Puerto Rican women who interacted with Bannan over the years told Prism they are now revisiting interactions they had with the attorney in which they ignored their intuition and brushed off uncomfortable exchanges to give her the benefit of the doubt as a fellow Puerto Rican woman. This was the experience of Elizabeth Yeampierre, a powerhouse in the climate justice movement.
As the co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance and the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, Yeampierre is an internationally recognized attorney and environmental and climate justice leader. But this did not stop Bannan from being condescending toward Yeampierre, treating her more like a competitor than a colleague when they appeared on panels together after Hurricane Maria.