Community Work and Climate Justice

As climate change continues to grow and impact our world, so does the response from activists across the world. Climate justice activists take many forms and employ many strategies to effect change in policy of or public opinion on greenhouse gas emissions. Through York University's Academic Innovation Fund dedicated to creating open source, publicly available course content, we've created 6 video segments interviewing grassroots climate justice activists from Toronto, a city with many climate justice organizations and efforts. Here we interview organizers and community-based activists Iakoiehwatha (Instagram: @memoria.melancholia), a Kanien'kehà:ka youth who has helped start programs for her community, and Anne Keary, an organizer and mother in Toronto. We discuss the importance of sharing traditional knowledge within Indigenous communities, the power of public school systems to get organized, and how local change can make the biggest impact on global issues. You can watch the live-recorded Zoom video interviews or read the transcripts recorded in Summer 2020.