RLS with Kat Morris
This podcast explores radical love for the self, the people, and the planet! Tune in to listen, learn, and expand your imagination as our host Kat Morris shares research and talks to strangers, friends, and loved ones about what makes life worth living—and protecting—amid the climate poly-crisis! Let’s heal, have some fun, and save the planet, shall we?
Rated EEE for educational, explicit, and entertaining.
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RLS with Kat Morris
Women are the Climate Leaders of Today and Tomorrow!
New York Climate Week is a trip! Still, you get to meet some pretty cool people doing really dope sh!t. Tune in and learn about these amazing women and how they are helping to solve the climate crisis!
This episode features interviews with:
- Antonique Smith: CEO & Cofounder of Climate Revival | Actress & Grammy Nominated Singer
- Sharon Lavigne: Founder of Rise St. James | 2024 Times 100 Most Influential People
- (Dr.) Roishetta Ozane: Founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana
- Aiyana Bodi: Employee Engagement Manager of Project Drawdown - Drawdown Labs
- Heather Milton Lightening: Native Artist and Activist
- Misha Mayeur: Gulf Rising Podcast
- Julie Souza: The Good Grief Network
- Kiana Michaan: Climate with Kiana Podcast
New episodes released monthly!
Can you share a moment that brought you joy recently in the climate world and something that you want to take with you or hold on to? I love this question.
Speaker 2:I think something that brought me joy here today was to see the beautiful expression of art that can come from any sort of medium. I think that's another way to really process. Some of the difficult aspects of living in a climate crisis, of living in a poly crisis, is to create. I think there's so much beauty in that and it really has brought me a lot of joy being able to see people express themselves through poetry, through music, through fashion, through just all these different forms of creating. So I really feel inspired by that and I'm so excited to take that with me and kind of get to share it with all the people I meet at Climate Week.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. Welcome back. Oh, my god, it's been a while, hasn't it? Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Radical Love Sounds with Kat Morris, and I am so grateful for your time, attention and good vibes, because it is a fact that only the coolest cats listen to RLS. Yeah, I'm talking about you. If this is your first time here, you're in for a treat.
Speaker 1:In this episode, we'll be hearing from a group of eco-baddie climate activists I interviewed during New York City Climate Week back in September. These powerful women are doing necessary and impactful work to advance climate justice across the USA, serving their community in their own unique way. So get cozy and settle in, because you'll certainly want to hear what they have to say. To start, let's chat with Julie Sosa from New York Climate Cafe and the Good Greep Network. Then we'll chop it up with Grammy-nominated singer and actress Antonique Smith, the co-founder of Climate Revival, followed by Rochetta Ozean and Sharon Levine, two incredible activists leading the EJ movement in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, the founders of Project Vessel and Rise, st James respectively, and their neighbor, misha Meyer, an activist and the host of the podcast, golf Rising. Please tell me your name and where we are right now and what brought you here.
Speaker 2:My name is Julie Sosa. I use she her pronouns. We are currently at Earth Sessions, the kickoff Climate of the Week event, and I'm here because I am supporting the wonderful Climate Cafe NYC and talking about the Good Grief Network.
Speaker 1:So can you tell me a little bit more about Climate Cafe, nyc and talking about the Good Grief Network, so can you?
Speaker 2:tell me a little bit more about Climate Cafe NYC. So Climate Cafe NYC is a great organization that brings people together to talk about the hard and difficult process of your emotions in a poly crisis. They are absolutely wonderful at creating a third space where you can come be your authentic self, talk about what's weighing on your mind, and not only that, but join in on the action if you feel empowered by the community to do so.
Speaker 1:I love the notion of having like intentional third spaces. I was recently watching a video and it was kind of talking about how, in the very digital era and the post-COVID era, it's really hard for people to find third spaces, with a lot of work becoming hybrid. Can you tell me a little bit more about having that third space and what people can expect if they go?
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%. Well, I feel like the importance of a third space is really to not only come and be with other people, but it's not a place for work, it's not necessarily a place for sleep, but it is a place for rest or being in community with those that either challenge you or support you or both ideally both and I feel like that is just unfortunately, hard to come by in the capitalist world that we live in. I know that so many people can resonate with the idea of whenever you walk into a space, you either have to pay to be there or offer your services to be there. So it's so important to find spaces that are like that. And the beauty is, third spaces can also be cultivated not just in the physical, but also online.
Speaker 2:A big aspect of what the Good Grief Network does is no matter where you are. If you are in a place that might be hard to get to some of these community gatherings, then there are community gatherings online available for you, regardless of where you are. You are welcome here. Your grief is welcome here.
Speaker 1:For someone who's listening, who might have never been to Climate Week. What is something that you wish you knew, going in and like a pro tip that they should carry with them.
Speaker 2:My advice for anyone who wants to go to Climate Week is just it's okay to not have to go to every event, to take your time acclimating to spaces, because a notion that I really felt grounded me this week was, if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling overwhelmed, that there's a we to come back to. There will always be a we to come back to. So even if you can't go this year, even if you can't go next year, the good news is this work continues. It continues wherever you are, so there will always be a place for you to come and join us whenever you're ready.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate the words of wisdom and that, yeah, acclimating and choosing the events that you want to go to with intention is amazing advice. Thank you so much. I hope to see you around the city. Yes, it was so great to meet you. Likewise, you were so great, exactly exactly. Thank you so much. Exactly, thank you. Thank you so much. Period. Thank you, thank you so much. Exactly, so sweet. I don't even need to say anything else so sweet. First of all, tell the people listening your name and the organization that you are representing here today and why you chose to express your love for this movement through your music.
Speaker 4:My name is Antonique Smith. Y'all probably know me as the actress that played Faith Evans in Notorious, or maybe you have seen me in Rent on Broadway back in the day when I played Mimi. I'm Grammy nominated. I've been blessed. It's been a blessing and I feel like God blessed me with these gifts to use them for a bigger purpose, which is, in this case, making sure that we're healthy and on this planet, because our existence is definitely in jeopardy.
