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Earlier this fall, community development financial institution (CDFI) leaders gathered virtually to consider the CDFI movement’s future. The conference was organized by the Opportunity Finance Network, a national trade association of community development loan funds. The conference theme was “Finance Justice, Finance Change.” But converting that slogan into reality is not easy. As Donna Gambrell, who directs Appalachian Community Capital and moderated the conference’s closing plenary noted, achieving finance justice requires aligning “money, people, and systems” in a financial system that often serves to undermine finance justice.

As NPQ has covered, CDFIs—initially ignored when the massive Paycheck Protection Program launched in April 2020 (ultimately $961 billion was disbursed to 11 million businesses), but which later became critical players—help smaller, often BIPOC-owned, businesses that had been largely excluded in the first round finally gain access to the funds. CDFIs’ success was rewarded in December 2020, when Congress approved a $12 billion capital infusion for CDFIs and other BIPOC-owned financial institutions.

Now comes the hard part of putting those resources to work. Although $12 billion sounds like a lot—and, in fact, is a lot for CDFIs accustomed to very limited annual federal allocations that have typically totaled around $250 million a year—it is still a tiny amount when one considers that the United States has a $22 trillion banking sector.

Financing Community Development with Limited Resources

Lakota Vogel, who directs the Four Bands Community Fund, a Native CDFI that serves the Cheyenne River Sioux nation in South Dakota, likened the situation faced by Native American CDFIs like her own to playing a game of Monopoly in which “the game has started without you and all your cousins have already started playing and as you scan the board you see all the prime properties are bought up.” Vogel noted that “our economic infrastructure was wiped off the board during colonization. A few centuries later we were invited to play … they eventually gave us back Baltic Avenue, if you remember that [low value] avenue on the Monopoly board, after some negotiations.”

Vogel highlighted the importance of advocacy to make further progress. “We realize that capital will never solve poverty, but we know rewriting the rules will,” she explained.

Marla Bilonick, CEO of the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB) also emphasized advocacy. “Advocacy propels forward the work we are doing. We can provide the most incredible services and it will be all undermined by policy. We need to engage … It is so, so critical.”

Bill Bynum, who has led Hope Credit Union, a CDFI in the Mississippi Delta, for over 25 years, recalled that 40 years ago Self Help, a CDFI he once worked for, had a bake sale that raised $77 for its startup capital. That CDFI, Bynum explained, is now one of the largest CDFIs in the country with over $1 billion in assets. Bynum concurred with Vogel and Bilonick on the need for advocacy, emphasizing the work of CDFIs is fundamentally about organizing “money and capital.” “Someone has got to make the rules,” Bynum noted. “Why not us?”

Bynum also emphasized the cost of not making the rules. After Hurricane Katrina, Bynum recalled, “billions of dollars went into the pockets of more wealthy communities and there are still people in New Orleans not back on their feet. Same in Great Recession. Same now. We need to dust off our advocacy muscles. If you are not standing up—not just public, but banks, corporations—then I think you’re a fake CDFI.”

A Story from Los Angeles

The closing plenary, as might be expected, focused on the national landscape, but some sessions provided a closer view of how CDFIs operate in specific communities.  On one panel, Rudy Espinoza of Inclusive Action for the City, discussed his organization’s work in Los Angeles. Espinoza’s work focuses on supporting street vendors. Becoming a CDFI was not initially part of the picture. But a few years ago, Espinoza noted that the street vendors the group was helping organize realized that if they gained legal status, then they would need capital: “Who is going to lend to us,” the vendors asked. Espinoza’s organization responded by setting up a facility to provide microloans to vendors and became federally certified as a CDFI last year.

Inclusive Action for the City has done more than support street vendors. It has also been actively organizing to stave off gentrification. Last year, working in an alliance with two other Los Angeles nonprofits—East Los Angeles Community Corporation, and Little Tokyo Service Center—Espinoza’s group formed CORE (Community Owned Real Estate), a partnership that now owns five properties and provides secure low-rent tenancy for 15 local businesses. This work was spurred, Espinosa emphasized, by the question of “How we can preserve small businesses?” Acquiring commercial real estate in neighborhoods that are changing and taking land out of the speculative market helps “make sure they can stay,” Espinoza added.

Thomas Simone, who is CEO of Genesis Los Angeles, a CDFI that partnered with Espinoza and the other partners to create CORE, acknowledged that the work was smaller scale than some other efforts, but added that he thought it was some of the most important work. “Much of the CDFI world has become a bit obsessed with scale: more money, more loans, more locations. There is certainly good that comes from that, the breadth of reach. But I think you also give up something. You give up the depth that you can go. We feel that our role in the local market has been really to do the deep work.”

