Elizabeth Yeampierre

Gabriela: Okay, today's October 25th, and I'm here at UPROSE with Elizabeth Yeampierre. Thank you Elizabeth for having this conversation with me. I'm gonna start just asking you a little bit about yourself. So if you could tell me where were you born and where is your family from?

Elizabeth: I was born in, well… First, thank you for inviting me to have this conversation with you. I was born in New York City, I was born to Puerto Rican parents. My parents came to the United States when they were very small, five and six years old, and lived in a lot of different places. We were displaced when I was a child. And I've, the longest I've lived anywhere has been here in Brooklyn. And, so my mom was from Santurce, my father from Caguas. And, yeah, myself and my brothers were born here.

Gabriela: Oh, wow. So they came , and they lived like in different parts of the city. And then they met?

Elizabeth: They met in the Upper West Side, you know, the Upper West Side had a lot of Puerto Ricans in the sixties and seventies. But we were displaced from there. And I went to five schools in eight years… I was tremendously shy as a result of that 'cause I kept getting uprooted from being displaced. So we were pretty much dispersed. But my mother and my father didn't stay together very long. They broke up , after my mom had my brother. She married again years later. And so I have five brothers.

Gabriela: Wow.

Elizabeth: But yeah, he ended up staying in the South Bronx. And then my mother and I, and my brothers, we ended up living in a lot of different places.

But my family, you know, my family came, I think in the early forties to the United States. And my grandfather came to work in manufacturing in the Garment District. They came from places in Puerto Rico where a lot of the land had been taken over by the United States for petrochemical industries. And so they moved to the city, lived in the largest slum in the history of Puerto Rico. My grandmother lost seven of her children to disease and to hunger in Puerto Rico. She had 13 [children] and she came to the United States with the ones that survived. And so, yeah, my family comes from struggle, deep struggle, deep poverty, and I am the first one in my family to go to college, and become a lawyer. I'm the first. I'm the first one. Yeah.

Gabriela: That's great. So then, tell me about your childhood. Was your childhood in the Lower East Side?

Elizabeth: No, in my childhood I lived in Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx. I lived in tenements. I grew up, literally seeing things that children are not supposed to see. Everything from watching people get shot to seeing buildings turned on fire, to seeing people shooting up, the kinds of things that if children saw today, we would turn it off if it was on television. I grew up in the middle of that. I grew up in the middle of a lot of violence, and I was tremendously shy. Watching my mother terrified every single time my brothers went out, because my brothers are darker than me. And she was afraid of the police. And she was afraid of police brutality, and she was afraid of what might happen to their future. I grew up, you know, in 1970s-1980s New York, when you hear about

economic disinvestment in our communities, walking past brownfield to get to school, in apartments that were latent with lead paint, with a family with high levels of asthma and a respiratory disease. My father died… I think he was 51 years old from an asthma attack. My mom died two years ago from lung cancer. I often share that I had bilateral pulmonary embolism several years ago. I almost died. And I don't smoke. I don't drink. I've lived pretty much a healthy life compared to my parents as a result of my education, I at least learned how to do that. But I still grew up and live and work in an environmental justice community, which means that, toxic exposure has been a constant in my life, all levels of it. Whether it's coming from highways, from power plants, from waste transfer stations, I have been in the midst of it all of my life.

When I travel to do public speaking, I go to communities that are environmental justice community. So I'm always in it, literally in that toxic soup that has contributed so much to the health disparities that exist in our community. But yeah, I grew up that way. And my mom went back to school when she was 50. She got her GED and she got a certificate in early childhood care. I was very proud of her, she worked three or four jobs because she didn't want to live on public assistance. She felt that welfare, not only was a way that they treated us, but that [it] diminished our humanity. Because we lived on welfare for a short amount of time. But she wanted us to… she also felt it had a narcotizing effect on us. And so she had the house full of books that she collected, and we did a lot of reading. She went to every cultural event that was free.

We spent most of our life in libraries. And it felt like there was a lot of politics discussed at home. We embraced blackness when it wasn't trending, our indigeneity when it wasn't trending, and it was very clear to me from a very young age that we were descendants of extraction and that we were the survivors of a legacy of enslavement and colonialism. And that I was gonna fight, that I was gonna use my education to fight and to be a warrior. And my house was just… it's really interesting because people often think that it's people with degrees that are the smartest. And my grandmother couldn't read or write, and I lived in a home where people didn't have a formal education, but they were brilliant. And my early formation as a child was deeply political.

We understood about the Black Panthers, the young lords, we understood about resistance. I grew up in a belief system that was an Afro belief system. You know, I come from Yoruba traditions. And so even Christianity was described as something that was used to colonize the world in the name of Jesus. And that Jesus was actually a liberator, an activist, an organizer. So my entire frame growing up, my entire political frame is developed in my home where people are struggling at a lot of different levels going with being attacked, their existence, being threatened, because that is the experience of the Puerto Rican in the United States at that time. And so, yeah, I, and I didn't start talking until I was 19 years old, [laughs]. I was very, very quiet. Very quiet.

Gabriela: So, yeah, I can imagine that you were absorbing and living all these experiences and hearing about organizing in your family, you know, [being] really political. So when was kind of the time… and it's remarkable that you became a lawyer, you know. But what was the time, you or what was the trigger, that you said like, okay, I'm gonna go for this, you know. You mentioned that you, you were like, I have to fight for this. But how was that process for you?

Elizabeth: I remember one thing that I talk about often. , first I wasn't gonna be a doc. I was going to be a doctor, not a lawyer. And my mom wanted me to be a doctor because she was worried about my future. She thought I was very radical. I used to like wearing fatigues and say things like: “¡Patria o Muerte! ¡Venceremos!” and march around the house. And I used to… the Young Lords were my heroes, and I'd see them on television. So she was worried that something would happen to me. And I was nine years old when I'm talking about these things. Right?

So, my uncle Roberto was black, gay, Puerto Rican, and did not speak English. And my uncle was tortured, beaten on the street, beaten and had to end up in a mental institution in 1988. He died from complications, from AIDS. But my uncle took good care of me. He developed a lot of mental health issues because of everything that he had gone through from being black, being Puerto Rican and being queer. And so, my uncle, you know, was the one who taught me how to put on makeup. And he was just like my heart. And I was coming out, we were living in Washington Heights, and we were coming home, and I was holding his hand. And some boys started throwing rocks at him and spitting at him and abusing him. And I remember taking my body and I was little and putting it in front of him to protect him.

And I think that that was the moment where I made a decision that I could never let things like that happen to people that I was gonna fight. And I didn't have formulated in my mind what I was gonna do or how I was gonna do it, but I knew that I was gonna do it. And it was just so clear that someone as kind and loving as him and, and as vulnerable and gentle could be treated that way was unacceptable to me. And of course I grew up with all the stories, from my grandfather, from my parents. My mom told me that when they moved to New York, they were the first Puerto Rican family in the village. My aunt went to school with Robert De Niro, and that the Italians used to chase them down with garrison belts. 

And that a teacher, when she, a teacher, held my mother down so that a white girl could hit her in the classroom. And I don't think that people know the stories of Puerto Ricans and what we've endured and how we've opened doors to make it possible for other generations of people. A lot of times people have a very capitalist way of thinking about their presence in this country. And they like being very critical of the way we speak Spanish. They like being very critical of us, when they have benefited so tremendously from our presence here. Like, we benefited from the African Americans, the African American opened doors for us. We have rights because of African Americans. We live the lives that we live because of the blood that they spilled. And I think people who came after us can say the same thing about Puerto Ricans. I don't think they know our story. And our story is one of survival and resistance. So I grew up on those stories, and there was no way that I could hear them and not be thinking about what does that mean for my future?

And how do I wanna show up in it? And for me, that meant that whatever I studied, even when I was thinking about being a doctor, because that's what my mommy wanted, even when I was thinking about, I remember saying: “Oh, so I'm gonna be one of those doctors that like, barters and they can pay me with pigs and chickens.” And my mom would laugh and say: “but we live in New York City. That's not, that's not what doctors do.” Even then it was like: “I'll be a community doctor”. So, so that idea of the kind of person that I wanted to be in my life started out by listening to the stories, watching what my family had gone through, and knowing that, as the lightest skin child, as the only girl, that I was gonna have access to things that maybe my brothers would never have, and that my role was to facilitate the building of power for our people.

So that started really young. That started really young. And remember, think about what's happening, right? The civil rights movement is happening. There's black power. The young Lords are matching the Black Panthers. And my parents are young and they're watching this stuff. And then, because I come from Yoruba Traditions, the house was full of people from the Americas. There were people from Honduras, there were people from Cuba. There were people from Venezuela in my house, you know, the santeros. And they were coming from all over. And they were coming to my house. I was meeting… My madrina was Ilda Santa Maria, who was Mongo Santa Maria's ex-wife. Like, it was culturally rich. We didn't get maracas, We got shekeres. We had Bata drums in the house. It was culture, it was politics. It felt like power. And it felt like the future. I felt like with a global majority, we have power. And so I go into school dealing with racist teachers.

They even put me into special education. 'cause I didn't speak in a resource room, with racist teachers that had deficit based expectations of us and people who wanted me to feel insecure. And I feel the fact that we exist alone is a testament to our brilliance and of power. Some people may think it's cocky, it's arrogance, it's none of that. I have tremendous humility because I know what my people have endured. But what I don't feel is less than, I don't feel powerless. I don't feel like privileged people know more or smarter. I don't believe that at all. And that is antagonizing, that is provocative, that annoys the hell out of the privileged when you walk into a room and you don't defer to them, and you don't believe that they should lead, and you believe that they should fall into place. And if they're committed to pro blackness and anti-racism, then they need to support frontline leadership. I believe that. And I think that that belief that was developed at an early age

really sort of shaped what I'm doing today, which is that I'm a frontline leader. I'm a climate justice leader. And I'm part of a very beautiful matriarchal movement that is intergenerational. And that all believes that we speak for ourselves. So that philosophy, the fact that I found a political home as an adult that really sort of was deeply aligned with my development has been a joy for me, a joy, that we share leadership, a joy. That there isn't one iconic leader. That it isn't patriarchal. That it has been a gift to be able to work in that space. I love it. And I feel very honored. And I get to work with the most badass people. It’s joyful for me. I’m really happy.

Gabriela: Tell me a little bit about that, because you go to law school. And at that time, it was not, as you said, trendy, you know, environmental justice.

So, there were not all these discussions, although all these things were happening, and had happened for a very long time in many communities. So how, how did you connect later on finishing law school with the work that you're doing right now?

Elizabeth: So I go to law school and I was proudly the youngest one in the class. Everybody at that law school at Northeastern was seven eight years older. They had been out in the field and then came back to school. And I'm terrified. I'm terrified because the crack epidemic is happening. My family's being impacted by it. And I left. And I felt irresponsible by leaving, because staying meant I could've taken care of my family. And it felt like a selfish thing to leave, to go to law school in Boston. And I'm poor. I don't have clothes.

And I'm getting basically three pound pounds of pasta for a dollar, and making it stretch and sending my loan money home so that my family can eat. And the language that is spoken in law school is a foreign language to me. We don't talk about mergers and acquisitions and we don't talk about wills or things like that. That is a new language for me and it is bougie. And the liberals are annoying as hell. The liberals in the class, the radical progressive whites are condescending. They are, in my view, racist. And I know that we all sat together, students of color sat together, and whenever we said anything, they'd walk over and say: “Oh, that was brilliant, what you just said”. And we'd look at each other like: “Wow”. So the first year, I think, was culture shock. And then I realized I didn't like law school. I didn't like lawyers. I became a civil rights lawyer.

And then remember, Reagan became president. And so you see the beginning of a civil rights rollback, and you're seeing all of our rights, everything that came out of the Civil Rights movement, which took a minute, all of a sudden that's being whittled away. You see the Bakke case. Bakke wins that lawsuit, and that begins the evisceration of affirmative action, right? [If] Affirmative action doesn't exist, I don't go to college, honestly. Literally, that's the difference it makes that people like myself who populate all of the movement spaces were able to get a formal education as a result of affirmative action. So I go out to practice law, and the chance of creating bad precedent is enormous. And then law is very particular. It's very specific.

So it could, it could all be about a specific ruling or some regulation. And I felt, and at the time, you're seeing the rise of racial violence. You're seeing it in Brooklyn. You're seeing it all over New York and police misconduct. And I felt that the streets were where we negotiated our rights, that it wasn't gonna happen in the courts. The class divide between me and other lawyers, and how I felt the law… But I always felt that going to law school was necessary. Because every single thing, everything from what you're wearing to the air that you're breathing, to what you eat is regulated. Everything's affected by law, right? And we are so underrepresented in that profession. So, while I didn't wanna be a litigator, and I was a good one, by the way, [laughs], I felt that that legal education was gonna come in handy. And it did. It did. I go to work as director of legal services for the American Indian Community House. And what do I do?

Instead of representing the indigenous people, I started training them to represent themselves. And that's the coolest thing, that was so fun to watch. I taught them just like I learned, you know, how to go from beginning to end, how to present an argument. Oh my God, that was fun. When it comes to UPROSE, UPROSE is the oldest Puerto Rican organization in Brooklyn. It's lost most of its funding. It's a storefront on 54th Street and Fourth Avenue, little like this big [signals with hand]. And my mom is complaining: “why don't you wanna make money? You have an education”. I was like: “Mom, what are we gonna do? We're gonna kick ass here. Can you help me answer the phones?” And, and to be honest, I spent, and I've shared this often, I spent a year just going to community board meetings, just listening to the community. People would come in and they would bring their lunch, and my mom would be sitting there at the entrance and they would be telling her stories. “Me pasó esto, me pasó lo otro” and I would be listening.

And so within that year, We had some young people walk in from around the corner saying, “What do you do here?” And I remember the attitude. I remember the sassiness. I remember all the fabulousness that they came in and me saying: “What do you wanna do?” And so the organization becomes intergenerational. They start talking to me about asthma, about lead paint. They care about the environment. And in my assessment of Sunset Park, what I found was that no one was working on environmental stuff. No one was youth organizing. They did traditional youth development, which is a whole other thing. And so I start training the young people how to organize, and they start telling me what the priorities are. So we start by challenging that council member Rodriguez, who was here at the time, to push him to pass legislation that would engage in lead paint abatement and remediation, because he didn't wanna do it.

And then this woman named Lucy Lopez, whose children went to PS 314, and who lived literally under the Gowanus [canal], said she would get up every night to see her children were still breathing. And that made me say, “what's this thing with the Gowanus [canal]?” Remember, I didn't study the environment [sciences], I didn't. For me, environmentalists were hippies. They were tree huggers. They were white folks who cared more about nature than they did about people. So I didn't really think about it, but as people are coming in, I realize that UPROSE can't continue to be a social service organization.

First, I don't have that as my background. I don't wanna do that. The people that I know are part of social justice movements… I realized, wait a minute, what people are asking for is for us to work on environmental justice. And so let's do that because we don't wanna compete with other people. We wanna complement what we're doing. We wanna carve out a niche for ourselves that we specialize in. And we have transferable skills. If you know how to do research, if you know how to do, how to write, if you know how to communicate, if you know how to organize, you can do this. Right? It's a transferable skill. And we all have them. So the organization starts by first fighting against the expansion of the Gowanus Expressway.  And we stop the expansion, right? We file a lawsuit, we get the legislation passed, and then there's the question of open space for the community. And what they're proposing is open space in Bay Ridge. And we then start training the young people, and they go to every meeting and they start talking about how they want the open space to be in Sunset Park. We train them on land use, on zoning, on decision making. What power does the EDC have? What do these agencies do, what can they do? So early on, because I don't know if you've seen this, but our communities go into meetings making demands that are not the appropriate demands depending on who the agency is in front of them.

The agencies love it because they're uninformed, right? So the idea was how do we create this training so that people know how to be very specific about their demands, right? And that becomes part of the organizing structure of UPROSE. So we get the park, it takes us 15 years to get that park. And I remember, going in there, it was like November. It was cold. I'm sitting by myself on a bench and I'm calling my mom and I'm crying. I'm like: “Mom, like we just doubled the amount of open space. We've got a park for the community and the workers. It's on the industrial waterfront. The workers can use it.” And as I'm talking to my mom, this 30 year old comes by with his baby, and he was one of the 15 year olds who had been organizing for the park. And he comes with his baby, and I hear him say: “You see that lady there? Go give her a hug”. And the baby comes running to me and hugs me.

And I'm just like, crying, you know, because like, he's now a man. He's got a family and they are using the park, right? So we go from that, to counting trucks, to measuring emissions. The young people tell us around 2003, they're gonna: “they're gonna bring a power plant to Sunset Park. It's gonna be the size of three football fields. We wanna fight that''. I'm like: “well, nobody beats those people. Like, yeah, well, we gotta fight that''. So I'm like, okay, let's figure it out. Let's bring people who can train us on how the grid operates. We defeated the siding of the power plant. I think we were the first in the city to do something like that. It was almost like nothing felt undoable to us. The community comes to us and they say, “Mija” cause these are the elders, “No puedo caminar ni cruzar la calle porque esos camiones me van a matar en la Cuarta Avenida”. So we then start, well what do you wanna do? “Yo quiero poder cruzar la calle sin que me atropelle un carro.”

So, I'm like, okay, so we could create a coalition and we'll train you. You can testify in front of the Department of Transportation. And so it isn't like UPROSE leads, UPROSE hears. And then we educate and we facilitate. And so what we did was we trained them. We took them through Fourth Avenue on a bus that we had. We lost that bus, that bus to Superstorm Sandy. And we shared with them, okay, so like, this is what a Bullard looks like. This is what a neck down looks like. This is what the city can do. This is how much it's gonna cost. What do you want? Well, let me let, let me take you to the places where we think that the most accidents happen. So they did that. So then I had the staff research those intersections, and we found out that in five years, there had been 88 accidents and fatalities in those very intersections that the community had told us were dangerous. So the community knows you have to really respect that. The community knows, right?

So what we're redoing, we were staffing them. We were believing them going back and doing the due diligence and the research. And then we called a meeting with the commissioner of transportation. And at the time, I'm sitting on Bloomberg Sustainability Advisory Board. So the commissioner's gonna meet with me, right? So the commissioner comes and the community is there and they're asking for what they want. And the commissioner said, “well, you know, Elizabeth, we just don't have the funding. I don't think we can do it because the funding's not there”. I said, “well, you know, Jeanette, you have the funding for those areas where luxury housing is going up and you're putting down street furniture, and you have the funding in all of these upscale communities that you are investing in, but you don't have the funding for Sunset Park”. I said, “so, you know, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna make a video and we're gonna docent all the places where you found the funding. And we're gonna make that go viral”. And she's like, “Elizabeth, you're so difficult”.

I said, “Jeanette, honestly, like they're telling you that they can't make it across the street, that they're like roadkill and you're telling us we don't have the money when you have it for like white communities”. So in less than a year, if they expand the median, the median is 30% safer. And then Menchaca comes along and he has a very close relationship with Transportation Alternatives, and Transportation Alternatives has a different vision about what should be happening in our community without consulting with us about what our local priorities are. And so you see UPROSE then sort of start becoming this organization that is at odds with a lot of traditional decision making, mechanisms including non-profits that sort of helicopter in and nonprofits in Sunset Park that compromise on justice and are empire builders, but are not community builders. And so we're seen as being difficult because we are not gonna play that game.

You know, we are an anchor of resistance that is here to staff the community because the community's working two or three jobs, raising two or three children, and is facing extreme policing, displacement, climate change, all the isms that our people have had to endure for generations. So as people who come from that and that live here, 'cause my family's been on 44th Street since 1980. My husband's family comes from Red Hook. He was born in Red Hook. His mother who was 20 years older than mine was born in Red Hook 98 years ago. My mom was 81 when she passed away two years ago. His mom was 96 when she died like two years before. So long history. Right? Like the first Puerto Ricans came from Red Hook. Yeah. So deep roots in the community and all of a sudden you've got these people who just showed up or who aren't even here thinking they have a say.

When I first started working at UPROSE, I remember one of my first community board meetings, the chair was a woman named Beatrice Del Rio. I'm sitting, I'm a young woman. And, a Latina gets up and starts talking and she's got a heavy accent. And that woman says in front of everybody: “I don't even know why she's talking 'cause she can't communicate. I don't know. She should learn how to speak English”. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh my God, they're gonna beat me up. 'cause I am not gonna talk, but I'm listening. It's my year of listening and getting a sense of who runs things. How are decisions made in Sunset Park, who are the power brokers in Sunset Park? And at that time, the people who made all the decisions were from Windsor Terrace, and they weren't used to being challenged by Latinos. And the Latinos were really sort of like, they would be satisfied with just getting a little right.

And then you had big organizations like the Center for Family Life that were these empire builders, these non-profit industrial complex type that existed to serve our community but didn't share leadership, were heavy handed and really sort of got, gave the impression that they were a lot kinder than they really are. They're monsters. And you know, I gotta be careful with that word monster, 'cause people may misinterpret it, but I mean it the way young people say the word beast, which is that they had a lot of resources, a lot of power, and people defer to them. And then our community depended on them. They needed them for food stamps, they needed them for housing, they needed them for all kinds of things, so they didn't challenge them. You see who they really are, and you see who a lot of these organizations really are when the fight against Industry City starts. And then all of a sudden Industry City’s dropping money and they're taking it. They're all taking money and compromising justice in the community. So our evolution from where we start from sort of checking out and,

and also the plan was also to save UPROSE. That we needed to save it from extinction. Yeah. It had lost most of its funding. The programming was duplicative. Other people were doing it and maybe doing it better and filling an unmet community need, figuring out what was the community telling us was a priority, and how do we turn this organization into that? And so that's how we organically become the organization we are now. Where we are planning on decarbonizing this neighborhood where we've mapped all those rooftops where we're fighting, what we are fighting for an industrial waterfront that is built for climate adaptation and mitigation. That level of depth and sophistication comes from years of community-based planning of research, of collecting data, of being in community, of honoring community voices and of not having political compromises. I'm not running for office. I'm never gonna run.

Me working on campaigns has never been about having a platform so I can run for something else. There's nothing. That's the only agenda is what I do. And I say that because people have come into this work and they have appropriated it, and they have used these campaigns as a way of elevating themselves, as a way of running for office, as a way of competing. It's an extractive, capitalist, patriarchal culture of practice. Right? So UPROSE's agenda has just been what it is. When people were running for office, we got calls, Hey, can you hold a candidate's debate? I was like, well, you know, we've never done it, but we'll figure it out. We did it wall to wall, people standing room only. We held the first Congressional Climate justice candidate debate in the entire City of New York, wall to wall people. We learned how do you ask the questions? How do you make sure that we are asking the things that are a priority to the community?

So there's a lot that we do, a lot that we've accomplished. And it's all been on something very simple, which is we're not competing with other people because we believe in collaboration, not competition. We are meeting, we're being asked. So like, everything from Industry City, to recently… What happened recently that I got a call? Yeah, I'm sorry. Been talking a lot. I'm sorry. I just went down the rabbit hole.

Gabriela: No… I wanted to ask you because I know that you have gained all this respect because of the way you’ve engaged with community members, you listen, you know, and all the processes that you follow.

Elizabeth: These are the principles. They're right on, on the wall.

Gabriela: Yeah. I know. It's, it's just, mind blowing to see, you know, , how you have organized and how you said like, prepare people to fight by their own, for their people and their communities.

And I know that in Industry City, you, you and your organization had a big, big presence. Impact presence organizing. So if you can tell me a little bit about that.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So Industry City, we had a plan. We had gotten some funding, to do some block to block organizing, which was massive. Sunset Park is big on climate adaptation and resilience. And the goal was to identify one organizer per block and paint rooftops white buildings and red aerobic digesters together. We are really excited about doing something that has never been done anywhere in the United States. And we had gotten the funding for it. And that's where our head was, when all of a sudden I started getting messages through Facebook: “Hey, have you seen the Industry city proposal?”

We're gonna be pushed out of the neighborhood. We need upwards to lead on this. We need you. And we were like, oh, okay. Let's just check it out. So we check it out , like we did with the BQX. We first check it out and we're like, well, this is contrary. What they're proposing is contrary to what the community has been saying now for years, like 1998. And I have flyers, old flyers that if I can find them, I would show you, the community is referring to the industrial waterfront as having the potential to be a greenport 1998 before nobody is talking about climate change. They are saying a greenport, they're talking about Containerships. They're talking about maritime uses. And there's the 197-A plan. There are all of these different plans the community has been engaged in where they have been real clear about what they wanna see happen in the industrial waterfront, unlike other communities across the country that wanna shut down the industrial sector because it's literally killing them.

We were already talking about how it could serve us so that we could retain the industrial sector, generate jobs, but that it didn't have to kill us. That it had to look like something different. And here comes Jamestown, with a vision that is dated, that is old school. It's been done. They dated in Williamsburg that has the ability to do what they wanna do here anywhere else in the city. But significant maritime industrial areas are only, I think, six or seven of them in New York. And they were created to build for the future, to build things. And so if they take that land away, we won't be able to build for that future. There won't be anywhere in New York City where we can do that. So we have to fight for it. It also meant that if Sunset Park turns into Williamsburg, where they lost 30%, and in some places 40% of its Latino community, that that was gonna happen here.

And then the connection to climate, because for me it was an anti-displacement campaign when they first approached and we're like, oh, we don't do that. And they were like, yes, you do. You build social cohesion. And I was like, yes, we do that. That's what we do. And disrupting, turning that sector into a font of entry level jobs for the working class that didn't have livable wages, that wouldn't be sustained over time, where they wouldn't be able to support a family, meant that people would be displaced. And remember, I was displaced. And I could tell you that when you were displaced, your family falls apart in a lot of different ways. there is drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, all the things that happen to people that don't have social cohesion. And studies show that communities with social cohesion are likely to survive even when they come from a poor family.

