On Monday, February 1 at noon, the James Baldwin Lecture and the History Department’s Feinberg Series co-present a free virtual event, “Young People Fighting for Climate Justice.” Young people -- particularly youth of color and youth from the Global South -- have transformed the climate and environmental movement. The event features two young organizers who have been central to this process. Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate and co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement Varshini Prakash ‘15 will reflect on their personal experiences in the climate movement and share their organizing strategy, insights, and visions for the world they’re fighting to win. A live virtual Q/A will follow.
Vanessa Nakate is a 24-year-old climate activist from Uganda and a leading voice on issues of climate justice and race. She is founder of the Rise up Climate Movement, which amplifies the voices of activists from Africa. Additionally, she spearheads a campaign to save the Congo Rainforest from deforestation and a project to install solar stoves in schools. She is author of the forthcoming book, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis. In January 2020, Nakate was cropped out of an AP photograph of youth climate activists at Davos, garnering international attention around how youth of color activists have been erased from media representations of the climate movement.
Varshini Prakash is the Executive Director and co-founder of Sunrise, a movement of young people working to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process through the Green New Deal. Varshini has been a leading voice for young Americans, including when she helped lead a mass demonstration for the Green New Deal with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that went viral and put the climate crisis at the top of the political agenda for the 2020 elections. Prakash’s work has been featured in the New York Times, MSNBC, The New Yorker, BBC, The Washington Post and more. In 2019, she was named to Forbes 30 under 30 list for law and policy, and TIME 100 Next, a new list of rising stars who are shaping politics, popular culture, science, and more. As an undergraduate at UMass Amherst, Varshini was an organizer of the successful UMass Divest Campaign.
The event will be moderated by Toussaint Losier, Assistant Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst, and introduced by Joye Bowman, Professor of History Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.