Poetry Month, and we heard last year from some of our nation's young poets.

Jessica Kim: I am Jessica Kim. I just turned 18. I am the current Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate, a program supported by Beyond Baroque, as well as a 2022 National Youth Poet Laureate finalist.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: In 2022, Jessica represented the West region in a program created and curated by Urban Word.

Jessica Kim: My interest in writing poetry actually first started when the pandemic hit because it was a survival mechanism in a fragile, fearful, and sometimes frustrating world. Before the pandemic, I bottled up many of my emotions and concerns because I didn't really know how to express them, and especially looking back at my childhood, moving around a lot and being visually impaired, I felt excluded and silenced from my surroundings.

When we were all locked down, I turned inward to find strength. That's how I started writing. I started loving writing, especially because it allowed me to express my vulnerable identities. I realized that I had the power to create worlds on the page. I was really drawn to that autonomy of having control over my story. I haven't stopped writing ever since.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jessica talked about what poetry has unlocked for her.

Jessica Kim: I really feel like a transformed person because writing has definitely made me more introspective, but also very outward-looking, and especially as one of the nation's youth poet laureate finalists, I really tried to use my voice and activism to create a better world, maybe in my own small ways, but in a way where I can find string. I think it's really important for everyone to find an identity and voice that they can fight for because we will all become different people. For me, poetry has helped unlock that part of myself.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What she hopes to convey to those who encounter her poetry.

Jessica Kim: Now more than ever, I see myself addressing societal issues through art and poetry, especially because this year's theme designated by the Poetry Coalition is actually disability justice. As a visually impaired person, I write a lot about either my experiences as a disabled person or just playing with the idea of sight being something different for me compared to most other people. One thing that I would really love for others to take away from reading my work is how my unique perspective, literally in the way I view things but also in a more metaphorical sense, is what empowers me and what I try to convey in my poetry.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Here's Jessica Kim, reciting her original poem, The Inferno Leads All the Way to the Sea.

Jessica Kim: 90% of wildfires are caused by humans, National Park Service

In 2020, global sea levels set a new record high, national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

There is no escape from burning

Of course, you won't believe me, blame it on natural causes as if it were some divine intervention

A decade ago, I sat around a campfire watching my father poke at the flames with his matchstick hands

Toss the bundles of firewood into the pit

My heart still attached to the timber

I tried to say that the fires get worse every year, but I am muffled by the rising smoke, the squirrels and bobcats scurrying for refuge

This is what I mean when my love for all creations is static, immobile, mortal, covered in soot

I'm chasing an end to these fires, leading me to the end of the world where land meets sea

I catch a glimpse of a horizon without a shoreline

Wired with asphyxiation, the fish calcified into bullets, drifting into a whales' body

The ocean is permanent, and how ironic it is to watch her eyes clouded by plastic candy wrappers

Her hands stained gray with petroleum

Her underbelly whitened like bleached corals

Sea levels are rising like never before, and so does my voice

My early morning song for memories spent on shorelines

Foam relapsing at my feet

Look, the sun too is rising, and I no longer am the only one here

There are children picking up every cigarette bud and candy wrapper

As they harm the aquamarine tunes left by the sea

From afar, the birds return to the reincarnated forest

All the fires burned out

Watch, together we can bring back every inch of our earth.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Our thanks to Jessica Kim for sharing her poetry with us. Now I want to pass the mic to a few more young people. These are the voices of Wake Forest University students who studied with me last year in a course entitled Race, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice. These bright, committed, diverse young people sustain my hope for more equitable and sustainable future.

Sureta: Hi, my name is Sureta. I am 21 years old. To me, environmental justice means understanding the connections between our space and place and how that intersects with our identities and histories, and calling for fair treatment and respect.

Janine: My name is Janine. I am 19 years old. To me, environmental justice means that everyone, regardless the race, gender, socioeconomic status, et cetera, lives in a healthy environment. This environment means safe living conditions such as clean and fresh air, as well as other less obvious components such as equitable access to healthy food, support, and healthcare.

Kelly: My name is Kelly. I'm 22 years old. As a politics major, I believe the demonstrations on Earth Day help to signal to my representatives in government how important action on environmental issues are to us.

Gabby: Hi, my name is Gabby. I am 22 years old. To me, environmental justice means recognizing the rights of undocumented Latino farmworkers and prioritizing a push for better pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Edna: Hi, my name is Edna. I'm 21 years old. To me, environmental justice means that everyone, no matter what, has access to safe and healthy earth.

Charlotte: Hi, my name is Charlotte. I'm 21 years old. Earth Day matters to me because it is a small start to moving our collective mentality and action towards respect for our planet and all living beings.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, if you missed anything from today, or you just want to listen back, check out our podcast. You'll find us wherever you get the rest of your audio, or head on over to thetakeaway.org. Thanks so much for being here with us. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway.

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