Assessing the Current Moment

At the closing plenary, participants also considered the present moment—a time that has led to new resources for the CDFI movement, but also presents enormous challenges for the people and businesses that CDFIs serve. “The same conditions that created the opportunity for resources for the CDFI sector, have put a great deal of stress on our organizations and us individually,” Bynum observed. “We are excited, thankful, but we can’t be satisfied. We saw 40 percent of Black businesses close. You see wealth being stripped. Policy-makers neglect and ignore their needs. It is urgent that we stay vigilant.”

Vogel said the Black lives movement helped lift her from what she called “a tyranny of thinking that the pie was only so big. I had adopted a scarcity mindset.” Now, she said, “we have been able to talk about our issues without the scarcity mindset. There are enough resources for everyone.”

Vogel also, however, offered her colleagues a warning. She recalled a speech by the late Representative John Lewis, who would remind people, “They poured water on us, and we kept coming. They sicked dogs on us, and we kept coming. They gave us grants, and we stopped coming.” It is imperative, Vogel emphasized, for CDFIs to push forward, even as resources become more accessible. “How we perceive our community is how we proceed,” Vogel added. “Being proximate is really important. Now we need to scale that. That is going to be the challenge for the next decade.”

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Famously, nonprofits depend on people. But the sector has underinvested in human resources (HR), even as talent enhancement has become imperative. The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and structural racism have laid bare unhealthy and unsustainable work environments that leave nonprofit teams disengaged and experiencing burnout.¹ The world of work is waiting to be reimagined.

When it comes to organizational management, the HR function often gets scant attention. Yet it is a vital function that touches the entire life cycle of staff. It is time, I would argue, to liberate HR. What do I mean by this?

Fundamentally, to me, liberating HR means three things:

• Reframing HR language
• Repositioning HR roles
• Transforming our paradigm about HR

These three major shifts can help dismantle HR’s racist history, as well as mine the strategic opportunity in HR and reshape the multiple roles embedded in the HR function.

Reframing HR Language

How can reframing language help liberate HR?

Imagine the mental shift that results from aligning the HR language we use with the language of the liberation movement and racial reckoning that have engulfed us. Although this reframing is not new and has already started, we have a long way to go.

Writing this article is both a heart-wrenching and a heartwarming moment for me as I traverse my own personal racial equity journey. My career has centered on organizational development, a chunk of which was in HR in both the private and the public sectors. In my transition from the private to the public sector, I realized that there were more shared HR practices between the two sectors than differences. Those shared practices—well intentioned and values-based as they may be—often support white supremacist norms. Indeed, I recognize that I have been complicit—even if unwittingly—in perpetuating those norms. So it is with deep commitment that I aspire to be part of liberating HR.

Like many areas of work, the socioeconomic and political environment has shaped HR. As we travel through the history of human resources management, a closer look reveals that alongside the benefits of HR work, there was the underbelly of paternalism and white supremacist norms resulting in disproportionate negative impact on Black people and other people of color. The language used in the world of HR, and the world in general, evoked at times subtle, and at times overt, racism.

The beginnings of the field can be traced back to the early 19th century during the industrial revolution, when two Englishmen (Robert Owen and Charles Babbage) developed the rudiments of what would later become human resources. It was a century later, however, faced with rising labor union strike activity, in the 1910s and 1920s, that the formal field of “Human Resource Management” was born.

A few companies began to realize that employees are motivated by more than just money. Benefits, job security, and participation plans were put in place to win employee loyalty, and—executives and HR managers hoped—to forestall unionization.

“Welfare Capitalism” gained prominence in the 1920s, the term itself evoking a sense of paternalism, a white supremacist norm. People were considered “assets.” An asset is anything which is owned by an entity to derive service in the future and is a legally enforceable claim.² If people are assets, then organizations expect to profit from them, and they are carefully tracked as “headcounts”—another basic HR term that treats people as part of a herd that needs to be accounted for.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression brought record-high unemployment, which only truly ended with the full-scale mobilization that World War II required. In the drive to win the war, the country had to solve phenomenal talent shortages by employing women to take on a variety of jobs: streetcar conductors, electricians, welders, and, yes, riveters. Yet, gender inequity persisted and the military remained racially segregated until President Harry Truman ordered integration of the armed forces in 1948. After the war, HR practices in the military carried over to the corporate world, with the system’s values upheld by white males.

The Civil Rights Movement has changed HR—somewhat. Notably, civil rights legislation—such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990—have resulted in HR “compliance” strategies. But that’s far from building liberatory workplaces.

Today, as employment has become more precarious due to a “gig economy” of short-term contracts and freelance work, this too has affected HR—and not in a good way. The key concept has been optimization—achieving the best work for the most gain, as if people were machines that can be revved up. The term “human capital” materialized, as if people represent currency. All these developments essentially begged the question: “Are humans resources?”—a question insightfully raised by NPQ’s Jeanne Bell.

