Q: Please tell me about where you grew up and your first experiences with the environment.
A: I grew up in Albany, NY; specifically, the South End which is considered an environmental justice (EJ) community because of the number of public transportation ports-trains, highways, bus depots, and things that were close to where I grew up. Most of my classmates had severe asthma. For about 8 years there were trains that carried crude oil (we called them bomb trains) less than ten feet from a huge housing project and an elementary school. Looking back, I did not think about environmental justiceI didn’t even know that term until college.
From a young age, I was passionate about the environment. I got involved with making sure my school was recycling, coordinating Earth Day rallies, helping create community gardens, and other things. I also spent a lot of time outdoors because of my mentor, a community leader and activist named Brother Yusef. Most people I grew up with didn’t have many opportunities to cultivate an appreciation for the natural world. He’s since passed, but he worked for the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for the State of New York, and his mission was to help inner-city kids and kids of color cultivate a love for the outdoors. I recently took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony dedicating a walking trail to him in the city. Because of him, I also spent a week on the Hudson River learning about river ecology on a working sloop and spent a few weeks at an environmental education camp in the Catskills.
Q: Why did you decide to go to law school?
A: As a kid, my dad called me “lawyer girl.” I always wanted to be a lawyer, but I was always going back and forth about the type of law I wanted to practice. I’m a singer so I thought I wanted to practice entertainment law for a while. But, ultimately, my passion for the environment prevailed, which led me to environmental law.
In high school, I took an advanced placement course in environmental science where I learned that environmental studies included the study of the planet and people (and the ways that we impact each other). That was eye-opening for me. From there, I studied environmental and sustainability studies with a concentration in political ecology in college, where I completed the joint-degree program with Vermont Law School (VLS). In four years, I got my bachelor’s from Bard College at Simon’s Rock and my Master’s in Environmental Law and Policy from VLS. Once I started law school, I did not envision myself as a litigator. But I knew I wanted to use my law degree as a tool to advocate on behalf of communities experiencing environmental injustice.
Q: Taking a step back to your time in law school, I wanted to ask specifically about the Environmental Justice Law Society (EJLS) and some of the drivers behind why you founded it.
A: Of course. So first, I did not found it by myself. Sherri Williams White (VLS ’18), Ryan Mitchell (VLS ’19), Jameson Davis (VLS ’21), Maggie Galka (VLS ’18), Jess Debski (VLS ’20), Kyron Williams (VLS ’19), and I founded it together. When I started my master’s program, I thought, “Okay, I’m at one of the top environmental law schools in the country. Why isn’t there an environmental justice focus? Why can’t I just take a bunch of classes on environmental justice and have that be my thing?” At the time, it wasn’t an option.
When I got to Vermont Law School, there was one environmental justice course taught during the summer. If you were a traditional JD student, you couldn’t take it. I just happened to be a student during the year we had a visiting faculty professor named Kathleen Faulk. Professor Faulk had just completed her time working with the Department of Health and Human Services to administer human services to Flint, Michigan during the Flint Water Crisis. So, the whole class was essentially just talking about health law, public health, environmental justice, and environmental racism. Professor Faulk assigned each student a different stakeholder role from the City of Flint, and we presented each week based on that role. This course aligned with my prior experience writing my college senior thesis on the Flint Water Crisis, so I was essentially the class historian.
I was in that class with Sherri (who worked for the EPA for many years before law school), Jameson, and Kyron (who taught physics at Florida A&M before coming to VLS). The group of us thought, “We’ve got to do something about this lack of environmental justice advocacy on campus.” Since Sherri organized the previous year’s Solutions Conference, which was focused on environmental justice, we also knew it was clear that the school yearned for more environmental justice education opportunities. Building from that momentum is how we started the Environmental Justice Law Society at Vermont Law School.
We got our first grant from a local foundation to host programs and educate our campus about environmental justice. So, we were giving presentations and sharing our personal connections to environmental justice along with the history of the movement and the way environmental injustice impacted certain communities in Vermont. Soon, EJLS started noticing state representatives at our presentations taking a lot of notes because they wanted to learn more about environmental justice.
EJLS then started presenting at schools. One of the most exciting events we participated in was the Hanover High School Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration in 2019 where I and two other EJLS Board members were keynote speakers. We talked about the history of the environmental justice movement, including MLK’s role in the nascent years, in front of 700 high school students. We printed giant posters with pictures and timelines and asked for student participation. Because I’m a board member of Positive Tracks, a national nonprofit based in Hanover, NH, I recently spoke to a group of students who said, “I remember you gave this presentation when I was a freshman and it helped me understand so much!” And that right there is why I do community education and outreach.
