In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Elizabeth Yeampierre, veteran organizer and executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, to explore how frontline communities are taking climate action into their own hands.
In a capitalist world that prioritizes bigger, faster, and more, Elizabeth’s work takes a different path. Small, hyper-local solutions like a community-owned solar grid have huge impacts. Residents of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, where UPROSE focuses its work, are seeing lower energy costs, good green jobs, and local ownership. All while creating a blueprint for other communities to follow.
Elizabeth also takes us beyond the buzzwords of “green economy” and “clean energy” to show what a Just Transition really looks like. Mainstream environmental efforts often focus on the end goal: shifting to renewable energy. But they fail to ask “at what cost and to whom?” Elizabeth’s work ensures that community members aren’t left behind.
This episode is a masterclass in how grassroots power can transition us to a just future.
Key Topics
- A Just Transition: Shifting to renewable energy while protecting workers and communities historically harmed by pollution
- The community-led renewable energy Grid Project
- Resisting extractive economies and reclaiming industrial spaces without displacement or gentrification.
- The importance of building an intergenerational movement
- How Trump-era policies have dismantled climate protections and undermined renewable energy incentives
- How disaster capitalism exploits crises and how community-led responses offer real solutions
Resources
A new solar project in Brooklyn could offer a model for climate justice
US Spending On Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year
The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein)
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