The racist roots of human resources management that reinforce structural racism in the workplace are mirrored in language. Because language is evocative of identity, language matters in liberating HR from its racist roots. As simple as it may sound, reframing language is difficult. It is reminiscent of learning a new language. It takes practice, commitment, and more practice.

Let’s start with the term Human Resources. How about changing it to People and Culture, which is already used by some organizations? PAC instead of HR. This shift moves us from a view of people as a commodity to an outlook that lifts the wholeness of people and the significance of the space they inhabit. Tom Haak named position titles that represent that shift, such as Talent Champion, Learning Ambassador, Transformation Lead, and Partner in Change.

Rethinking the HR Basics

Another shift in language centers on the terms as well as the messaging used in specific HR practices and functions.³ A lot of HR work concerns what I might call the basics—recruitment, retention, compensation, and performance. Liberating HR would involve changes in language and practice in all these areas. In my years of consulting with clients on people and talent issues, I have seen, happily, that some nonprofits have begun to adapt parts of the language and practices listed below.

Recruitment

• Job Descriptions: Evaluate the job description for class bias; use language that is culturally and gender inclusive.
• DEI Statements: The law requires an Equal Employment Opportunity Statement; add your organization’s DEI statement or a value statement that reflects your commitment to equity.
• Outreach: Conduct focused outreach directed towards communities of color. Ensure there are at least two BIPOC candidates in the finalist pool; a 2016 Harvard Business Review article reported the results of one study of 598 job candidates for university teaching positions, including 174 who received offers. When there was only one woman or BIPOC candidate in the hiring pool, those candidates did not get hired. But if there were two or more women or BIPOC candidates in the hiring pool, the likelihood of one of them being hired was similar to that of the white males in the pool getting hired.

Retention

• Onboarding: Include discussion of organization culture and norms; an honest overview of racial equity work (including recognition of shortcomings), organization functions, and how decisions are made.
• Support Strategies: Employees of color in predominantly white organizations can face a great deal of social isolation and bias within the workplace. Examples of support strategies are learning about their perspective and worldview, including race; identifying their interests; helping them build social networks; connecting them to affinity groups, professional associations, and other social groupings that support employees of color; and providing mentorship.
• Stay Interviews: Conduct regular check-ins.

Compensation

• Job Posting: Income secrecy is a divisive cultural tool that derives from free market capitalist logic, which benefits the one percent. Everyone, especially funders, need to see how such practices are furthering inequity.
• Pay Equity: People are handsomely paid for analyzing financial data, but not for work involving emotional labor; a move to jobs that require increased cognitive labor results in an average of 8.8 percent wage boost, but a shift to positions that demand higher emotional labor results in a 5.7 percent cut.

Performance

• Team Contributions: Shift language from Performance Management to Team Contributions. Consider eliminating performance ratings. A recent NPQ article illustrates that the practice of performance ratings can be traced back to the management of enslaved people. Even today, performance indicators often are used to maintain hierarchical work norms rather than build a culture that fosters two-way feedback and accountability for one’s growth and staff development. A better alternative are self-assessments that set the stage for conversation of what is working and not working—engaging staff and colleagues in conversation regarding how to improve organizational performance.
• Talent Enhancement: Focus on strengths instead of deficits in planning and implementing growth strategies; infuse learning opportunities with a DEI lens; ensure equitable access to learning opportunities. A focus on strengths does not mean ignoring the need to address learning edges. By focusing on strengths, a work environment is created that leverages team members’ strengths to address areas where improvement may be needed.

Repositioning the HR Role 

How does role repositioning liberate HR? For role repositioning to effectively shift HR practice, it must rest on the following principles:

1. The HR position is a strategic partner to, and reports to, the highest level of decision-making in the organization.
2. Its responsibility is bolstered by the appropriate level of authority. The level of decision-making incumbent in its role supports its authority level.
3. The HR role is not monolithic and therefore its scope must encompass the key pillars of the function—the distinct competencies or specialties around strategy, organizational design, talent search, talent enhancement, staff engagement, rewards and recognition, and the leadership pipeline.
4. It is not a solo act. It requires the collaboration of those responsible for guiding and advocating for staff and requires at least one other HR team member.

What would a repositioned HR role look like? Because the scope of HR is encompassing, it warrants multiple complementary roles. The role architecture that is proposed here aligns best with the paradigm shift described earlier and was inspired by the writings of Dave Ulrich.⁴

• Strategic Partner: Develops and aligns strategies with mission.
• Change Coach: Strengthens change capability within the organization.
• Talent Champion: Develops strategies and helps implement actions that enhance team contribution.
• Systems Ally: Creates and delivers effective and efficient HR processes and services tailored to the organization’s unique needs.