Speaker 4:I am CEO and co-founder of Climate Revival. It's a play on words, because I feel like people of faith need a revival. Climate change needs a revival and the climate movement definitely needs a revival. We need more people of color leading this movement. We're the ones that are suffering first and worst from all the effects of the pollution that's also causing climate change. The public doesn't really understand that. They understand, okay, we don't have clean air and clean water, but they don't understand that that same pollution is also actually what's causing climate change and why we're getting all of these storms. I like to say it's like we feel like we're getting new storms with new names almost every week, going through the alphabet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I know.
Speaker 4:Going through the alphabet super quickly. It's definitely not like when we were growing up and you know the heat waves and the droughts, the floods. It's crazy, and so you know, as I saw things were getting worse, I just felt like I needed to take my my journey in this.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you too. It was amazing. The second time, thank you all.
Speaker 4:Thank you, have a blessed night. So, you know, I was already in in the climate space for 10 years and I just felt, like you know, I just felt like I needed to do more. I felt like, you know, we're not using art enough, we're not using storytelling and music, and what this country has, what the world has, is we have a love problem, which is a heart problem, and, you know, science is necessary, but it's not what's going to touch people's hearts, it's not going to change hearts. We definitely need to inform people, which is partly what I do, but we also need to change hearts like big time. We need a full outout love, joy movement.
Speaker 4:That's why I was so excited to be here today, because that was the vibe and, you know, as we change people's hearts and minds, which is my mission, to mobilize people of faith and people of color, using storytelling, using art, culture, music, to inspire, to inform and to get people to just like, like, let's go. Like. The first thing we can do is vote on climate, like, go to the polls, because when you vote on climate, you're voting literally for your own health and your own existence on this planet. To me, that's the number one issue of all time, because if we're not on Earth, then what else do we have? We have nothing, right yeah?
Speaker 1:We're not going to Mars, babe right, yeah, let's.
Speaker 4:We're not going to mars, babe. We're not going to mars. We're not going to mars, you know, and extinction is possible. Where are the dinosaurs? They're not here, guys. Um, that could be us, and we don't want it to be us. That's why I'm working so hard and we have to work together. So, all hands on deck, moment. Um, in 2024, we're seeing, you know, a thousand people died in mecca just walking, just doing the same thing they do every year their pilgrimage, just just normal stuff. A thousand people died in the streets because it was like 126 degrees, and it's only 2024. So we're talking about, you know. Oh, we got to save the planet for future generations.
Speaker 4:Oh, this particular generation is like it's about to be unlivable for us. So, yeah, so that's why I started Climbing Revival with my amazing co-founder, rev. Shout out to Rev. Shout out to Hip Hop Caucus. Shout out to Hip Hop Caucus. Yes, rev actually was announced as one of Forbes' 50 top sustainability leaders. Yes, so I'm so honored to have him as a co-founder. And, yeah, you know we're just getting started and it's a lot of work to be done, but I'm just so grateful and I'm so excited and I want to make a massive impact, love y'all. I want to make a massive impact in this world by touching hearts, moving hearts and inspiring people to to fight this fight, this good fight that I believe that we can absolutely win well, first of all, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I agree wholeheartedly with everything. I find it so necessary the point that you're making on changing hearts, because it's not just about like letting people know the science, it's about getting people to do something about it in a way that is meaningful to them, in a way that connects back to their life.
Speaker 4:So that they understand that there's no way. You've got to make it hit home Exactly, you've got to make it hit home Exactly.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us a little bit more about Climate Revival's task of doing that, If someone wants to get involved in your work?
Speaker 4:what can?
Speaker 1:they look forward to doing.
Speaker 4:So first, follow us on Instagram at Climate Revival. Go to our website, climaterevivalorg, sign up to our mailing list. First thing we're doing is coming to a church near you. That's what we're starting. We're starting with the people of faith and, specifically, churches. So people of faith is, you know, it's everything it's. You know, it's Muslims, it's Hindus, it's Jews, it's everybody. But we're starting at the church because I'm a church girl, it's my wheelhouse, me and Rev, both actually. So we're doing a church tour to start, but we're going to get to everybody.
Speaker 6:We're going to your home to make it hit home.
Speaker 4:You know what I'm saying. A lot of organizations are using, which is amazing. We're using social media, we're using you know all the things, but it's something about when you get to touch people, like in person. So that's the goal is to make our rounds around this country and at some point around the world, just touching people and making a hit home, because you know, all hands on deck, we gotta, we, we gotta speed this up. The devastation is speeding up, so that the work that we do in the fight has to speed up yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:I think I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I want to ask, like if you were to like make a soundtrack for what you want the climate movement to look and feel like, what? Songs would you put on there, oh um no pressure I know that's a tough one.
Speaker 4:Um, it's a combination. It's a bit of beyonce, it's a bit of Beyonce, it's a bit of Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Mercy, mercy Me. It's a bit of the Beatles. You know that I sang today. Here Comes the Sun. It's a bit of. My playlist is diverse, like Maverick City, jyra, because I think we definitely also need to use our faith to continue to believe that winning this battle is possible. You know, I believe God created the universe, the creator of all things, so we need to lean on the creator, we need to lean on source to keep us strong. It's not an easy battle. We are fighting against billion-dollar corporations who do not care about people. They care about profits. They consider people of color, our communities, a sacrifice zone. They know they're killing us. They know they're giving us cancer and asthma. I was knocked right out of bed and good night. But yeah, you know, are the villain, the thanos, yeah, in this story, and we're the avengers and thanos, is you know?
Speaker 4:he's snapping his fingers. He's got us. You know it's tough out here. Um, there is such a thing as cancer alley. It's a's a real thing in Louisiana, but that's not the only place they may not have a name called that. But yeah, it's all over Clusters of people living in a community where pollution is just put because nobody cares about it, because people care more about money, and it's that pollution that's causing climate change. So, if we can stop people from dying of cancer and asthma we can also stop climate change.