So I knew that industry city represented massive displacement for Sunset Park residents and for small businesses, which as you know, are sort of the lifeline of our communities. And that it would take away our ability to manifest this vision for a green industrial sector and would harm our communities. And that once it was gone, it would be gone. And already you could see them moving in. You could see they were holding onto plots and, and lots all over Third Avenue and Second Avenue. They were holding on. They called onto them for like years to see what Industry City did. There was a lot invested in it. And we did exercise leadership. We created a coalition called Protect Our Working Waterfront, our hashtag was Sunset Park is not for sale. Our vision… 'cause there was another group that was created to literally copy ours, which I thought was: “wow, the division is already starting”.

People are elbowing their way to the front instead of thinking about how we work with each other. Because it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like people didn't have access to the media or to things. I literally don't do it unless I have to. But like, really, we trained people to talk to the press. So I didn't understand why people were sort of trying to elbow us out after we had done all the freaking work, , to just hold it because it had to be institutionally held somewhere. Right. because decentralized initiatives don't have accountability and transparency. Right. And centering it in one place, we have to be accountable and we have to be transparent. , so it became sort of like a feeding frenzy because all of a sudden we had done all this work and people saw the opportunity for them to advance themselves. And we had to sort of, sort of stay the course and say, we're gonna be okay. Let's let this go. Maybe good stuff will come out of this.

Maybe good stuff will come out. But when we started, it was the community [who] was asking us to do it, just like the community asked us to get back the bus, to fight the power plant, to, to expand the median. We literally were doing what we were asked to do. And it was hard because it took us away from this plan, to create resiliency, it took seven years that we didn't anticipate. It wasn't the plan, it wasn't the funding. We had to tell our funders, Hey, we're not gonna be able to do these other things if we don't do this. And they were like: “It's okay.” Right? So that's kind of how we start. And we create what I think is a very sophisticated, sophisticated organizing strategy. We were literally, they had like five public relations firms. They had dropped tons of money in everybody's pockets in Sunset Park. They had plans to show up at our organization in our meetings. They had people literally, like if you went to the People's Climate March, I don’t know if you went in 2014.

Gabriela: Yes.

Elizabeth: Did you see the banner drop that we did?

Gabriela: Yeah.

Elizabeth: That banner drop was Protect our Working Waterfront alliance. That was UPROSE. We did things at that size because we have strategic partnerships all over the city and all over the country. Because we are movement people. We're movement builders. We're not Empire builders. We're not your regular community based organization. We're movement builders. And so we have relationships that made it possible for us to take all of that and bring it into Sunset Park. Because what Sunset Park represented was the kind of threat that was being experienced all over the United States.

So seven years fighting them, fighting revenue, fighting the partnership in New York, the whisper campaigns that were happening in Albany, [and] here. And like we knew, we knew everything that was going on. Because what people forget is that the civil rights movement generated people that landed in a lot of different places. And that they look out for each other.

We don't have to say who those people are, but the whole idea of the civil rights movement was that we'd have people in governance, that we'd have people in philanthropy, that we had people in universities, that we had people everywhere. And so they misunderstood us. They thought, okay, this is a little organization. We got this. It kind of reminded me… I did a police brutality case in New Jersey, and I was, I looked like I was 17 years old. And, I go to Newark and it's seven cops with their seven lawyers, and it's all men. I walk into a room of like 20 men and I look like I'm 17 years old. And so “soy delgadita, chiquita” and I see them, I walk in to do a deposition and I see them going like this. Like, and I was like, just smiling, thinking, this is how you disarm people. Like don't, don't get it twisted. And I think that there is their own racism and their own stereotype about the power of frontline leadership and community-based organizations was part of their undoing.

I don't think they understood that we are not an organization from the 1970s or the 1980s. We are something different. We're an organization that understands land use, we understand GIS mapping, we understand engineering, science. All of those things live here in this organization and media. We understand communications.

Gabriela: And you have been invested in the waterfront for decades, yes? So that is your territory, and you have been protecting it, you know?

Elizabeth: Yes. I have a group of students that I have to meet with this afternoon from Yale that are providing us with some research. I can tell them block by block what's there? I'm like, well, you know, there's a sector in the sixties where the Chinese have sweatshops. They don't have windows, they don't have air conditioning, the conditions are terrible. And that's a disadvantaged community. That's a docket. It needs to be included.

Like, how do you know that? I'm like, you know, maybe I'm geeky, but like onon weekends I'm riding. I can't walk anymore, but I'm in the car, I'm in the car and I'm driving through looking at what are the changes, what's happening, right? So yeah, I know, I know the community, but anyway, I I don't know if this answers your question.

So how we go into this work, this fight against Industry City, literally [it] was the community asking us: “you need to do something.” And then the next thing that comes is how are we gonna win? Because everyone is saying that they're gonna win. That there's no way that we can win. Well, the only way that UPROSE believes that you can win is by having an alternative viable operational plan. That we're not the people who say no, we're the people who say “no, but this can be done.” So, remember that while we are developing the plan to honor the community vision, what else are we doing?

We're getting the CLCPA [Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act] passed. We're passing the Community Mobilization Act. We're literally getting legislation passed that will make it possible to operationalize the vision. Right. So it's not enough to have a vision. Because there's a lot of visions that sit on people's desks, right? And nothing happens. Good idea. But it's not moving. And you can't have your community lose hope.

You can't make them feel like, okay, we spent all this time and it's aspirational, but it's not operational. We needed to be able to say, oh, it's operational. Because while we've been doing that, we're also part of these formations that are doing this to move the money so that the industrial sector can start building for that future right now. So when I say it's complex, it's complex because it's not cookie cutter, it's not a bandaid. It is multi-layered. It's multi-dimensional. And having a vision of being a visionary leader is not enough. There are a lot of people out there with good ideas.

But how do you make it stick? How do you create traction when you need to provide something that people are gonna look at it and say: “Hey, you gotta take this seriously because this is, this is real.” Like, and this is not like, and then the other thing is stakeholders. We come from the working class. So, you know, when you're talking about, white activists that come from privilege talking about the waterfront, they're talking about esplanades and swimmable waters. We're talking about places where our people can work. Yet, that shouldn't kill us. That shouldn't be dropping carbon and coal pollutants on our lungs.

But we gotta work. Right? So we don't have the luxury of swimmable waters around an industrial sector. Do we want open space? Absolutely. But is that all that the working that the waterfront is from? No. There are some places where we gotta work very practical.

