Isha Clarke: A New Era of the Climate Justice Movement
In her keynote speech at the 2019 Bioneers Conference, Isha Clarke says that to build a successful global climate movement, we must prioritize the voices of those most impacted by environmental injustice. We must also resist efforts to tokenize the term “intersectionality” rather than actually implementing it in our movements and daily lives. What would a movement and a society functioning on a genuine understanding of intersectionality look like?
We talked to Isha a few months ago about adult allyship with Youth vs. Apocalypse, the group she leads to redesign the climate justice movement as a platform for youth of color and Indigenous youth. In that conversation, she said:
"Adult allyship is actually very strong at this moment. Adult organizations will reach out to YvA asking, “What do the young people want to do?” Adult organizers are very much trying to follow the youth. There is still work to be done there too, because, yes, the youth need to be leading this movement, and I’m super glad that people are on board with that, but there’s also a point at which we get stuck … where we can’t do everything. There’s a difference between leadership and carrying everything.
It’s also true that a lot of these adults have been organizing for decades; they have a lot of experience. Young people aren’t disregarding the fact that we’re working with people who have a lot of experience. Youth should be envisioning what moving forward looks like, but with the support of people who have been doing this work, and who may know things that we don’t know. There can be more collaboration. Overall though, we have a lot of adult allyship, and that’s something that is relatively new and it’s working out well for us."
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