Speaker 4:It's the same fight. It's all connected. Yeah, it's all connected, as they said in Manifest. I like that show. It's all connected, it is. But going up against the powers that be like that is not an easy battle. So that's why we have to. That's why I love what we did today Self-care and joy and hope and faith. That's climate revival. You know, using love, Love your neighbor as yourself, Like that's. I mean, if we just did that, if we just did that, this whole world would be so much better. It wouldn't be any of the problems that we face.
Speaker 1:If we could just do that simple thing. I love like at the talk today. A lot of the continued theme was like radical imagination and I love that and I love also leaning into radical love and like the act of knowing that the love that you feel for your family, you can feel for the entire species of humans but also every other species on the planet right, like the love that you feel for your dog.
Speaker 1:You can feel that for every other animal and you can act from that and protect it in the way that you would, with those people closer to you, so kind of just expanding that love, I think is a beautiful way to start and that's why I love tapping into faith, because so many people, myself included, be like God is love. So how are we doing with? That, yes, god is love Thank you so much for your time Again. Oh my god, your voice is insane. Thank you, it's really a gift. So thank you for sharing with us today.
Speaker 4:It's my pleasure and honor and purpose. I think thank you thank you so much.
Speaker 9:I'm Rochetta Ozan. I am the founder, director and CEO of the Go For Project of Louisiana, traveling all the way here during climate week because we wanted to ensure that frontline voices and frontline communities were represented, because we know a lot of the decisions that are made here, especially on Wall Street, are directly impacting our community, and so if you're going to make decisions about it, you're going to have to meet with us, and you came here to demand that these banks stop financing projects in our communities and that decision makers who are here for the UN climate summit, for climate week, that they phase out a house of food immediately.
Speaker 5:I'm Sheryl Dean, director of our organization called Rise St James in Louisiana, and we are fighting petrochemicals and they're still trying to come as I speak, and we're fighting all those that are trying to come in. We have lawsuits against so many of those industries and our parish, against our parish council members, because they approve these facilities to come in, and it's time for it to stop.
Speaker 1:When you talk about the fight. It's the tenacity that I think goes underappreciated. People take it for granted.
Speaker 5:What can you do about it. Turn around so I help you. Numbering students in rural and special ed. Yes, I experienced that, so I look for more, but it's time for it to stop, and we are the ones that are going to make it stop we are the ones.
Speaker 9:For me. I think what keeps me going is what we're fighting for. I like to talk about the joy, the culture in Louisiana, because you can't even say Louisiana without smiling, without singing, about the jazz, music, the blues. And you know, people always ask us, like, if there's no man, what do you mean? And we always, you know people always ask us like, if it's so bad, what do you mean? And we always say, well, we're going to eat. I mean, nobody looks better than Louisiana. We have the best seafood, we have, you know, the best culture. When you come there, people are saying, yes, ma'am, no ma'am. Have you seen? We take care of people, we take care of each other.
Speaker 9:It's that Southern hospitality that we're fighting for our beautiful North Coast, that nourishes and gives water to the entire world, and we just want people to know that we're not a sacrifice. You cannot continue to dump things in the gold code and feel like everybody's not going to be impacted. What's happening in our community is impacting the entire world and that's what we're fighting for and that's what keeps me going. Also, I'm a mom of six and I have a grandbaby and sometimes, you know, I go to bed. It's so heavy and I'm sad and I'm crying and I'm like we didn't win today, because you know, our wins are captured by these things that we can touch, but the wins are actually preventable. You can't think all of them. You can't touch all of them Because it's the wind just meeting you and me on your podcast, because now more people are going to know about our community. It's the wind that we share in our year, together with speaking at these trials. So we have them every day and as long as we keep fighting and keep getting better.
Speaker 9:I also do.
Speaker 1:I need to capture the amount today and as long as we keep fighting, we'll keep being relevant. That was so good. I think it captures the amount of spirits that we take to keep doing this work. I would love to hear about your key issues.
Speaker 9:Yes, of course. I'm so glad you brought that up, because what I'm writing my dissertation on is really the intersection of all these injustices that we're facing in the black community. Looking at environmental injustice and how that has been a catalyst for everything that black people have offered our community, and when we look at that in the context of even police brutality, which is another injustice, when we think about how black people often go undiagnosed with a mental health issue. Police are untrained to deal with people who have mental health issues. I was up in the citizenship drawing jailing and saying lots of ways.
Speaker 9:May I have even committed a violent crime? All because they didn't know they had a mental health issue and the police didn't know how to deal with it. So there are so many things that are linked together and we are continuously allowing the perpetrators, which is the oil and gas industry, the government, these big banks, to get away with murder. And right now in Louisiana we have three of our police departments who are under DOJ investigation, are heavy citizens locked away who have never been to court, have never been to trial, no record of a crime.
Speaker 9:You know, it goes back to gerrymandering railing when you know white people were leaving the communities and resources were being pushed out of the communities. You know, and this is where we are. And now it's just something new being done. It's like we fight against one thing, because we fought against coal and we started winning, and now we're fighting against LNG, fighting against petrochemical work, and I could go on about this.
Speaker 9:But the last thing I'll get with you when we look at management hierarchy of needs and we think about our communities, we think about that very basic level of needs. If our very basic level of needs are met, we can never rise to our full potential, but if those needs are constantly being muddled by all of these things that are being dumped into our community, then you can't say things. Like you know, black people steal a lot. Well, some of the resources in the community that are providing food at low cost are accessible food or accessible produce when black people can go back to their tradition of growing our food. We can't even grow our food in our community because of the soil, Right food.
Speaker 9:we can't even grow our food in our community. That's a story, point Right. So we can't even drink water. That's healthy, you know, when they say you know, black people have a high rate of diabetes, they're drinking soda. But if I'm going to go to the store I'm going to buy a soda before I'm going to buy water, Because I should be getting water from my toxic. It's not my fault.
Speaker 9:I can't get water from my faucet, so I'm not going to pay all this money for a plastic water bottle, she's going to buy that coke that's sitting on that shelf and that's going to contribute to my health issues. But this is what's more probable to me, because it's also a known fact that it's cheaper to be unhealthy than it is to be healthy. So, anyway, all of these things are intersecting in our community and we're still being overburdened by a few solutions. They're building on our wetlands, poisoning our food, poisoning our air, poisoning our water, poisoning our mind, killing our babies in the womb. The younger you are, the more plastic you have in your body.
Speaker 1:Like I said this podcast is on forever If I keep talking about it. I'm going to shut me up no, shut me up. I speak my language. This is what I'm going to do it. Well, I guess I'll do this podcast and go on forever If I keep talking about more. Show me up. No, show me up Speaking my language. This is what I'm passionate about Connecting it back to nature. When we're talking about responding to environmental justices, it has to start with the foundation of us understanding that there's no separating human health from environmental health. We're plant health and animal health. They're all related.
Speaker 6:Hi, my name is Misha Mayer. I am from New Orleans, louisiana. I lived in Brooklyn for 10 years before returning back to New Orleans in COVID for my father who worked for Chevron Ornate and passed from a very aggressive cancer at the age of 55 within the span of a year the span of a year and that's when I started questioning what's going on here and I learned about Cancer Alley and I learned that Louisiana has 40% higher cancer rate as a state than anywhere else in the United States, and it's because of the pollution from the petrochemical plants. And so I am here today because I called the sound guy last night and he goes. I'm doing all these events for these amazing people within our community in Brooklyn and I said, shit, I got to go be with my people in Brooklyn because I built such a large community here while I was here, and so I'm bridging worlds for myself right now in being here.
Speaker 1:So how's it feel to be back? Are you able to visit friends and family?
Speaker 6:It's rather serendipitous. I get to see a lot of friends while I'm here and I am just really excited. I get to go on the Clearwater Sloop tomorrow, which is a boat. I get to go on this Hudson River Clearwater Revival Boat, which was a symbol of cleaning up the Hudson River, and I was invited to do that because I participated in Climate in Faith Week, Summer of Heat earlier this summer and I'm very excited to do that tomorrow morning. Right, that sounds beautiful.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear more about your work. I'm pretty familiar with Cancer Alley from a research standpoint, being a scholar activist at the intersection of environmental justice have detrimental impacts on your health and wellness of communities that are usually low-income communities of color, predominantly black communities. I want to know more about what boots to the ground work that you're involved in and how you are showing up in the space right now and if you have any calls to action.
Speaker 6:So Boots on the Ground in Louisiana. I am working specifically with Southwest Louisiana because, while we hear about Cancer, alley and Rise, st James is doing amazing work. The amount of petrochemical plants across Southwest Louisiana and into the eastern southern part of Texas is so astronomically large it's insane. So one of the nonprofits that my organization works with is called Mossville Environmental Action Now and it is founded 40 years ago by a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who was the canary in a coal mine for petrochemical plants in Mossville, and Mossville is no longer it's like no longer a town. It was the first black town in Louisiana and petrochemical plants came in and everyone in Debra's family has died of cancer. She is fighting the fight and she has moved away from Mossville. At this point, what she wants? A she wants litigation and B she wants to do health surveys.
Speaker 6:One of the many, many things that I'm doing right now is talking to a specialist from Stanford about collecting this kind of data so that we know how to format these health surveys and orient the data collection around the illness that is pervasive across Mossville as well as Cameron Parish and Calcasieu Pass in southwestern Louisiana because of petrochemical plants, and we are designing the study that will inform litigation around what is happening to people's health down there.
Speaker 6:And what I will say and I'm going to echo what we just heard upstairs is that you have to get curious because there's stuff happening everywhere and the more local that you can be with the work that you're doing, the more fruitful your work will be. And so there's this tie-in of like going tell people out there what's happening, but also being really curious and really a detective about what's going on in your own community and like if you smell something funny, note it, google it, find out where your chemical waste is going, because it's probably in your water table. There is so much in the air and in the water and in the soil. Do testing, get curious, become a detective. That's what I got.
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm really curious about the study and the formatting of that. I know in Connecticut there have been different drives for having health impact assessments for communities in general so that all policies are informed with that information and shaped accordingly. Do y'all have a sense of wanting to structure it to be standardized enough that anyone can take it to their communities and use it in their own litigation, or is it more customized to the particular ailments?
Speaker 6:What I will say is that, while the health surveys can be something that are easily transferable for different pollutants that are within the air like are you experiencing eye irritation? Like are you experiencing respiratory issues? Are you experiencing heart problems when we interviewed fishermen next to Venture Global LNG, 21 out of 23 said that their health had been affected. So it's very easy to ask what health things people are experiencing and then format the processing of that data in order to tell the story that you're looking to tell. So if we're looking to see what happened to people who moved away from Mossville versus people who stayed, then we're sending the same health survey to both people.
Speaker 1:I think it's super important, especially, you know again, when you're talking to decision makers, they want that quantifiable data in tandem with qualitative data, testimonies and storytelling. That's essential for the work that we're doing, but it's also just like really impactful for the general public to understand the extent to which these things are really happening. So I think when you're not living in these communities, it's really easy to turn a blind eye or to think it is kind of a far-fetched thing, or to have a greater degree of separation than actually exists.
Speaker 6:Right, and so that's where the numbers really stop, because people don't like people can hear 40% higher cancer rates and they'll just say I'm never gonna go to Louisiana, Like that's. They'll go 40% higher cancer rates and they'll just say I'm never going to go to Louisiana. They'll go to New Orleans, though. New Orleans is amazing, and what I will say is that this is where the storytelling does come in and where personalizing these issues, finding common threads where you're like oh shit, that's something that my grandma experiences. Then suddenly it's tangible and it's relatable. That's the one-two punch for getting people to care yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me a bit more about your personal journey and getting into this work and how you see your current experiences and insights you've gleaned thus far shaping your future in environmentalism?