Towards a New HR Paradigm

Calling for a paradigm shift sounds good, but what does it require? It was Thomas Kuhn—the well-known physicist, philosopher, and historian of science—who developed the notion of a paradigm shift, which he described as “an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.“⁵

Kuhn adds that paradigms only shift when the paradigms we use fail to make sense of the world. We are already seeing this in HR. Back in 1998, in “A New Mandate for HR”⁶ David Ulrich posed the question: “Should we do away with HR?”

Despite some doubts about HR’s contribution to mission, Ulrich affirmed that HR has never been more necessary. The community needs effective organizations that make a difference. The way organizations get things done and how people are treated are central to achieving that goal.

How might HR achieve that goal? Imagine an HR department that did the following:

1. Centrally focus on aligning strategy and talent by moving away from purely administrative, policy-focused, and procedural concerns.
2. Infuse HR with a diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial justice lens.
3. Co-create solutions up and down the organization.
4. Sustain organizational culture—serving as stewards of work-life wellness.

We can act like the frames of HR we use still make sense. But we know better. The time to develop a liberatory HR is now.

1 Jennifer Robinson, The Emotional State of Remote Workers: It’s Complicated, Gallup, December 15, 2020.

2 Investment in Human Resources, MBA Knowledge Base, 2021.

3 Desiree Williams-Rajee, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Recruitment, Hiring and Retention, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, October 4, 2018; Mala Nagarajan and Richael Faithful, Brave Questions: Recalculating Pay Equity” Network Weaver, July 8, 2020; Andrew O’Connell, “Emotional Labor Doesn’t Pay,” Harvard Business Review, September 29, 2010; Jasmine Hall, Reimagining Compensation Decisions Through an Equity Panel, CompassPoint, December 11, 2019.

4 Dave Ulrich, Human Resource Champions: The Next Agenda for Adding Value and Delivering Results, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 1996.

5 Tania Lombrozo,“What Is a Paradigm Shift, Anyway?” Cosmos & Culture, Commentary on Science and Society, National Public Radio, July 18, 2016.

6 Dave Ulrich, “A New Mandate for Human Resources,” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1998.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Ten years ago, fossil fuel divestment—that is, getting institutional investors to pull their investments out of fossil fuel companies, was just an idea. Today, it is a reality. According to Invest-Divest 2021, a report that was published in October by the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitments Database in anticipation of the recent United Nations (UN) climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, 1,485 institutions with assets totaling $39.2 trillion have publicly committed to “at least some form of fossil fuel divestment.” Just weeks later, another 12 institutions have also divested, and total assets of divesting institutions have edged up to $39.88 trillion, nearing the $40 trillion mark.

How large is $40 trillion? Well, if you take the total capitalization (value) of all 500 companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock index, that adds up to $38.4 trillion as of the end of September 2021. The value of the divesting institutions’ assets exceeds that amount. And in 2021, some big institutions that had been holdouts joined the movement to divest. This includes Harvard University, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. The movement to divest—and critically, to reinvest in renewable energy—is a global one, of course. Among the recent converts outside the United States are the Dutch pension fund PME (Pensionfund Metalelektro), the Quebec pension giant CDPQ (Caisse De Dépôt et Placement du Québec), and the French public bank La Banque Postale.

The numbers are impressive. And the victories have been hard won. Harvard provides a case in point. A year-and-a-half ago, Harvard was resisting. Even after a 179-20 faculty vote that called on the university to divest, Harvard president Lawrence Bacow argued for continued engagement with fossil fuel producers, writing that, “we believe that divestment paints with too broad a brush. We cannot risk alienating and demonizing possible partners, some of which have committed to transitioning to carbon neutrality and to funding research on alternative fuels and on strategies to decarbonize the economy.” Bacow’s tune was different this fall, when he wrote instead that, “Given the need to decarbonize the economy and our responsibility as fiduciaries to make long-term investment decisions that support our teaching and research mission, we do not believe such investments are prudent.”

One tactic that might have helped spur Harvard to change his stance was a complaint that Harvard students filed with the Massachusetts Attorney General under the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. That Act governs investment standards that an endowment like Harvard’s must meet to comply with its charitable mandate. In other words, the students sought to put Harvard’s nonprofit status at risk.

At Harvard, the direct financial impact of its divestment means exiting an estimated $838 million in investments. The impact is broader than that, however. Harvard’s action helped spur a similar decision by nearby Boston University, as well as many other institutional divestments by universities from across the country.

This shift has been years in the making, starting with students calling on Swarthmore to divest in 2011 (notably, Swarthmore still hasn’t divested). A key movement goal, as Bill McKibben, a co-founder of 350.org, wrote in a Washington Post article years ago, was to “undercut the industry’s political power, just as happened a generation ago when the issue was South Africa and hundreds of colleges, churches, and state and local governments took action…divestment is one tool to change the zeitgeist, so that the day arrives more quickly when the richest and most powerful can no longer mock renewable energy and play down climate change.”

How much does all this matter? McKibben, writing this fall in the New York Times, notes the Peabody has listed divestment as a major concern and Royal Dutch Shell has warned shareholders that the campaign could have a “material adverse effect on the price of our securities and our ability to access equity capital markets.” There are other signs too. In 2020, for example, Exxon was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial stock index, a sign that it was no longer considered one of the 30 most important stocks by Wall Street. Exxon had been part of the Dow Jones index for 92 years, longer than any other company.

More broadly, fossil fuel stocks back in 1980 comprised 29 percent of the total capitalization of those 500 S&P stocks. By 2018, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reports, that share had fallen to 5.3 percent. The IEEFA report goes on to make the “business case” for divestment:

For investment advisors and fiduciaries that continue to hold oil and gas stocks, it is a much smaller task to reallocate five percent of an investment portfolio than 29 percent. It also becomes less painful when the poor sector performance is acknowledged. The sector has underperformed in the stock market for a decade and continues to perform poorly and offer little in terms of a value proposition going forward. Finding alternatives to fossil fuel companies will not be difficult—every other sector in the economy is growing faster, smarter, and healthier.

At the end of 2020, according to the Invest-Divest report, the share of fossil fuel companies in the overall stock market had fallen even further, to 2.7 percent.

But Will Divestment Lead to Climate Justice?

Nonetheless, the fossil fuel industry’s economic and political power remains significant, as the results of the Glasgow conference demonstrate. Formally known as Conference of the Parties (COP), the COP 26 gathering was precedent-setting in a way, its importance amplified by the fact that the meeting had been delayed by a year due to COVID-19, and yet also highly disappointing. UN Secretary General António Guterres at its conclusion observed bluntly that this year’s accord “reflects the interests, the contradictions, and the state of political will in the world today. It is an important step, but it is not enough.”

In short, even now, the central goal of the divest/reinvest movement—to break the political stranglehold of fossil fuel interests—remains only partially achieved. The Washington Post published the agreement text with annotations regarding key sections. For example, on the plus side, a UN climate agreement for the first time mentioned “coal” and “fossil fuel subsidies” by name—but the language in the agreement was watered down, a sign that while fossil fuel industry political and economic power has been diminished, it is hardly gone. The agreement also mentioned “climate justice” by name for the first time, although this too was watered down: the agreement language indicating that in facing the climate emergency, addressing climate justice was important “for some.”

Some of the compromise language is amusing in a disheartening way. For instance, the call to reduce fossil fuel subsidies was modified to a call to reduce “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, as if “efficient” fossil fuel subsidies would be perfectly acceptable.

Climate Action Tracker, a consortium led by two German nonprofits, released an estimate that the world is currently on track for a 2.7-degree Celsius rise in global temperature—well above the 1.5-degree target set by the UN’s scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These numbers do reflect an improvement from the 3.6-degree Celsius estimate that the group produced in 2015, before the singing of the Paris Agreement, but the consequences of a 2.7-degree rise would be severe. A 2018 study indicates that even a 2-degree Celsius rise would lead to far more severe storms, flooding, drought, and heat waves, as well as the destruction of the coral reef and very substantial melting of Arctic Ocean ice.

It is worth remembering too that the world has already experienced a one-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures—leading to the rapid rise in climate-related disasters seen today. The effects are increasingly obvious: this past summer, for example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that 32 percent of Americans lived in a state or county that was declared a disaster area.

Moving Forward

Of course, international conferences are hardly likely to lead on climate justice. The UN secretary general himself called for a “climate action army” of “young people, Indigenous communities, women leaders” to spur more transformational change. And no one—least of all fossil fuel divestment activists themselves—believe that fossil fuel divestment alone will break the political logjam. It is one tactic, albeit an effective one, within a much broader climate justice movement.

The Invest-Divest report itself calls for institutional investors to invest 10 percent of their assets by 2030 in “renewable energy systems, universal energy access, and a just transition for communities and workers” and promote “net zero” plans for companies in their investment portfolios. It is not surprising that a report on investment focuses on what investors should do. At the same time, the report authors recognize that a broader shift is required, pointing out that, “The transition to a renewable energy economy represents a huge shift in society and, as with all such upheavals, contains within it both the potential for compounding injustice and the opportunity for positive transformational change” (page 25).

In short, capital shifts alone are not sufficient, even if impact investors “do the right thing.” Earlier this year, writing in NPQ, Johanna Bozuwa pointed out that a “Green New Deal that doesn’t cut to the heart of racialized capitalism is certain to be inadequate.” Bozuwa is also the coauthor of a report that argues that fully breaking the veto power of fossil fuel companies over transitioning to an economy that supports climate justice may require the federal government to acquire fossil fuel companies outright, to wind down extraction and thereby force a transition to renewable energy.

