HFC Sarah Lawrence Fellows Interview Youth Climate Justice Activist Isha Clarke

Kate Sabiston and Leia Pfeffer, HFC Student Fellows at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, interviewed four youth climate activists to ask them how the pandemic has challenged and changed their activism. Despite the difficulties of organizing virtually and collaborating at safe distances, these activists have not let COVID-19 slow them down, continuing to fight for environmental justice and climate action in creative ways. 

Isha Clarke was born and raised in Oakland, California. In 2017, after joining a youth-led action targeting a developer intent on building a coal terminal through West Oakland, Isha co-founded the organization Youth Vs Apocalypse.  Since then, Isha has continued to be a leader in the climate justice movement in California and across the country. Read Kate’s and Leia’s interview with Isha Clarke to learn how Isha has adapted her activism to the pandemic.

Kate: Could you give us some background on your activism and the work you're currently doing? 

Isha: I have always been pretty aware of social justice, and fights for social justice, and just awareness around it--like the realities of the world--just because of my family. And growing up in Oakland, Oakland, California, is the home of the Black Panther Party. It was a really big hub for the antiwar movement. And it still continues to really be this hub of "wokeness." I hate that word, but I think that really explains it. And so I always grew up around that, and despite that, I never really felt connected to any environmental or climate-related anything because it was always presented to me as something that was very white and of privilege. And I did not feel connected to that kind of narrative. 

I never really felt connected to any environmental or climate-related anything because it was always presented to me as something that was very white and of privilege.

When I was a freshman in high school--so three years ago, 2017--I was invited to an action that was targeting Phil Tagami, who is a very prominent developer in Oakland, and who was at the time, and still is, trying to build a coal terminal through West Oakland, which is where I live and is a community that is predominantly Black and Brown working class people. It was at this action where I finally had this realization of what environmental racism is, and how central it is to environmental injustice, and how wrong and destructive that narrative that I was told is because it completely takes away from what is actually happening, which is Black and Brown, poor folks, Indigenous folks, getting years taken off of their lives because of this racist pollution, and this very visceral extension of capitalism and white supremacy. And that is also true for climate injustice, where you have the same folks, the same frontline communities, really bearing the brunt of the impacts of climate change and not being responsible for actually creating it. 

So that's how I came in, and I was like, “oh my God, like, I need to do something about this. I need to be a part of this”. And the action that I was at was pretty much all very young, like middle and early high school aged students of color. And I was like, I want to be a part of this movement, and I want to be a part of changing what this movement looks like in the mainstream media because environmental justice has always been, you know, Indigenous folks and working class people of color being on the front lines working. But the narrative that's told to the rest of the world is not that, so that's my long spiel. That's how I got involved. 

Kate: I know you are currently working with Youth vs Apocalypse--could go into that a little bit? 

Isha: So it's interesting because that first action I went to wound up being the founding group of Youth vs Apocalypse, because that group turned into a campaign called Youth vs Coal, and then Youth vs Coal turned into Youth vs Apocalypse. And that's who I'm with right now. So I'm kind of a cofounder and activist with YVA, and now a staff member actually. It's hard to summarize the work I'm doing, because when you work in a small organization like that, you kind of do a little bit of everything.

But I think my main work is to really change the narrative about what climate change is, and about what fighting to stop it means. And what I mean by that is, climate change is the result of these foundational systems of white supremacy and colonialism and patriarchy and capitalism--that are not only the foundation of this country, but really of the entire world. And that means that climate justice has to be about dismantling these larger systems in every way that they exist, whether that be through environmental destruction or pollution or our faulty education system or police brutality or mass incarceration; all of these are extensions of the same systems that are resulting in climate change. And so I think that my work right now is really to speak that truth to power and to really start helping to build a movement that recognizes that, and that is truly intersectional and fighting to really build a new world. 

Climate change is the result of these foundational systems of white supremacy and colonialism and patriarchy and capitalism--that are not only the foundation of this country, but really of the entire world.

Kate: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your activism, and what struggles and challenges have you encountered as a result? 

Isha: I think like on a more technical level it's been difficult because we've had to completely rethink our organizing because we never really did a lot of digital organizing. It was mostly going into schools, doing presentations, mobilizing young people to come out to the climate strikes. And all of our other campaigns were really based on in-person actions, so that's a big thing that had to change. We had to think about how we can still be strategic and impactful, but also safe in this time. So we had to turn to social media campaigns and stuff like that.