So it means industrial retention. And it's interesting because the businesses wanna hate us, but what we're doing is really in their interests. We're basically creating a model that is gonna help them thrive economically and survive in the face of climate change. And they're not gonna be able to continue to operate the way that they're operating now because climate change is here. So whether they like it or not, they're gonna have to transition. And the transition has to be a just transition. So I share that with you because who do we work with? We worked with everyone, including businesses, and now we've reached out to Industry City and we said: “Hey, can we get your parking lot? Can we put solar canopies on it and make that energy energize the small businesses so that they can get renewable energy at a reduced cost because they lost so much because of Covid”. And people may ask: “are you reaching out to Industry City?” Well, it’s all over. The fight's over, they got space, they're a big land lord, and they, and we need that space.

If we're going to address climate, you know, we're good with it. You know, because we're thinking about what's in the best interest of the community, not working with Industry City would be about ego. That would be about something else. But we have to, because they're there, they have so much space and we need to be thinking about how do we bring these unconventional relationships together to build for a future that is going to be violent and is going to do harm. You already saw it with the orange sky. You've been seeing it everywhere. It's scary as hell. Right? So, we have to get into the room with people, get out love, and, and figure out how we, how we build with each other.

Gabriela: Yeah. No, I know that you are really connected to many alliances and coalitions, not only in the city, but also beyond, nationwide and beyond. And I know that for that win, in a way that we can mention [it as a win] because as Industry city didn't expand, you know, as they wanted, I know that there was a lot of support from many organizations.

And, and that was, that was something beautiful. And you are an example of how it is possible to prevent this. So if you can tell me about that, because I think that there is a lot to learn from this in fight.

Elizabeth: So the fight against Industry City… that victory gives way to offshore wind. And , all of a sudden, I'm on the SBMT with [Chuck] Schumer and with Industry City, the owner. And I remember him walking over to me. He says: “Was this what you were imagining?” And I was like: “Yes.” He goes: “I didn't think this was possible”. I said: “well, yeah, we did” [laughs]. And he said: “do you wanna meet?” I was like: “sure. Let's meet, let's talk about what we can do, because we need to do things that are as big as the impact of climate change”.

And so, I'm sorry, I gotta stand up for a second. I'm having some trouble with my foot, I have this brace on, and it's hurting a lot right now. Gimme just a second.

Gabriela: Yeah, yeah. Take your time.

Elizabeth: You know, when I was at a protest against Industry City, 32BJs, rank and file were menacing me. They were physically threatening me. I was there with a cane. I had just had spine surgery and they were physically threatening me. These workers, who could have been my sons, had been convinced that UPROSE was in the way of them getting jobs. And so they kept saying "jobs." And we kept saying: "Green jobs." And they said " Jobs," we said, "Green jobs." "We want what's better for you, for your family, for the future of your children. We want you to be able to breathe and we want you to get paid well to do it.” And I remember one of the young men went over to the sky, that was like attacking me, and said me for a long, but like...

The tensions were really, really terrible. It was, it was pretty scary.

Gabriela: I imagine.

Elizabeth: Well, your question was about our partnerships now.

Gabriela: Yeah. I know that, there were like a lot of organizations, but also different alliances, you know, anti gentrification, and the working class more like for the workers and so that was, that was something very unique, you know?

Elizabeth: Yeah. There was room for everybody. and, and I think that's what the lesson is for people. That there's no need to compete. That the issues are so fast and the impact is so dire that there's room for everybody. That we all bring our strengths and that the power is in the collective. I know that during the hearing process, that groups that had emerged after we created power, they had a different approach and a different way of doing it. And it was beautiful. It was all beautiful. I remember watching through Zoom some of the hearings because by that time we're in the midst of Covid and thinking: “Hey, that was really cool. That was dope. I like that”.

And it wasn't folks that they had learned from us. I mean, literally , their mission, their whole vibe. They had gotten that from the work that we had done, but we weren't hating them for doing what they were doing. We thought it was pretty cool. And, we thought it was necessary. And it added to the breadth of the resistance in Sunset Park. So I thought, I thought that was really cool. And I liked watching it. And I even texted them and said, Hey, I saw what you did. That was awesome. I think that, you know, people come to this from different places and for different reasons. But that was a moment where there's consensus on the grid. So I'm kind of surprised that the Fifth Avenue committee, that has always sort of helicoptered into our community,

and imposed their vision and their priorities on a community that has not been consulted. It [Fifth Avenue Committee] is so competitive, is so hierarchical, is so capitalist, to come in with another vision of planning [was surprising].

When the community has said that they support the grid, we've had so many, like, I would've heard about it already and I would've paid attention. Listen, within the grid, there's an initiative for just transition worker exchange. And we presented it and I remember people in the community like, this was here and when, and some of the women said: “I don't know about that.” I'm like: “No”. And they're like: “No, no, I think what we need to do is focus here on food sovereignty.” And we're like: “Okay, put up food sovereignty and figure out what that looks like and then present it back”.

And so literally we put it up, they said: “Nah.” We're like: “Okay." It was as easy as that in honoring what the community is telling us is the priority.

And then when we gave the vaccine, like: “Ah, okay, that's good.” And it was some, mostly Mexican and Central American, women that are part of a group that they've organized. And they came to all of our events and they were, this is what we want. And we were like: “okay, this is what we're gonna do then.” That's not Fifth Avenue Committee. And I wanna make the distinction because now they want to do what we're doing. They want to work on environmental [justice]. And remember, we set ourselves up not to compete. Yeah. Right? And we have reached out to other organizations so that we could educate them on how to put in a climate lens into the work that they're doing. Because we don't wanna do housing and we don't wanna do what OBT is doing. We don't wanna do what CFO is doing. We don't wanna do any of that. We think that since they've been doing it for a while, they should continue to do it, but they can't do it successfully unless they incorporate how we're going to be able to collectively withstand an extreme weather event. They're gonna have to incorporate that.

And that's what we're here for, that we're here to do that. We don't think there's a need for competition. So the idea that other organizations can come into the neighborhood with plans that they developed, you know, at their desk somewhere and then ask the community to react, is opposite of asking the community, what are your priorities? What do you want? And then creating something that honors what they've sent and then literally doing iterations that honor that voice, that collective voice.

And one of the reasons that I shared, the brilliance of the community about how they knew which were the intersections that were most [needed for help]. They [the city] need a study to prove that… The study, what it does is it helps make a case before the city so that they invest in infrastructure that is gonna make it safer because their [the community’s] word is not good enough for the city.