Since then, the environmental justice presence on campus has grown tremendously. I’m proud of the way that EJLS has evolved in such a short amount of time. The first conference we hosted in 2018 was in New Haven, CT as a partnership with Yale’s School of Public Health and School of the Environment. The following year, we added Duke and hosted the conference in North Carolina, focusing on Hog CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), where we included a very impactful tour of the area. In 2021, we added Howard and Shaw University and hosted the conference virtually. The plan is to keep adding at least one school every year until it becomes a national conference. I appreciate the passion for the organization’s work. And if it weren’t for us, a passionate group of students that came together, the EJ clinic or the Climate Justice Practicum might not exist. There are many things that worked out in a beautiful way as a result of this passion.
Q: What is something that not everyone knows about environmental justice that you have come to know?
A: One thing I want people to recognize is that EJ must also include advocacy and protections for incarcerated people and communities with disabilities. I want to find ways to include these groups in more EJ conversations. Riker’s Island, for example, was built on top of toxic waste. And lead is still on the walls and in the pipes of prisons across this country. The drinking water is not of sufficient quality. And Black and Brown populations predominantly occupy prisons, so just thinking about the impacts of that and how it contributes to environmental racism is important. And considerations for communities with disabilities are frequently forgotten during environmental hazard mitigation and planning, and many other aspects of environmentalism. We can’t forget about those who are already overlooked. That’s one of the most important aspects of environmental justice. Environmental protection, advocacy, and decision-making must be intersectional and inclusive to ensure we are not leaving anyone out.
Q: How does environmental justice differ from environmentalism?
A: The EJ movement began as a result of unequal enforcement of environmental laws and the dumping of toxic waste into BIPOC and low-income neighborhoods across the United States. The movement for environmental justice also exists as a result of the lack of inclusion, and often blatant erasure, of people of color in mainstream environmentalism. Now, we’re finally starting to see national recognition of what EJ leaders and advocates have been telling us for decades, and the environmental movement as a whole is finally coming to terms with the ways environmental racism has been perpetuated in decision-making and conservation efforts.
Environmental justice is rooted in civil rights and the idea that regardless of race, national origin, and income status, all people deserve a healthy environment to live, work, play, and pray in. This extends mainstream environmentalism’s view of the environment beyond mere protection of the natural world and includes human and social elements, like the existence of racism, that are inextricably linked. It saddens me that the summer of 2020 had to happen for environmental nonprofits and institutions to recognize this link. The U.S. conservation movement is built upon a notion that before colonization, the country was an idyllic Eden untouched by man, which erases the existence and justified the displacement of millions of Indigenous people from the landscape.
Environmental justice simply amplifies the faults of the environmental movement and tries to rectify them in the most inclusive way possible. Environmentalism must be intersectional.
Q: What was the most valuable lesson that you’ve learned since graduating from law school?
A: Well, it’s all so new, and it’s hard to say. Throughout law school, I participated in activities and programs that helped me remember my “Why?” I came to law school to help people and participating in all these extracurricular activities was me reminding myself of my “Why?” Law school’s tough. If I hadn’t had these opportunities to be active in my community and contribute to something greater, I probably would’ve lost myself. And I’m reaping the benefits of that extra work right now (post-grad). I made a lot of connections during law school because I was very intentional about networking with people that were doing the things I was interested in pursuing. I’ve cultivated a strong professional network of mentors and people that I can reach out to. Being involved in the early development of the school’s EJ clinic, co-founding EJLS, and working on all the projects that came out of it, including Rural Environmental Justice Opportunities Informed by Community Expertise (REJOICE), helped me gain important skills that aren’t ordinarily taught in law school. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t even have this job.
Q: What do you hope your crowning achievement will be?
A: I believe that I was put on this planet to help people. So, I will feel the greatest sense of accomplishment when I can continuously see the impact of the work that I’ve done, the people I’ve helped, the people I’ve shared information with, and the people I’ve educated. I’ve shared book recommendations that have opened people’s eyes and encouraged them to get active in the fight for a more environmentally just and equitable world. That’s what means the most to me. I really just want to build a career that is contributing to the environmental justice movement: the movement for environmental liberation and self-determination of communities that have been environmentally overburdened, politically overlooked, and altogether underserved. I have no idea what it is yet, but those are some of the elements of what I hope my crowning achievement will be.
Q: What is the last piece of advice you would like to share?
A: I really believe that every single person has a role to play in fighting climate change and improving the state of our world. We can all do it in different ways. I have a hard time with people saying that you have to go to college to contribute to this fight. And I know that I’m very privileged in the fact that I’ve had so much education. But I don’t think I’m different from anyone else. That’s why I try hard to share the books that I’ve read in school and the resources I’ve learned from. I’m really passionate about breaking down the ivory tower, or at least making it shorter and easier to access, because I just think that’s really the only way we’re going to build a better societyby getting everyone involved in the process. So, that means artists, architects, or developerseveryonehas to be involved to get it done.
