Green Latinos National Summit 2023 Recap
When I heard the Green Latinos National Summit was coming to San Antonio, the land I call home, I knew I had to attend. Quickly applying for a scholarship to attend on behalf of Veggie Mijas, I was excited to be surrounded by environmentalist familia.
I learned a lot about policy and felt a great deal of pride in seeing Latinx gente representing in the field of Environmental Justice and acknowledging the intersectional issues within our communities. Climate Justice overlaps with topics of transportation, farmworker rights, food justice, immigration, language access, water justice, clean energy, and almost too many sectors to name.
Just when the statistics and fact-dropping had my head buzzing with apocalyptic dread, an outdoor or healing activity would lift my spirits. I think this is the way we need to be balancing our lives. Whether we are doing advocacy work or not, it’s essential that we balance the harsh truths of our changing climate with both self-care and community care; with checking in with our bodies/minds/spirits. And if we find ourselves okay, checking in with those around us.
While I was grateful that the summit kept me well-fed with vegan options, plant-based discussion topics were not centered. I was left desiring more overlap between environmental issues and food justice within the Summit. I did, however, have some wonderful individual conversations with folks on what it means to decolonize our diets.
I gathered some words that stood out to me, and that’s what I’ve chosen to highlight. I encourage you all to follow these organizations, to see how you can get involved, and to be a part of the growth of Green Latinos.
In the end, I gained an even better appreciation for the land of Yanaguana, after seeing folks from coast to coast in awe over native butterflies, tortoises, and how one day we had a thunderstorm, and the next, we were sweating up a storm.
The truth is, we all have a role to play, changes to make, and voices to be heard if we plan to keep our beautiful planet alive because we owe Madre Tierra the same kind of balance that we know we all need and there’s no better time to start than now. ¡Adelante!
“We recently had a victory here [in San Antonio]. Our utility, CPS Energy, decided to shut down our last remaining coal plant. It was one of the last units built in the United States, it’s called the Spruce Coal Plant, and it’s the City’s single largest emitter of Carbon pollution—7 million metric tons a year. That’s significant for people with respiratory issues. In fact, in San Antonio, we lead hospital visits by children with pediatric asthma. So, eliminating that pollution is significant for the health of our little kids. But our utility, CPS Energy, has big affordable plans for that coal plant once they shut it down. One will shut, the other one’s going to convert to gas—fracked gas that comes from the Permian Basin…they also want to build two more fracked gas plants. This is bad for our community and it’s bad for our climate.”
“We need y’all to take action on this. Tell @cpsenergy we stand with San Antonio, the San Antonio community. No more fracked gas. Clean energy now.”
— DeeDee BelmaresSupport the cause
“We need to start seeing ourselves as part of nature…We cannot separate ourselves. The way we come back is by decolonizing our mind frames, our systems, our approaches to things.”
“As immigrants, we…know what it’s like to live the effects of colonialism…Let’s use our lived experience, the reasons why you left, and apply them to the urgency that wildlife requires from us. Let’s start there.”
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“Don’t be afraid to dream big. The Binational River Park…has taught us to believe that we, that our people are worthy and that we too on the border deserve big investments and large-scale sustainable infrastructure projects, proyectos majestuosos that celebrate us, our stories, our culture, nuestros antepasados, and our generations to come.”
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“I want to talk about this concept called nepantla. I’m going to read a couple sentences from a passage by Gloria Anzaldua, who was a queer feminist author from a small town called Harlingen…’Nepantla is a nahuatl word for an in-between state. The uncertain terrain one crosses when moving from one place to another. When changing from one class, race, sexual position to another. When traveling from the present identity to a new identity. The Mexican immigrant at the moment of crossing the barbed wire fence into El Paso paradise of El Norte, the United States, is caught in a state of nepantla. Others who find themselves in this bewildering transitional space may be the straight person coming out as a lesbian, gay, bi, or transexual. Or a person from working-class origins crossing into middle-classhood.’
I think we all have to embrace nepantla to be able to move through this energy transition. We’re in it right now. We’re feeling it. To me, it feels like purgatory. Sometimes it feels lonely. Sometimes it feels like fear of the unknown. It’s very confusing because it doesn’t feel easy. But I think to get there you have to have a connection with your body and with yourself and who you really are. And when you’re in it, it’s like riding a horse or surfing a wave. You have this connection, but your mind is still active, and so it’s a sense of objective risk-taking. And I think that is what takes us from brawling with our opponents to dancing in heaven and moving through into the other side.”
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“We cannot rush forward without looking back and bringing the entire community along, and that is a system of trust that we have to build within our own relationships, that if we are not having meaningful relationships about where we come from and what ties us together then there is nothing to force that relationship forward in a way that is truly from a position of love and care and safety. We need to create our safe space.”
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“In California, we always have a drought. When you have a disaster, if you’re an advocate, it actually creates a really good moment where there’s political pressure, and decision-makers feel that pressure. When we have drought in California, it’s the best time to advocate for water regulation, which people are always pushing for, but at that time, officials are paying more attention and you have leverage. So whether your issue is air quality, whether your issue is disaster preparedness, whether your issue is fires, it’s a good time to mobilize and put more pressure on decision-makers…because you have leverage in time of disaster.”
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“It is also our responsibility to be able to visualize and vision into the future and to learn what plants, what flowers grew in our territory so we can bring those colors back to our homes, to our hearts. Those are medicine for us, so it’s all of our responsibility to connect, reconnect in this way and to bring that beauty back through celebrations like these.”
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“Texas registered voters until December of last year: 17,119,633. That’s a lot of people. You know how many people vote in Texas elections? 8,320,432. Less than a half. So, it’s not a matter of registering people. People are registered. Pero, que pasó? So there might be a lot of reasons why people don’t vote. But we have to vote. It’s our civic duty. Other than paying taxes, our responsibility of being a good citizen is voting in government and having a say in government.”
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“The intersectionality of our issues is what defines this time. And in order to do that, we have to build coalitions big enough to win, big enough to face the biggest threat that humanity has ever faced, which is climate change, and defining this not just environmentally, but socially.”
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· For the first time in history, $48 billion is supposed to go to communities of color and other disadvantaged communities under the Biden administration.
· We have to make sure that we’re knowledgeable about this, that we partner with each other, and that we go after that funding because it belongs to us.
· The funding belongs to our communities for helping us to clean up our communities, build them up, take care of our health, for housing, transportation, climate, and more.
· We must challenge the Biden administration to ensure that this funding is going to the right places at the right amounts.
· They don’t know what’s happening in our communities but we do, so it’s important that we on the ground are involved in this process.
· We can testify to let our voices be heard, and if we testify in large numbers, that’s a flag that has to be addressed.
— Susana AlmanzaSupport the cause
Be sure to follow @greenlatinos and stay in touch with these motivational speakers!
Other voices represented at the Green Latinos National Summit:
