By Brandon Pineda
Spend a little more time with two guests from our March film festival screening of “YOUTH v GOV.” Please meet these dynamic young people who are speaking up about climate change and urging federal, state and local governments to do better in protecting their future, as well as the future of all people.
A freshman at Howard University, Isaac Vergun is a litigant in the Juliana v United States of America lawsuit, which was featured in the film, “YOUTH v GOV.” Brandon Pineda, our intern from Urban Alliance, interviewed him about why he got involved in the lawsuit, how climate change has already affected his health, and more. Check out the video or read the interview.
A senior in high school, Alexia Henderson is involved in four—count them! —organizations urging the city of Chicago to act on climate change and environmental racism. Brandon Pineda, our intern from Urban Alliance, interviewed this dynamic young woman. Check out the video or read the interview.
Isaac Vergun
Brandon: Hello everyone, My name is Brandon Pineda. I am an intern for Urban Alliance on behalf of One Earth Film Fest and today we are here with Isaac Vergun and he actually is one of the plaintiffs from the film “YOUTH v GOV,” and we’re excited to have you here, Isaac. The film “YOUTH v GOV” follows youth suing the government because it’s not taking action to stop climate change. Being one of the plantifts, how have you been affected personally?
Isaac: So the biggest reason why I joined the lawsuit was because of the harms that climate change does to me personally. I have asthma and one of 1 million to 3 million kids diagnosed with asthma in the United States right now. And the wildfire smoke from wildfires in Oregon's colonel river gorge-- it’s in Central Oregon --and Northern California wildfires affect the air quality where I live in Beaverton. The particulate matter goes up into the stratosphere and then follows the air currents in Northern California and skips over southern Oregon and into the valley, which is where I live, and so the first time when climate change really affected me -- not as a impending thing -- was the day of my friend’s bar mitzvah in 2013. It was summertime, and I was super excited to go to his bar mitzvah and I opened my blinds to my room to let some natural light in on a beautiful Saturday morning, and the sky is just bright bright orange. And I was just completely confused like ¨Oh that's weird. That’s kinda pretty so I'm gonna go outside and see what's that all about.” So I went outside and I took a deep breath in and I just started coughing like crazy. I had to go back inside and use my rescue inhaler a few times. And just gulp down some water because the wildlife smoke from the Columbia River and around the Portland area had flown over into the valley where I live and that was right after, actually, I signed a lawsuit to agree to do it. And that was really eye opening for me because a lot of people think that climate change is something that they won't be affected by because they live in too nice of an area or x,y,z reasons whatever makes them think that, but it will sneak up on you a lot faster than you think and affect tiny things and big things in your life.
Brandon: I felt that and going on - probably further, with the new administration; How do you expect the lawsuit to change in path? We’re not giving any spoilers for people who haven't watched the film yet - but we clearly see how the federal government reacts to people fighting for climate change. So how do you have hopes for the new administration currently?
Isaac: So I don't know honestly. I'm pretty neutral as to how the Biden administration treats our lawsuit. We’ve been trying to knock on their door and get them to pay some attention to this and to finally push this lawsuit forward so that we can get towards settlement. But it’s kind've been unresponsive on the Biden administration's part, but beginning of this month in March we filed a motion in the courts to amend our complaint against the federal government and to adjust our remedy that were seeking as part of this in response to them sending back a decision back in early February, saying that in a 2-1 the rest of the bench of the 9th circuit ruled that we couldn't proceed to trial, and so we just filed a motion to amend our complaint so that they can see it again and hopefully get the ball rolling again. So maybe we'll see some more action on the Biden administration's part. We're trying to have them endorse our lawsuit and kind of fast track it and so we can get the settlement and maybe trail. So that's what I'm looking forward to hopefully, but I don't know if I expect that out of them.
Brandon: It's so important that we continue fighting. There's not a lot of people of color within the film. How do you feel about representation? Knowing that climate change isn't just affecting white people but affecting people of color, just as much if not more.