Beyond policy, a deeper cultural shift is required as well—a shift that demands what NPQ’s Cyndi Suarez labeled a “global movement for life.” As Ruth Miller, Meda Dewitt, and Margi Dashevsky remind us, drawing on Alaskan Native values and traditions, the broader “goal must be to return to balance in all investments, industries, and sectors—infusing justice and restoration throughout a new economy.”

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

This article is from the Fall 2021 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Climate Justice: A Movement for Life.”

In this conversation about Puerto Rico, climate crisis, leadership, and the all-too-often unrecognized and unsupported knowledge of communities of color, Nonprofit Quarterly’s president and editor in chief, Cyndi Suarez, talks with a highly respected and beloved environmental leader in Puerto Rico who, because of the communications policy of the foundation he works for, cannot speak on the record.

Cyndi Suarez: It’s wonderful to connect with you! At NPQ, we are prioritizing four areas: racial justice, economic justice, climate justice, and health justice—because these are the major movements. This issue of the magazine is on climate justice—and because I’m Puerto Rican, and because Puerto Rico has played such a big role in this area, I wanted to circle back and see what’s going on there, and what the take on climate justice is right now. I remember that when I spoke to you back in 2017, you were saying that in Puerto Rico, people didn’t really believe in climate change. And I’m wondering what it’s like now. I know that so much has happened since COVID, and after Maria. A lot of movements were happening when I last spoke with you, and I would love some stories about what’s going on now with that.

Anonymous: I could connect you with some good community folks that could speak on the issue and really tell you, from the perspective of the communities, how they’re seeing it, how it’s affecting them. I’m sure you’ve seen that the Texas company Luma has taken over the electric grid. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) no longer controls it.

CS: Since when?

Anon: It started about mid-last year. And then they pushed out the union. It’s been a big mess. Yet you still drive down the road and see electric pole after electric pole after electric pole that’s literally bent over and about to fall. You know, if this was in the U.S., we would be raising flags, because we wouldn’t be driving under those electric poles, because we’d be fearing that they would fall on us.

CS: It was like that when I went there. I thought to myself, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Anon: Yeah! And, you know, we have a hurricane that’s coming. It’s currently a thunderstorm—it could become a hurricane. Maybe level one, maybe level two. It could be coming by as early as tomorrow night. And things like that mean that the country is still fragile? Economically, we know we’re fragile. And then, given the state of COVID . . . a lot of people have lost their jobs, a lot of people are still trying to get back on their feet. A lot of people still don’t have their homes in the best of shape, post-Maria. And so there’s still a lot of blue tarps on roofs. And you think about all of that, and you think about the fact that something like a hurricane one, or a hurricane two, could do a lot more damage than that hurricane five did when we were much stronger. We were in an economic crisis, but we hadn’t gone through COVID-19 and lived all the economic difficulties that it has caused, including the many people who died, the many households that were shrunk, right? Both here and in the U.S. But there are great folks that I can connect you with to get the full picture.

CS: I’ve been wanting to catch up and figure out what Puerto Rico is learning. Because, you know, that report came out today—the United Nations report.¹

Anon: I saw that. Alarming.

CS: There’s just a lot to really put into perspective—because when I came into this position, what I learned from my time before, talking to people in the field, is that people don’t always have all the information of the ecosystem that they’re a part of. So, I’m hiring editors and bringing in art and bringing in all these different aspects and voices of the people that are doing this work.

Anon: Right. And that’s important.

CS: Most of the knowledge in our sector—99 percent of it, 98 percent of it—is aimed at funders. It’s not aimed at the people. The funders spend money to talk to other funders, because they think that’s the most important thing to do. So, you don’t hear from people like you. There’s so much happening that I hear about from people who call me, and I’m thinking, “There are so many solutions! There are so many things that no one’s covering!” So, I’m growing this journal as a multimedia platform. We have podcasts, we have webinars, we have fellowships, and we’ve been developing a program called the Voice Lab, which is for leaders of color to come in and be supported for a year to develop a portfolio of thought pieces, as a group. We’ve been doing a lot to highlight those voices, because honestly, what people like you guys know is very different from what is recorded as knowledge right now in the sector. My priority is to capture knowledge of people of color and support it and highlight it. And a lot of people want that.

Anon: I think people are looking for that, Cyndi—and the more you do that, the more voice you give to these communities. You know, the reason why we created the climate network was because all these climate change and environmental conferences that were taking place in Puerto Rico were taking place within four walls, where the folks that were being invited were groups of scientists or professors or foundations—but communities weren’t being involved. And they’d invite the executive director of an organization to come in, collect that knowledge, and bring it to the community. But the more access you give of that information to the community directly, instead of going through an organization, the more people understand why they’re being asked to do things like reduce, like recycle and reuse, to conserve the environment—the more they can tie one thing to another. And in many cases, I heard over and over again scientists say in conferences, “And we’ve learned from the community that they already knew this stuff” and “We figured out that it was important to start working with the community.” Well, see, you should have known from the start that it was important to be working with the community. We should have known that the community has a whole lot of this knowledge already. Let’s connect it, you know? Let’s really bring it together. And sometimes, you see that the community is afraid of scientists, because they say, “Well, they’re going to spend a lot of money on analysis, and we’re never going to get anything done.” And you’ll hear scientists say about the community, “Well, you know, they’re gonna say they know stuff, but they don’t.”