Speaker 6:so I was born in this through the effects of large oil on the health of people. There's a lot of different things that I'm working with now that are not that specifically, and it all stems from this. Place of my dad was within the system, my uncle was within the system. They died really painful cancer deaths from working within the system, and there is this huge contingent of Louisiana that's ready to sacrifice their lives for the comfort of the money of oil. Right, it gives you a better quality of life to work for the oil company for the shorter amount of time that you work for the oil company in the capitalistic society that we live in. So I'm trying to shape a different narrative for people. Louisiana is investing in solar in a way that is fortifying to our hearts. I would love for that to pay more Right now.
Speaker 6:I just gave a workshop on storytelling and narrative shift in environmental justice, and so what I will say is right now it feels like in environmental justice, we are in the stage of justice. Right, you go from being complacent to something happens to you and you're a victim of the environmental injustice, and then you are angry and you are seeking justice, and right now people are seeking justice, and you can't skip that part. So from the seeking justice, then you move into creator. What's the future that we are creating together? How are we using sustainable energy sources? How are we dismantling the powers of the government, like becoming less reliant on these grids, on these sources, to impact our lives? How do we become independent of this system? I don't personally know how to change the system, so I just know how to be self-reliant from there, and that's looking like getting a lot of solar grants Right.
Speaker 1:If you were to build your own community from scratch, what would it look like? And I mean no limitations.
Speaker 6:Design this future with radical imagination. So it's this amazing cross-section that I feel, because for a while I was living here in Brooklyn and I felt like we were creating this community within the party scene of Brooklyn and the people who were thinking beautiful thoughts and imagining the future, and we were going on retreats together and these like all right, I was going to Burning man and I was was like in that life and what I found is that there is no equity at all in that. So if you're not like, if you're not, if you don't have a child in one hand and like a and a wheelchair in the other, how accessible are you making your community? And so I want to imagine a future where we have the holistic healing of the forefront runners and we're bringing the medicines and the health consciousness and the spirituality aspects and bringing those back to seed in the hearts of vulnerable communities, not just the ones who are privileged to be around. So I'm in this space of looking to marry access. That's my radical life is figuring out how to make things accessible.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Misha, for your time. I really appreciate it and I wish you good luck in all your work.
Speaker 6:Thank you so much. Oh, plug your podcast. Oh, if you want to learn about all the really nitty gritty things of what's happening in Southwest Louisiana, I do have a podcast. It's on Spotify. It is Golf Rising G-U-L-F-R-I-S-I-N-G is gulfrising G-U-L-F-R-I-S-I-N-G, and I have gulfrisingcom and you can go check out how chemical waste management systems are poisoning our water tables or how Mossville happened. I have a whole episode with Debra LNG facilities sinking oyster ships, all these different tiny aspects of the whole of what it's like to be in the wild west of southwest Louisiana.
Speaker 1:Tune in, learn something, get active, look how she ate. I mean, look how she ate. I hope y'all are enjoying it. So far here on Radical Love Sounds. I like to invite listeners to take an intermission for this episode. Your interview interlude is here Comes the Sun by the Beatles, of course, in honor of Antonique's incredible performance. I mean I wish I could play it here, but really you have to be there. It was truly magnificent. Still before you go, I want to mention that I created this episode specifically to highlight women leading on climate, in part to protest the hot mess that is COP 29, having practically no women leading their planning, and you see where that got them right. Okay, so when we get back, you'll hear from Kiana McCain from the podcast Climate with Kiana, ayanna Bodhi from Project Drawdown and super rad native activist and artist, heather Milton-Lightning. Tell us your name and where we are right now.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Kiana and we are here after the Earth Sessions for Climate Week hosted by Intersectional Environmentalist here in Brooklyn, new York.
Speaker 1:What drew you to Earth Sessions and have you been to any of their?
Speaker 3:other events. This is my first Earth Sessions event. I've been trying to go to a few in the past and scheduling this was the first one I was able to make and, yeah, it was a great experience. I think what drew me to it is it's a beautiful intersection of so many things that I love, which is, you know, environmental, climate action, and then also just celebrating art, music, joy, community. So they had all these incredible free books they give away and then beautiful poetry and speakers and music and everyone was dancing. So really a wonderful event all around.
Speaker 1:I know that you have your own podcast. Can you tell us a little about that and if the thing that drives you to have a podcast isn't in any way related to what drives you to come to events like this?
Speaker 3:So I do have a podcast.
Speaker 3:It's called Climate with Kiana and it's about exploring climate solutions in a framework of joy and justice.
Speaker 3:So it's an interview show.
Speaker 3:So I talk to experts, leaders, seasoned leaders, emerging leaders who are working on different aspects of climate solutions, also focus on energy justice as well, and I mean what inspired me to start the show was that I felt like I was having organically so many incredible, hopeful and optimistic conversations about complex climate challenges and solutions with people in my professional network and meetings, so I wanted to be able to basically bring conversations that I felt were happening to a larger audience, so you didn't just have to be in the room with the experts to be able to access those conversations.
Speaker 3:And I think definitely the benefit of having the show is that it's allowed me to connect with even more people who are doing amazing work, and coming to events like this and other events during climate week is a great opportunity to get to meet in person when so much work happens. You know online to be in person when so much work happens. You know online to be in person and meet other passionate people passionate climate experts or just enthusiasts and talk about all the amazing climate work that's happening and celebrate together too.
Speaker 1:I'm curious about, then, because you kind of lean towards a solutions oriented work and you lean towards climate justice work. Do you have any specific events at Climate Week that you're most looking forward to?
Speaker 3:There's so many events and I don't want to say that I'm favoring any events over others, so I definitely can't think of everything at once. But some highlights that I'm excited for this Climate Week are the Climate Film Festival, which is in its first year. I actually went to some of the short film screenings this morning. I'm going to more tomorrow. I'm excited for Marketplace of the Future next weekend, which is always a great event I am really looking forward to at the NEST Summit, the BIPOC Green Career Summit, which friends of mine are putting on, and it's, I think, going to be really fantastic programming and resources for people looking to get into environmental careers and bioscene. And then also Megan and Polo of the Green Journey. They just biked across America on solar bikes over the last few months and they have a handful of events this week talking about that experience. So those are a few highlights that are coming to mind, um, and then, honestly, some more informal gatherings that I'm going to just to connect with people.