Isaac: It's honestly kind of what I expected. Because as people of color we've got a lot more social fights that we need to put our energy and time into and so not seeing a lot of people of color or specifically back people in my experience, it's something I've just noticed overall, ever since I was young -- I started with my climate activism at 11. More so now, but not as much as I would like to now either, it's kind of weird honestly because you can see the subtle microaggressions that when you work within these organizations. I'm not going to name drop or anything, but like during my time for 350 and stuff or volunteering for them not really working and same for volunteering for Sierra Club. There have just been instances where there was some pretty blatant ignorance amongst volunteer leaders as to think what I can do or the Black perspective on the climate crisis. And so that was disheartening, but I guess just as the years have progressed and I've also gotten older, there's more Black youth and people of color youth that are doing this activism, and so i'm very hopeful as to what the future of the next climate activists are going to look like because it's definitely going to be a lot more diverse than the people I was working with before. The older generations, though, no offense!
Brandon: So what can regular -- like me or anyone within our age range -- know? How can we help? So It's not just the older generation, but us, too.
Isaac: No yeah there's so much stuff we can do. I’m 18 now, turning 19, so for when I was below 18 I voted with my dollar. So I really didn't buy fast fashion or anything, and I know it's kind of a trendy thing to do -- thrift -- now, so that's cool, but it has some downside, too, because it makes things more expensive for people who need it. But also: go to lobby days, there's youth lobby days in Oregon I know of that I have participated in. You can start lobby days for your local governments or state governments just asking for more climate based policies or for them to consider the ramifications of their bills towards the climate crisis. Just any sort of lobbying that they know the youth are watching and paying attention and care about how the future pans out for us. Those are two major things. Always reposting on social media, climate actions, signing petitions, attending zooms if you want to seek more information, joining your local sunrise movement, which is a non profit organization that is geared towards youth fighting for climate change policies, and just involving yourself in any sort of way: big or small. I made a big time commitment, but I'm not asking everyone to do that either. Just supporting and reposting [on social media] is just as good in some cases.
Alexia Henderson
Brandon: Hello everyone my name is Brandon Pineda. I am an intern for Urban Alliance, on behalf of the One Earth Film Festival, and we’re here today with Alexia who is a part of the Chicago Youth Alliance for Climate Action. And she will help us explain what exactly is happening in major cities like Chicago. So Alexia, living in Chicago, how do you feel sometimes knowing that outside there are more buildings then there are trees?
Alexia: I think sometimes it's like hard to build a connection to the environment and sometimes it's kind of a little upsetting that there are more buildings than trees in the city. Especially because a lot of the buildings that we have are tall buildings and so realistically for balance of everything there should be more trees then what we have but I kind of think of it as giving us a chance to build a better connection with the environment and learn to appreciate what we have more.
Brandon: We enjoy being out in nature, we enjoy the wilderness, and most of the time we can't even get a decent park.
Alexia: Yeah especially for little kids I think it's kinda sad if you grew up and you don't exactly know what a national park is or you've never been out into the woods. Like you think this is all that is around us. You don't really think about nature and I think that's what causes a lack of connection between people and nature is that they grew up in a place where they didn't see any.
Brandon: Could you explain to us a few of the organizations you are involved with, and what do you do exactly?
Alexia: I work with 4 organizations. I am a co-director for Chicago Youth Alliance for Climate Action. I call it CYACA for short. I am one of the high school leads in Chicago for the Sun Rising Movement. I work with Illinois Climate Movement. I’m one of the action leads there, so running strikes etc. And then lastly, we partnered with Ready For 100. People should know that whatever you're interested in the climate movement, there's a space for you. The Sunrise Movement is geared towards winning a Green New Deal, which is a resolution, now but basically it's just to get clean energy, good jobs for all people and a bunch of other things. You can be an artist and be in the Sunrise Movement. You can like hosting actions, you can like legislation or doing research on your politicians … whatever you like, there's pretty much a space for you there. We’re more based on education, so we (not this past year) do educational meetings and go to schools on the south and west sides [of Chicago] and talk to people about it, what is happening, how you can help to fight against that. In the Illinois Youth Climate Movement we do strikes. Every year for 4 days, the Illinois Youth Climate Movement is pushing that. Lastly, Ready For 100 --I think there's one in every major city -- is basically a group of people who are fighting at the city-wide level to get climate legislation passed, and help win a clean bright future.
Brandon: Now how exactly did you get involved with all this work?