And this is where empathy, understanding, and communication need to come into play. These are things we may think are so obvious, or we may think are so simple that it’s a given that people understand. But it’s those things that are going to enable these conversations to take place in an effective manner. You know, if scientists take half the empathy and understanding and wanting to hear and learn that I use when I talk to communities— man, we bridge the gap! And if communities do the same thing, vice versa, vis-à-vis scientists, and say, “Let me just listen to them—let me try and figure out what it is exactly that they’re trying to communicate to me. And if they can’t communicate it in a way that’s effective, let me ask the questions to make sure that they communicate it in a way that I can understand.” Boom! We have a connection. And I think that those gaps are important to fill.

CS: Yes. So, what’s your old organization doing now? Last time I was there, it was work around Hurricane Maria.

Anon: Yes. They were doing work around energy. Giving out solar lanterns. We ended up giving out thousands of solar lanterns door to door.

CS: I still have people thanking me for the lamps and telling me how much it meant to them. They still have the lamps.

Anon: They clean them up and they shine them and they put them away. It’s the funniest thing, you know? They give them the Puerto Rican love. Many said that the solar lanterns are an example of what the whole island can do by going 100 percent solar. I’ve gone back to houses where people still have the lanterns and still use them when the lights go out. I have seen on Facebook where people who were given lanterns post a picture of the lantern when the lights go out, and they write, “Thank God for giving me this gift that I can continue to use on days like this”— because the lights still go out. I mean, I know in my case, my lights go out twice a week for hours at a time.

CS: When I was there last year for my dad’s funeral, it was during the earthquakes. The day before I was leaving, the whole island shut down. I was so freaked out, because everything closed—the hotel, the supermarkets—and everybody was so casual about it. Everybody just brought out their generators.

They were like, “It’s just gonna be like this for a few days, so get some water.” I was freaking out! Everybody was so matter of fact about it. It was like a party. Like it was normal. And it was so hot. It was just so hot. And I realized, “Oh, wow, this is normal.”

Anon: So there are two things to that, right? One is—and I think about this every single time I get off an airplane and come to Puerto Rico—that we’ve become so complacent with having the minimal. Having the minimal services—having poor public education, having minimal electricity service, having roads that are destroyed, driving under poles that could literally fall on us.

CS: I mean, they could kill you, right?

Anon: They could kill you. And then, we have really bad legislators, and we continue to reelect them. We’ve become so normalized about that, that we don’t have higher expectations.

CS: When did that happen? It wasn’t always like that. I remember I would go there and everything was so crisp, and everybody voted.

Anon: Yeah.

CS: It seems like so long ago.

Anon: Well, the voting still happens. But they are settling, and they know they’re settling. And I don’t even want to get into the whole issue of statehood versus independence versus, you know, commonwealth. Because I think that we’re at a point where we’re just okay with living the way we’re living, you know? But on the flip side of that, because the electricity has gone out so much, because we are living so fragilely, because the economy is a mess, because we have really bad legislators, because of Hurricane Maria, we are better prepared for crises now.

CS: Say that again.

Anon: We’re better prepared for a crisis.

CS: Because of what? Because of everything that’s happened?

Anon: Because of Hurricane Maria, because of everything that’s happened.

CS: So people just know how to deal with crisis.

Anon: So, when a crisis comes, people are relaxed and know what to do.

CS: Wow.

Anon: “I have this, this and this, and this in the house. All I have to do is do this, this, and this.” So there’s a flip side to it—there’s a negative, which is we become complacent with, you know, everything. And then, on the other hand, we’ve become better prepared for crisis, which is: “A crisis comes, I’m gonna take it easy. I know what I have to do, and I’m going to do it.” So, you have those two sides. But, you know, last time we left and returned, my wife said, “Oh, my God!”

CS: What is it like? Because of COVID? Is there lockdown in Puerto Rico?

Anon: It’s been on and off lockdown. It’s not a heavy lockdown right now. It’s pretty open now.

CS: So, people aren’t vaccinating?

Anon: People are vaccinated. I think 60 percent of the people are vaccinated.

CS: Oh! That’s good!