But we believe the word and we believe the brilliance that's local and we honor it. So it's a different way of organizing. It takes a little longer. So like when there's a community meeting , most people will bring in the community with the agency. We will do a community learning circle where we will tell them: “Okay, when they're saying this, they mean this, this is what they have jurisdiction over. What is the ULURP [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure]? How does it work?” We do all of that in between. And then we're like, okay, now, now meet with them. And then we don't have to say anything. Yeah. Because the community knows what it wants, but they have all the tools to be able to engage meaningfully and to walk in their power. And it's cool to sit back and watch it. It's kind of like, you know, when I worked at the American Indian Law Lines and, and I was teaching people how to go to court for themselves, or when the young people first came into UPROSE and we were like: “You're gonna speak at that. You're gonna testify. Let me teach you how to testify, how to develop testimony”.

There's nothing for me anyway, everybody has different goals. But for me, that's really rewarding. That's really like an amplifier, you know what I mean? Like Yeah. It's really cool. Yeah.

Gabriela: I'm talking about the future. Along these lines… So, you moved to Sunset Park. I understand you, you have been here.

Elizabeth: My family… So my husband's family has been in Sunset since 1980. Yeah. They were born on Columbia Street in Red Hook. I, like I said, went to five schools in eight years. And I always say I was imported into Brooklyn by my husband. I'm not originally from Brooklyn, although I feel like I've lived here the longest and the best. But like I never told people that I was born here because like I wasn't.

Gabriela: Yeah. But you, you have been really rooted, you know here in this neighborhood for sure.

Elizabeth: For a long time. Yeah.

Gabriela: You have seen everything, you know, like all the different periods of the neighborhood, like all the struggles in the 1970s, 1980s, you know, 1990s and involved like in different plans and all that. If you can tell me a little bit about how do you see the future of Sunset Park now that there are demographic changes, a lot of interests, real estate taking over, you know, becoming stronger in South Brooklyn. But also, about the youth that you have been mentioning all the time. Because I think that that is something super powerful, you know? And, also I was very inspired by what you have said about what you have learned a lot from certain communities, you know, that have a struggle.

And I think that the new generations and new immigrants have learned a lot from the Puerto Rican community and have united in different fights. So that youth that you mentioned right now, how is it to work with them? You know, to prepare them to continue fighting because this is getting worse in many ways.

Elizabeth: So, remember when I told you growing up, the house was full of people from different parts of the world? That's kind of how I grew up. And, and I think Puerto Ricans are those people that have love for everybody. We show up at every protest. You know, you always see the Puerto Rican flag. We are people who give a lot of love. It's part of who we are, my organization. Like, we're a little bit of everything. We're Sancocho, you know? Esperanza is Mexican, Sebastian is Ecuadorian and Dominican, like nosotros somos sancocho, un poquito de todo.  And if you come to our events, and you should, people are always amazed how mixed it is, racially, ethnically, like, they're like stunned by how we do that.

And I think that's just who we are. Like we, if this doesn't feel like your house, then we're doing something wrong. This needs to feel like it's your house.

We know that there are gonna be tensions and group tensions, and we're seeing them growing. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking, for example, to see the tensions between the Asian community and the Latino community. The fact that they redrew our lines, our congressional lines. And they disenfranchised the Latino community when they did that. And I'm still angry about it. I remember breaking night, making phone calls, and I knew, I knew that it was a done deed. I knew the minute that Nancy Pelosi weighed in, that this was a district that was gonna be redrawn. And it broke my heart because—what it did was it made the conservative elements more powerful. It increased the number of privileged people in the district, and it disenfranchised the Latino community.

What we did, for example —with the Asians, is we trained 45 young people, East Asian, young people on the history of civil rights that Asians have contributed to from the Yick Wo Case to Korematsu, to the Chinese Exclusion Act. We wanted them to understand that the East Asian community has played an enormous role in civil rights in this country, because their parents are very conservative, but the young people are trying to find their way and don't know their own history. So we trained 45, they didn't even know their own history. We brought in all our friends from across the country, particularly those who are out in California, who are the most radical Asians, to talk to them and talk to them about their own history. We introduced them to books. That's how we were working on building Unity. 45 we're trained. And they're like, we didn't know. I said, I know you don't know. You don't know about Korematsu. You don't know about the Chinese Exclusion Act. You don't know about the railroads.

You don't know about indenture. [They were like]: “How do you know that?” I said: “I'm making it my business to know everybody's history. Like, literally, like, that's what I do. I know a little bit about everybody”. Because that's how I honor how they come into the world together. And so they were blown away by that.

We're gonna do a thing for Día de Muertos. We're gonna do Bomba Plena. Like we just, everyone is integrated into the fabric in terms of the intergenerational, those were all young people. And our youth, one of them was working for Marcela [Mitaynes]. Another one started with us when he was 10 years old. He then was hired here when he was like 19 as an environmental justice organizer. He now heads the New York City Immigration Coalition.

Gabriela: Wow.

Elizabeth: We built leadership. He's Palestinian, Murad Awawdeh. So we are… our youth are not like other organizations have youth programs.

UPROSE doesn't really have a youth program. We do training because we need to level the playing field because there's a lot of things that they don't know. And they get played… their heart… you know, they, they lead with their heart first. They're very idealistic, and then they get played politically. So we do that. We provide them with all the information they need so they don't get played, but they get integrated into leadership. So it's not like a youth program. And we don't romanticize youth and say, well, what do the young people think? That's just patronizing and condescending. Yeah. Sometimes they're wrong and sometimes we're wrong.

So our culture really is about learning across the table from each other. And like, if you met Satia, he's, he's 22 years old. And he's working on campaigns that would blow your mind, like blow your mind. And he's just 22. Like, the staff is super young. I'm the older one, right. I'm the elder. I'm an elder. Right. I'm literally an elder now. Which is kind of a cool place to be.

So, the organization has always been, intergenerational on our board. For example, Joaquim Brito started with upwards when he was 14. He then went to Cornell and got a double master's. And he serves on our board of directors. And young people are on staff. They're part of decision making. They lead. Sometimes they don't, it's not on. This is also a story I often tell where I can come in here, you know, where I'm clear this is the direction that I think that we need to go. I spent all night thinking about it, and then some 15 year old will say something, and that is so much better. And I'll be like: “Yeah, look, we gotta do that”. And they'll be like: “But you felt strongly. I said, yeah, but I got new information and it's better. And it's a better direction. It's a better vision. Hadn't thought about it. So let's do that”. So intergenerational also means having the humility to accept that brilliance exists across the continuum of age. That great ideas come across the continuum.

