Hear Their Voices: These Are The Young People Of Color Organizing To Fight Climate Change

“You are the leaders. You are the ones fighting power plants and shutting down pipelines. You are doing it with a lot of sacrifice. You’re doing it in communities were the police are after you. You’re doing it in the middle of ICE raids. Leadership looks like the faces in this room,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, issued in her opening remarks at the Brooklyn-founded advocacy group’s seventh Climate Justice Youth Summit on September 21. 

“People of color know how climate change is affecting them so that means they have the solutions. The people above us make decisions that don’t really help us in a positive way that we need,” Nyeshia Mallet, a student at Cooper Union School of Art and summit organizer, told BET.com about the importance of centering Black and brown voices within the movement. “With the strike that happened yesterday, I would've liked to see a lot of young people of color leading that strike. That’s why we had our own. We have always been involved and coming up with solutions.”

CHELSEA TURNER, 20 – BROOKLYN

“For generations, we’ve been experiencing different kinds of environmental racism, whether it's having nuclear plants in our neighborhoods or having garbage literally left on our streets. Now, we’re being threatened by extreme weather events, especially the Global South,” Turner said. “We’re not the ones who are going to be getting government aid. Climate change and climate injustices have been happening for decades, but now’s the time to act or we’re gonna die.”

NYESHIA MALLET, 18 – BROOKLYN

“[UPROSE] has a solar co-op that we are doing right now. It’s open to all of Brooklyn. We have a panel that’s going up around the Bushwick Terminal. We got that open a few years ago because there’s not a lot of green spaces in New York, especially Brooklyn, other than the cemetery and Prospect Park. We’re going to have solar panels, and people from Brooklyn can sign up through Con-Ed to power their house.” 

Brooklyn's Frontline Climate Strike Was Led by the Communities Hit Hardest by Climate Crisis

What Are Frontline Youth Fighting For?

Nyiesha Mallet, an 18-year-old artist and activist from the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, boils down the frontline youth fight to this axiom: Climate justice entails an economic shift that swaps an economy focused on the individual for one focused on people. Beyond clean energy, that involves a just transition, which means helping phase out environmentally harmful industrial practices for better pathways, while also making sure workers from those industries aren’t left out in the cold. And she believes people of color know just how to do it.

“We need people to start listening to frontline community members because we are the ones with the solutions, not the people higher up, who’re looking out on the map and judging us based on [our experiences, saying,] ‘There’s a heat wave here, and there’s water melting here,’” she tells Teen Vogue.

“Young people of color have been doing the work to fight climate change for hundreds of years. It’s something that we are born into,” she says. “We’ve lived in an extractive economy our entire lives; we come from a generation of families that have to live through this extraction and we know what it is, we know how it affects us, and we know what kind of change we want to see.”

VOICES FROM THE GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE

“CLIMATE CHANGE HAS FORCED OUR COMMUNITY TO BECOME OUR OWN FIRST RESPONDERS.”

Nyeisha Mallett, 18

UPROSE — Brooklyn, New York

Cooper Union School of Art

How is climate change affecting your home and daily life? Climate change impacts my home and community not only physically but economically. When a superstorm like Hurricane Sandy hits communities of color like mine, we are completely unprepared, underfunded, and without the resources that we need to rebuild. Climate change affects our health, our bodies, and our way of living. What is so amazing is that after Hurricane Sandy hit, the people in our community came to us at [my organization] UPROSE and urged them to help prepare them for the next storm. They want to learn how to adapt to the changing climate and take matters into their own hands to lead the recovery and preparation efforts in our community. Climate change has forced our community to become our own first responders.

“I HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT THE EARTH.”

Why are you joining in the climate strike? I have a duty to protect the earth and use my voice to help represent people of color and our frontline communities who are fighting day and night to just survive climate change. For this movement to be successful, it has to be intergenerational and aligned with frontline-led movements. There has to be a culture of practice that is committed to building just relationships.

What solutions do you want to see come out of the strike and UN climate events this month? I hope to see a real push for a just transition to come out of this strike and the UN climate events this month. That means we stop extractive economies and extractive fixes and build a regenerative economy where everyone can thrive. I want to see the people in “power” take climate and our lives seriously and recognize that long-term solutions will come from the frontline communities who are experiencing the brunt of the climate crisis.