Speaker 1:I think that's so important. Like when you come to climate week, it's so easy to get like caught up in that, but I think part of the experience of it being in new york is to remember to like explore new york and connect with people, to stay well-rounded in your experience here and not lose sight of what really brought you into the climate movement. Something I want to get back to is that you said that part of your journey towards podcasting was wanting to share a conversation that you were having in your field of work. Can you say more about your field of work and kind of how you transitioned into the climate justice space?
Speaker 3:I think for me I sort of knew that's what I wanted to do from a younger age, so I had maybe less of a transition from another field and sort of went straight into that work while in school and out of school. But yeah, I focused primarily outside of my climate storytelling and more activism focused work. I work in solar. That's what I've done for many years. So kind of more of the some of the technical side of solar work and project development years. So kind of more of the some of the technical side of solar work and project development. So basically, I think organically from my work in solar and broader clean energy community and climate justice community. That's where those conversations came from. That inspired me to start the show.
Speaker 1:We gotta take a group photo. Everybody say Earth Justice. Earth Justice, yay, perfect. I love how we organized that.
Speaker 9:I love that. I'm really proud. We all made that happen.
Speaker 7:Great, yeah, so thanks so much for having me. My name is Ayanna Bodie she her pronouns. I work for an organization called Project Drawdown, where we advance climate solutions essentially. So we do that by advancing climate science, engaging with different stakeholders on solutions and doing a lot of climate storytelling. I specifically work around the stakeholder piece and I engage non-sustainability employees within companies who want to be change makers and want to take action on the climate crisis from their workplaces and from their jobs, and I wanted to be on the panel today because, first of all, the topic was very relevant to me. It was about the future of work. How can creatives get involved in taking climate action? How can people make their jobs climate jobs so kind of my bread and butter? I'm also a really big fan of the organization that put it on, creatives for Climate, as well as always been a big Marketplace supporter, so I love this event as well. It's a really good way to kind of wind down after the craziness that is Climate Week, new York.
Speaker 1:While you're on the panel, I was really rather grateful for your candor in terms of the really simple tasks that people can do and how that complements the very specific structural climate action checklist and guides that you offer the people. Can you tell me if there was a moment in your life specifically where you were like this is what I want to do, this is what I want to commit to and this is how I'm going to show up in the climate space, because I think it is another example of the fact that there's no singular way to be a climate activist and you're doing climate activism in a very structured way that helps people bring it to their work anywhere. Yeah, what brought you to doing that?
Speaker 7:I love this question. I feel like I don't have like I feel like a lot of people have this like really one moment, this one story that got them into climate. I don't really have that. I'll just say that I've always just been interested in the environment more broadly and I think that my grandma really influenced me. She grew up very poor in like rural Korea, and so I just feel like she and she lived with us in the United States for most of my life growing up and I would just always see her like going on nature walks every single morning and she knew like what plants to pick that were edible and she would use chestnuts to make pillows, and so I was just very inspired by her connection to the natural world. I think that influenced me a lot and I've always ever worked in the environmental sustainability space more broadly ever since I've, you know, been a working professional.
Speaker 7:But I think what brought me to this work specifically around like engaging employees, is that I tried working in policy and I was like this is going really slowly and it was very frustrating.
Speaker 7:And I saw this job posting at my current organization, working with corporates, and I was like I'm very skeptical but I'm intrigued because I feel like, unfortunately, governments and companies hold a lot of power in this world, and so I thought why not give a chance to working with companies and I'm still very skeptical of companies taking real climate action, but the one thing that I've loved in my job is working with employees because, at the end of the day, companies are just people people and I've met so many climate passionate people who just you know, yeah, they happen to be marketers in a tech company or they work as an engineer at a manufacturing company, and so just connecting with those folks who really care and want to make a difference has been very inspiring. That definitely is what keeps me going and gives me hope that we will solve the climate crisis and, yeah, I just love building those relationships with people.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate that my master's in public policy and so I thought that was a good avenue. But yeah, it's so slow in a way that feels disheartening at times. So I really respect your ability and your drive to like no, I'm going to make that change. I'll commit to doing that. More importantly, I really appreciate the way that you're expressing wanting to work with employees in a way that's absent of shame, and you're not making people feel bad about not being an environmentalist, not being on the front lines and what. Have you Paying homage to your grandmother and the way that she drove a bit of your connection to this work. How do you find yourself rejuvenating yourself and maintaining your connection to nature and to our earth as a function of protecting against burnout or just staying inspired to do the work that you're doing?
Speaker 7:admittedly, this is something I could probably be better about.
Speaker 7:I definitely think that like being in nature is, like my number one way of feeling rejuvenated.
Speaker 7:Obviously, doing climate work whether you're like on the front lines or in a nonprofit or you're an employee, like asking for change within your company all of it is very exhausting and nature has always been my way to feel just literally and figuratively grounded.
Speaker 7:I think living in New York I haven't done a great job of getting out into nature, but I feel like I've also found a newfound appreciation for like the urban environment and just like appreciating the green spaces I have around me and my neighborhood, even just like admiring you know, it's fall right now admiring like the changing of the seasons and so I think, you know, not having access to like what we typically think of as nature, like mountains and trees and streams, etc.
Speaker 7:Finding myself feeling more excited by like the urban environment and just appreciating the fact that I'm able to walk around and go to a park and be able to escape into at least a semi-natural environment, even for just a little bit. So that definitely keeps me grounded. And then the last thing I'll say is just having community, like coming to like places like this, like Marketplace of the Future and just like meeting awesome people like yourself is really rejuvenating and like yes, it's just awesome to be reminded that there are so many people working in the same space I am thank you so much for your time and all the work that you do.
Speaker 1:If you haven't already check out project drawdown, introduce yourself. Okay, tell me where we are and what you did today.
Speaker 10:I'm at the new school here in New York City for the Rights of Nature Tribunal. My name's Heather. I'm from Treaty 4 territory which is part of southern Saskatchewan, a little part of Alberta, a little part of Manitoba, so it's an area like north of North Dakotaota and montana.