 But I think more conceptually, like taking it back to the work that I do, which is really about shifting the narrative. I think that--I hate to like, you know, find the silver lining in all of this. Cause that's such bullshit. The--if there is an upside to this, it's like people are, it's disrupting everyone's life. No matter if you're poor, wealthy, middle class, Black, Brown, white, whatever, it is impacting your life. And I think that people are very viscerally experiencing what we've been talking about, which is this apocalypse, what we're experiencing right now, all of these crises, whether it be climate change or the economic crisis or whatever else craziness is happening in the world.

It is a direct result of these unsustainable systems that are our foundation, these systems of oppression, and so I think now that everyone's lives are being impacted, people are starting to understand that more and really get what that means. And so I think that even though this is a really terrifying time, we have this opportunity to really do something, to actually dismantle these systems, which people have been talking about doing forever. Because of the moment that we're living in, where we're literally seeing these unsustainable systems fail--not because the systems aren't working as they were designed to, but because they're working exactly as they're designed to, which is resulting in mass extinction and destruction and apocalypse, which is so extreme, but it's so true. So there's that. And also because people are really starting to experience that on a personal level. So I'm trying to remain optimistic in this moment. 

Not because the systems aren't working as they were designed to, but because they're working exactly as they're designed to, which is resulting in mass extinction and destruction and apocalypse.

Leia: Knowing that, are there new tactics that you've had to use for advocating for your cause, and have you had a learning curve of what does and doesn't work during a pandemic?

Isha: Yeah. I think that I'm going to speak more for myself as an individual than for my organization right now, because one of the main ways that YVA functions is through campaigns that we have, and all of those different campaigns are partnering with different people and are led by different folks in the organization. So I don't really know what their processes have been, because I've only kind of heard the like broader report backs. 

But with the stuff that I've been working on... during this time, really during the height of the uprisings for Black lives specifically, like when the George Floyd video first started really infuriating people as it should, I started another organization, or another group, called Black Youth for the People's Liberation. And we were organizing in person actions during the pandemic, because that was a tactic of that specific movement because that was what was happening all over the country. But you know, like we couldn't do that for a climate strike. Like it might not get the same turnout and it also might not be worth it to do that because that's just not, it's not that, you know, they're definitely the same fight, but like the, how do I explain this? Yeah. It's just like, not the same thing. Yeah, y'all get what I'm saying. 

So, you know, for the work that we've been doing, we've been doing a lot of social media campaigns. So towards the beginning of shelter in place, there was supposed to be a big climate strike for Earth Day, and we wound up not being able to do that. So we turned it into a social media campaign called "No One is Disposable”, and we came up with an original song and a music video that went to that song. And we had a TikTok challenge that went with it. And it was really like, for me, that was a really powerful campaign because it was spreading that message that, at the end of the day, that's what this is about. That our society doesn't value people. That's why we're here. And so trying to reverse that and say no one is disposable.

So that was one thing that we did. And I think that that tactic we've found to be super impactful for people like creating art and visuals because that's something that people need right now. Like art is healing and inspires people. And so that's been a good tactic. And then I can talk about what I'm working on right now. So, I'm trying to plan national action for October that is going to be connected to another project out of YVA where we're trying to create an electoral engagement EP. So that there again is like that art, visual strategy. 

Art is healing and inspires people.

But the thing that I'm trying to do is centering around collecting pledges from people to fight for a habitable and just world, and kind of outlining the commitments of that pledge. So fighting to defund the police, fighting to put progressive candidates in all levels of office, fighting to close detention centers etc, and then giving people specific ways to do that and collecting a list of people committing. So yeah, that's kind of a pour out of different things. I don't really know if that answers your question, but we've been trying a lot of things. And I honestly think we haven't really gone through the full arc of trial and error.

Leia: Again, kind of continuing in that same vein. What does it mean to you to be an activist in a pandemic and also in the broader context of 2020?

Isha: What does it mean to be an activist? That's a good question.

I think that it means… I really think that anyone can be an activist. And I think that in this moment, activism is about taking a stand and refusing to lose hope and using that ground that you're standing on to mobilize other people, to be with you and to fight to get us out of this shit that we're in right now. 

One of my comrades Lizbeth [Ibrarra] from YVA just said this morning, she was like, what did she say? She said, "Things won't get better with time, they will get better with action." And I think that that's exactly that describes this moment perfectly. This is not a “wait it out” situation. The longer we wait, the worse it's going to get. And so it's about standing together, getting more people and getting our voices heard. And I think anyone can do that.