And that we need to be open to constantly changing it up and changing and challenging old systems and old ways of being that are not serving us. And you know, I think with my particular generation, that kind of stuck sometimes in a way of thinking, oh: “we did that and we tried this” sort of this cynicism.

I don't think that works. I think the human spirit has to grow and evolve and try new things and reject things and know that things change, values change, systems change, people change. And what didn't work maybe 10 years ago may work now. You know, so, so being for us, we can't imagine being an organization that's not intergenerational. We can't imagine it even because we feel like we would be stuck in a very narrow way about thinking about solutions. 

And, in order for us to be creative, innovative, to be able to think about new technologies and intervention, also new radicalism, we need to be in a bigger space that's meaningfully, like really, intergenerational. Like, you know, how much I've learned from young people? It isn't just about how they use graphics and how they use comms, but also how they define themselves, the language that they're using to challenge self and identity. How they're decolonizing language. I feel like a human daffy duck. I'm so, I'm in a perpetual state of excitement because they, like, [pshew] they just blow everything wide open. And you're like, wow. “Eso, si!" you know, that's how we're gonna do this.

So like that we don't see it as "Oh, our young people are at risk." No, our young people are at potential. Remember they said we were at risk and look at us. Right? So like, this sort of like: “¡Ay bendito!” I'm like, I would say no "Ay Bendito Boricua." I am"ni lo pienses, ni te atrevas!”

So in terms of groups, and our groups we create spaces to challenge the way people think that creates division. So I'll give you an example. We can be with a group of immigrants that say things like, well, we work and this country was created by immigrants.

And we say, first of all, you're not the only ones that work. And you wouldn't work if it wasn't because black people made it possible. So say thank you. And second, this is an indigenous nation built by black people, sustained by immigrants. So tell the whole story. He said, because when you come here, you come with the American dream. And the American dream is an extractive dream, built on capitalism, built on extraction, built on the blood, spilled by people. And you have bought that because you're coming from struggle. So you want that dream, but that dream is not gonna serve you.

That dream pits people against each other. Right? So literally what we take is we dissect language and we challenge things that have never been challenged before. Nobody tells immigrants: “Yeah, no, you didn't build this country”. No one says that because it's not politically correct to challenge. But we need to be able to give up propers to the black community. And I say specifically the African American community, even Africans that are benefiting from the struggle of African Americans have to give them propers. Right? So, and that this is indigenous land. We need to tell the whole story because the power lives in that whole story, and do it in a loving way, and help them sort of take apart these models that they've, that have been, that have been given to them by people who are using them for funding and for other things, but are divisive.

Afro indigeneity. I always tell people, listen, from the time I was little, despite how I look, I always knew that I was black and I always knew I was indigenous. And that that was something, if I look at my mother, I see an indigenous woman. If I look at the men in my family, everybody's black, right? I said, so for me, nationality is a creation of colonialism. And my people, of my people, whether they were born in Guatemala or whether they were born in Puerto Rico, whether they were born in Nigeria or whether they were born in the South, and I'm like, we are the global majority. We have power. And so it's important to celebrate. Difference is the cultural piece. Right. Really important to celebrate difference. What we have in common is this history of enslavement and colonialism that has put us where we are right now. And we can't let that keep us apart from each other.

So how you connect with people? So, that's my long way of explaining to you

how building community power is grounded in our ancestral history, and how important that is when you've got… For example, if you went to Sunset Park, you would think everybody's Mexican. Well, what happened to the Ecuadorians? There's tons of them in Sunset. Yeah. Right. What about the people from El Salvador? We got some awesome pupusas in Sunset Park. Right. Don't erase people. And then often that immigrant narrative erases blackness. Right. So they'll write off the Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans because they're erasing blackness and we need to name it. Not every Latino is indigenous. Right? 'cause there is this, this sort of fetishizing of indigeneity at the expense of blackness.

And people may think: “Well, why are you having those conversations when you're talking about infrastructure?” Oh. Because we are climate justice organizers. Yeah. And for us, all of these things are connected to each other. We're having an event coming up. I'm so excited about it. Where we're bringing in, this is the first time it's ever done.

And it was something that I've been wanting for years. And I called, and it's happening where we're bringing in all the Orisha families from all of New York with UPROSE and the Climate Justice Alliance to talk about how our African traditions are Mother Earth and the elements and what we need to do in order to survive. Because that's an enormous untapped base that's happening November 4th. And so if you want to come, please come to that. It's gonna be so much fun.

But we can't separate policy base building infrastructure from who we've been as a people. We need to be able to tell those stories. And people need to be able to see themselves in the leadership and in the solution. So I know it's a long way of answering your question about why intergenerational is important. Why culture and race are important. And so like, if you see, listen, what, what is cool about this neighborhood where you got like, literally there's the woman, the the lady, we lady, she makes them right there on the street and we're like, or you've got the Mexicans making like, literally like how culture shows up.

The differences are like, how could you not fall in love with that? And how could that not be our magic? That's like our magical power right there, right? So yeah. That's important to us. We do maintain our Puerto Rican identity. You see the flag everywhere because we wanna honor the people who founded this organization and we refuse to have Puerto Ricans erased. But this should feel when you come in like your house. So, I'm sorry I went on for a long time.

Gabriela: No, that is, that is beautiful.

I’ve spent a whole lifetime thinking and working with people to figure out how we reach people's hearts and minds? How do we get them to understand their power? And how do we get them to show up in ways that are not… the way that we've learned when we got colonized. We behave and colonize ways.

And those ways are competitive and, and like, you know: “my people are better. My people…”, you know” everybody's got something that is fabulous and, and there's room for all of it. So I think that's part of the cultural practice at UPROSE, but it's also part of the culture of the climate justice movement. Yeah. And we're part of that movement. So like if you went to PODER in California, or you went to SWOP in Texas, or you went to Little Village in Chicago, you're gonna find similar organizations. We're all very similar to each other.

One of the things that we do nationally is that we share expertise. We share technical stuff, policy, cultural practices, what are our challenges, so that we can, so each organization can then benefit from the wisdom of the collective. Right now, a lot of our people at the Marianas, they're in Guam for a climate justice for Micronesia Climate Justice Alliance gathering.

And they sent me a picture, because one of them is wearing an UPROSE backpack. So they sent it to me from the Marianas. That's how far we stretch, right? Like, we're literally like this. We all share a common understanding of, how we got to this place that we're dealing with climate change, who our people are, and how that who we are is the core of our power to be able to survive the extreme weather events that are on their way.

Gabriela: Thank you Elizabeth for having this conversation with me.