Speaker 1:that's where I'm from I've only been to canada once. I was in toronto and a little bit outside, so surrounding areas of ontario. Um, do you agree that toronto is the new york of canada?
Speaker 10:no, because new york is new york, it's like. I don't feel like this city compares to anywhere else in the universe. But Toronto is like the city, yeah.
Speaker 6:That or Montreal.
Speaker 10:It's debatable, or Vancouver.
Speaker 1:The three, it's kind of the trifecta, the iconic ones. I really want to go to Vancouver, actually all of them. So today you spoke on the just transition and your philosophies on how we can make sure that we're actually incorporating justice into it more than we're just kind of virtue signaling or centering diversity in it. Can you give us a sense of what a just, justice-oriented transition means to you or would look like in its best?
Speaker 10:case scenario. I think I'm still learning what that means. I also think that it's really up to our communities and our people and our movements to define these things. I often find that we'll come up with something great like, for example, environmental justice and all these things, and it gets co-opted and it becomes something else, and you can definitely say that with just transition, but to me it's just, it's the possibility in the realm of possibility and I think for a lot of our people back home.
Speaker 10:You know we're trying to undo the colonial project right. You know we're trying to figure out how do we take down capitalism, how do we have healthy, regenerative communities? You know, I think the thing that I was thinking about is there's a practice person called care that I've been really checking out in Berlin, and the actual practice of the things that we talk about, because it's it's. You know, there's all these catchphrases where I come in Canada that are political. The government now uses them and they become something else. And I think it's really up to us to figure out what the healing practice looks like, because it's not just like we're trying to heal ourselves and the trauma that we carry from generations of all the things, but it's also like how do we heal our economies, how do we heal the relationship to the earth? And to me, like those are really, really those are simple concepts. We've had several iterations of what that could potentially look like.
Speaker 10:Um, I think the thing that I've really enjoyed about, you know, the recent work that different people are doing all over the globe kind of under this idea of collective liberation, is, you know, embracing the conflict, embracing the uncomfortable silences, embracing the things that I feel like have taken that hold our movements back. You know, also just pausing. You know I really love Trisha Hershey and the idea of rest is revolutionary because, again, we're just, we embody that idea that we have to be productive, we have to be all the things, and indigenous people really believe like if you're just human, you exist, that's enough, right, we don't have to be all the things with all the titles and everything else and and compete over things, and I think the idea is also like part of healing is also getting an idea out of scarcity and for a lot of indigenous people, we believe that everything we need is here yeah, right yes, but we don't need to have like endless growth.
Speaker 10:You know, I think that's always been my argument with like the people in like ecological economics. They're like you know, they want to value nature and price it and we've seen those models and they don't work. In particular, like market-based solutions don't work in terms of climate change so it's really thinking how is the problem going to solve itself?
Speaker 1:it's not like you can't use the exact same tools to solve the problem it created that doesn't make sense, right.
Speaker 10:And I think the other thing I'm super excited about is that I just I love art. I love art and I I think, like for our folks back home, artists are leading our really revolutionary thought right now and I'm excited to see, you know, new generations rise up with this idea of like they're able to practice, they're able to think beyond these boundaries and like. That's why I really wanted to include like some of the work that adrienne marie brown was doing around, like um, like black sci-fi, right, and like her work, just meeting with folks and allowing space for us to to think beyond what's been imposed on us. And this idea of like visioning is revolutionary. You know, like it's supposed to be a practice that we carry as Indigenous people, but it's really hard to actually think about what it means to truly be free.
Speaker 10:What does that mean to your community? What does that mean to your family? What does that mean to you as a person? Like is freedom just having, um, a better job? Is freedom actually like embodying the rights of nature, embodying a different way of living where we just have to be human and, like trisha was saying, like we can rest, we don't have to work 24, 7, you know like, because to me, when I think about just transition, yes, it's about jobs, yes, it's about renewable generating, it's all of those things, but do we actually have to work to live?
Speaker 10:yeah for someone else to get rich off of us? I don't think so, you know. So I think for me, I'd really love to see us incorporate some of these ideas into the planning that we're doing, um, to get to that vision of freedom, whatever that looks like. And so, to me also like I can't answer this question so specifically, because it's going to look different for each community, yeah, you know, and we all have a different relationship to colonialism and like the nation states and all of the things, right. So I said, doing that's going to look different in different places. So I know the un and other global movements like to kind of just, this is the solution. I'm like the solution looks different depending on where you come from and what you're dealing with, and I think that's the thing that's super exciting. It's like the idea of really creative, artistic, beautiful endeavors, but also it's just valuing our lives in a much different way and living differently, you know, and that's exciting. I think everybody could be into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think everybody could be into that. Yeah, I agree, I feel like, yeah, the three-day work week should be part of the Just Transition. Seriously, yeah, because when we think about the way humans evolved, we evolved with leisure as the majority of our time. You know what I mean, and in that time, that is the ability to think, that is the ability to connect with people, to tend to your relationships, to tend to yourself, to tend to your creative process and just expand and grow as humans in relation to each other and in relation to the land, which I think so much of the issues with capitalism that we're talking about, the issues with the way our society values certain things that are inherently related to capitalistic production, is that it presupposes that humans are above nature, that we are separate from, and therefore nature is for our, our use, as opposed to no, we exist within it. We are very, very integral part of the delicate balance, and all of the climate crisis is a result of us taking ourselves out of that and thus ruining the balance. Right, like and you know you can think about that balance in a lot of different ways, but the more straightforward way is like ecological balance and the way that we we're now seeing the effects that we've had on the broader ecosystem. When I'm thinking about just transition, it is again like understanding that, in relation to the work that we're doing, in relation to the different career paths, we you cannot just think that the climate jobs need to be responding to climate, you know, or that there are very specific sectors I have to do. It's every single sector and it's it's. It's transitioning every single sector to address climate in ways that are visionary, um and artistic.
Speaker 1:I love the, the use of art in this, because we we need that. For me, music especially, it's so special in that it transcends time and species, like I don't know, maybe dance is the only other one that is like something you see across different animals, but that is something I think we can't lose sight of in terms of the way that we are envisioning our futures, whether it be an Afrofuturism or Indigenous Futurism. Can you tell me more about Indigenous Futurism? And I really liked the seventh generation thinking. Can you expand on that a bit?
Speaker 10:I think we've just, you know, we've always had this idea that we're supposed to make decisions now, with thinking about future generations, and like, clearly, our people did that for us to survive right now, they made certain decisions to hide our ceremonies, to hide our language. You know, when we went through a time where we weren't allowed to do any of those things? So it is. You know, when we went through a time where we weren't allowed to do any of those things, so it is actually being responsible to who we are, as we were directed to be.
Speaker 10:I think the thing that I'm excited about this idea of just futurism in general is like it's just the idea of what could be. The reason why I like to put it out there is this connection with this visionary thought, practice, but also art, and people generally will get that. I think the other piece to it is that, you know, the difference, I feel like, with indigenous futurism is like they're trying to articulate what, what the future would look like if colonialism hadn't happened, right, and I think that's actually a really important process for us to think about collectively, as movements, if we want to actually see where we want to go, and I think that's the thing that I feel like it's gonna sound really weird, but I don't want to work on just doing all the things. I actually want to have a strategy to get us to where we need to go, but I feel like we assume that we know where we want to go, but I don't think we do.
Speaker 10:Yeah you know, we don't know, and I don't think that people have had the opportunity, like, like, what Adrienne Brown does is just gathering people to think about it and just to go through a process together. I think that's so amazing and I think it would be really nice just to hear from other movements and other people like, what does that idea of freedom look like to you? What does it feel like, you know, without all the things that we talk about, because I think we do need hope? You know like it can be. This work can be so isolating, can be violent and can be all of the things Right. So I think that's where I'm trying to think about.
Speaker 10:I also feel like, you know, the way that we define just transition is more like it's a bowl or it's a vessel that's holding all of these things. So to me, like, what's in there is also like birth work, you know, and like, um, you know, say more about that. Well, because it's the start of life, right, for indigenous people, we have a whole ceremony that goes with the start of life, as we do with death, right, um, which is this idea of reinvigorating those practices so that we value our children again the way we used to, because they used to be the center of our universe, right, and they're not anymore because of colonization, right, our communities aren't healthy. So that's the thing it's not just about, like we need to fight all these systems. We also need to figure out the practices that we do have that we can invigorate in our communities, and you know, a big piece of that is also like language justice and thinking about ways to invigorate indigenous languages, and you know all of the things.
Speaker 10:So that's what I mean, like it's not just about, like, economies, it's not just about jobs. It's about all of the things that make up the fabric of our society we should embody, like sovereignty and self-determination and all of those things as a practice, right. However, the the issue with that is, like also the contradiction of where we are right now within this system, right, and then trying to figure out. So how do we take it out? You know, understanding, like money isn't going to leave tomorrow. You know racism isn't just going to stop because we want it to. You know patriarchy isn't going to just disappear, like, we still have to fight things. But I think, to me, the balance of that is we also need to build the new, and the new can look really amazing.
Speaker 10:I think it's also the idea like we just have to try and fail and learn yeah you know, and allow that to happen and allow that to not be like, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world, like the idea like failure is actually really important. Conflict is important, like all of those things, and learning, like that liberatory process of how to do those things in a way that is good for us and it's healthy, because we're so taught like we're, we're supposed to fight all the time, but we don't need to when we're building something new, right, and those two things kind of need each other in order to get us where we want to go, but we don't know where we want to go yet. So that's the other part about it, right? So I think it could be beautiful too, like all the fighting and everything else. It's just, it's harsh, it's a harsh world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I had like three life old moments when you were talking just now. I loved everything that you're saying, and so I I really actually want to hear, you know your answer, understanding that this is your answer today. This isn't your answer forever. It's your answer for yourself. But what is freedom for you? What does it feel like, taste like, sound like?
Speaker 10:Well, it's funny because my friend just released this film called Singing Back the Buffalo and, where I come from, the buffalo they're our closest relative, like we have a symbiotic relationship, and it's so interesting because our societies are actually modeled off of theirs, so they're matriarchs, right.
Speaker 10:So say, for example, there's a threat, the buffalo will hide the children in the center, and then the older people, and then the females, and then the males, the older males and then the younger males, and so it's just a natural formation that they do in their family groups.
Speaker 10:You know, and it's interesting because our communities are starting like cross-border projects to bring the buffalo back, and there were millions, millions of them. And then you know we lost what 80 to 90 percent of our populations during the epidemics that happened as settlement happened and the buffalo can had a genocide. You know, the settlers right to build the railway and expansion and all of the things. So you know, like what happened to them happened to us, and so we're in this space that I feel like we're starting this, this generative process of healing in our communities and bringing all these things back, and I really feel, like the buffalo we're trying to do that too, even though it's this weird relationship because we were never like supposed to be like farming them or like that kind of relationship. But we understand more like animal husbandry?
Speaker 10:yeah, but it's not. We never did that, like they had their own existence and we had ours, like we didn't farm them. So it's this moment where we, like we have to do what we have to do in order to make sure that they can thrive again, and so I really think like that's also in the back of my brain thinking about like those kinds of relationships that we want to see. So, to me, like I always think, one day the buffalo will be free, and if they're free, we're free, because it's a symbolic relationship. So probably didn't answer that question very well, because I'm not sure that other people can embody what that means, or if they even know what a buffalo is, but that's what I mean. Even know what a buffalo is, but that's what I mean. Like I feel like it's very different for who you are and where you come from, where your history is, right, you know so, yeah, that was.
Speaker 1:I think you answered it perfectly. I think that was so beautiful and I thank you so much for your time perfect, awesome.
Speaker 10:That was a lovely interview, by the way well, there you have it.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode of radical love sounds and I look forward to chatting with you again soon. Follow me on ig at more cat, that's. That's M-O-R-H-K-A-T no-transcript.