Alexia: My freshman year, I took world studies and world history courses and through that I just saw that no one really cared for the environment. Throughout history we've seen so many signs of it. There were a lot of organizers that came to my school and so from that I could just say there wasn’t an excuse for me not to get involved. I saw and was learning constantly about the problems, especially in Chicago with environmental racism and stuff like that, and so I was like: This is a problem affecting and my people; there's literally no excuse not to go outside and help everyone, so why not?
Brandon: Exactly. How do you feel sometimes that mainly the poster people for helping climate change is predominantly white, cis-hetero males or white people in general versus people of color?
Alexia: It's very saddening, especially because climate change majorly affects people of color. Like islands that are sinking, they’re primarily countries [where people of color live] being taken advantage of. Once again, we are missing out on the root of our power because all of the passion, all of the stories, our stories, all of everything, it’s in the communities that POC live, and we’re relying on them to tell our story, so that's kind of upsetting.
Brandon: It's affecting everybody but yet again it sometimes feels like people of color are excluded in a sense. Is that correct?
Alexia: Yeah. We’re definitely affected by climate change. This is not just an issue of color or anything but the people who are oftentimes affected most are those who live in low income neighborhoods or neighborhoods who are majority people of color.
Brandon: And can you possibly give us an example of how that affects us currently, like let's say in the city of Chicago?
Alexia: Yes - I think a really good example is that I think there is a steel plant called General Iron. It used to be I think in Lincoln Park. Everyone was complaining because it would produce pollution: it's not good for the environment and air. So what had happened was, people in Lincoln Park, which if you’re not from Chicago, it's a [wealthy mostly white] neighborhood. The steel plant had to move, and so now it's moving to a neighborhood on our south east side which is primary Latin-x and Black. The permit has not yet been denied and it has been going on for I think two years now. So that's a really good example of people going “Hey we don't want this here, we’re going to move it to by some people of color” and no one’s really solving it at this point.
Brandon: How is the city of Chicago handling this?
Alexia: So originally there wasn’t anyone stopping General Iron’s move to the southeast side. But because of the recent commotion activists have been causing, there has been I think a temporary halt. I'm not sure what you would call it specifically, but there's a pause [ in General Iron] getting its permit because of all the complaints. And it's pretty obvious we shouldn’t be giving them a permit anyways, but I think it's a good step in the right direction.
Brandon: Have you ever felt maybe backlash from family or friends saying that you're just wasting your time or why would you wanna focus on this as a job?
Alexia: Definitely - when I first got into the environmental movement, and I feel like this is for a lot of people, there is a lot of blame on people and consumers. There's billions of consumers and so when you try to be more reasonable in response with what they buy, everyone’s like “you’re not going to get all those billions of people in the world to listen to you or do what you want them to do.” And everyone is just like it’s useless what you're doing. I think as you learn more and as you go up the ranks you see who's actually responsible for most of the pollution. All that stuff becomes a lot more manageable, but yeah there's a lot of backlash from everyone. I had to convince everyone in my family to support me, but it's worth it.
Brandon: What can regular teens do to help with climate change?
Alexia: I think the youth have the most power or the most passion from what I’ve seen. We’re the most passionate people on earth. I think we should be using our power to educate each other because we are the next generation of voters, the next generation of pretty much everything that goes on .. like workers. So if you want to create a business, make sure it is sustainable. Research what politicians were voting for and what they stand by so when they go into office we hold them responsible especially in black and brown communities because that whole culture of listening to politicians and listing to their people is very important. Learn how to take responsibility in saying ¨this is something I am comfortable with and I like doing it but it's not good for the earth and it's not good for other people¨ - let me learn how to do something else.” I think taking responsibility and ownership is doing the right thing. However you help, by joining local organizations to learn more, doing small projects with your school...everything helps as long as you're interested.
Brandon: And I think we can both agree that the film “YOUTH v GOV” that we’ve seen and discussed, actually promotes that for us-- it's actually breaking it down for everybody.
Alexia: Yeah I think it shows a really good balance between youth and older people because obviously the parents and lawyers are adults. It shows how together we can fight for something better.
Brandon: Everyone give a round of applause and thank you to Alexia Henderson from Chicago Youth Alliance on explaining and breaking down for us her experience with climate action. Thank you so much Alexia for having the time for us and well see you on the flip side.