Anon: Yeah, it’s really good. What my wife was referring to was that the minute you get back, you see the holes in the street, you see the infrastructure is a mess, you see all the buildings are a mess. You see the light poles hanging by a thread. And you just still see the results of Hurricane Maria, and you say to yourself, “My God.” And it’s funny, because it hit my wife—it didn’t hit me. But it didn’t hit me because I knew that we have become accustomed to complacency. I knew that we have become accustomed to living in the situation that we are living in. So, the minute we got on the highway, she started looking around, and she saw the highway, she saw the buildings, and she said, “Oh, my God! It’s really hitting me right now what we’re living in.” And I can’t even walk on a decent sidewalk. You know what I mean?

CS: Yeah, I feel it when I go there. I feel it. And then I remember what it was like when I was a kid. And it almost feels like la-la land.

Anon: What happened, right?

CS: Yeah, it’s very different. If you’re not used to Puerto Rico, when you go there, living in a state of a crisis—you can’t fully recover from it, it does something to your psyche. I was there for maybe five days, and it was very hard for me. And the earthquakes when I was there were very strong. I felt very unsafe. I felt like I was going to get swallowed up by the ocean. I was like, “How do people live here? This is so stressful.” The lights went out. It was so hot. The fumes from the generators. Everybody was used to it. I had a headache from the fumes. 

My brother lives in a gated community. And as we were leaving, as we were driving out, I noticed that the guy at the gate had a big automatic weapon. And I looked at my brother, who didn’t flinch, and I said, “Why does the security guy have an automatic weapon?” Like, he’s not in a war. And he said, “Oh, that guy, that’s his own weapon. He’s crazy. He just likes to bring his weapon to work.” And I said, “And nobody does anything?” And he said, “Who’s gonna do anything? There’s no police, really. This is not what people are paying attention to.” That was my vision on my way to the airport. It was almost like something out of a movie. It was pitch black, because there was no electricity. And I was just trying to get out. I felt like I was in a movie trying to catch the plane before everything collapses. And then you get to the airport, and everything is closed. There is just one place that opens at a certain time, and everybody stands outside to wait for that place to open to get food. It’s like nothing works.

Anon: Right. You’re 100 percent right.

CS: It’s very emotional for me when I go there. I don’t like to go there, actually. My son wants to go, and I feel bad taking him, because this is the first time he’s going to see it. But I feel like I missed those chances for him to see it. And this is what it is now. And he really wants to go. And my daughter, she had been wanting to move back to Puerto Rico. She really loved it there. She wanted to do creative work there.

So, we were there for that, and we were walking in San Juan, where we were staying, on the main street there with all the restaurants, Calle Loíza—and the street was broken up. And I remember I asked someone, “Why is this stuff in the street?” They said, “Oh, people cover the holes themselves, they just mix cement and cover the holes themselves.”

Anon: And that’s the complacency I’m talking about.

CS: But the amazingness of the people, though! People were creating all these microbusinesses, and there was all this healthy food that was delicious. And I think that’s what struck her—the people. She would say, “The people here are just so unbelievable. Look at how it is, and look at how nice people are.” Over here, you have a little thing in the street, and someone’s ready to kill you. Over there, people are living this crazy existence, and they’re sweet. You know, everyone’s like, “How you doing?” People sit down at the table next to you and start talking to you. They recommend dishes. She had never experienced that, you know?

Anon: Right. And those are the things that keep people in Puerto Rico, right?

CS: I can imagine.

Anon: Those are the things that, when we leave Puerto Rico, we miss. I have this sort of inside joke that I do when I’m in the U.S. Basically, I get into an elevator, and other people are there, and I’ll just randomly say, “Good morning.” Or I’ll say, “Good afternoon.” Or I’ll say, “Good evening.” Because I know, most of the time, people will not say it back. But if I do it in Puerto Rico, they will always 100 percent say good morning back, or good afternoon, or good evening. You know? And those are the things that remind me that the beauty of Puerto Rico is not only the nature, right? The environment of the island, the beaches, all of that. It’s our people. So regardless of all the madness that we see, the people keep you there. And I think that’s a powerful thing. It’s a powerful statement. And I think that in times like these you need something that says to you that there is hope. And it’s those reactions that you’re getting from folks that let you know that, regardless of our current crisis, there’s still hope. Because that love is being extended from one person to another on the island, no matter where you’re from or who you are.

CS: Is that part of the culture?

Anon: Yeah.

CS: I wonder what part of the culture contributes to that? That hope. . . .

Anon: I think a large part of the culture contributes to that. It’s island-wide. You could find that just as much in San Juan as you could find it in Cabo Rojo, or Humacao, or Loíza, or Ponce. I’ve seen it everywhere. I saw it equally in Vieques. And so this constant love that we get from one another allows us to really be able to feel that hope, regardless of the situation. Feel that you’re in a circle: that regardless of whether or not there are times when maybe the situation could make someone else feel alone, you don’t, because you feel part of a community.

CS: People take care of each other.

Anon: People take care of each other. And it’s funny, because I have a friend who, when one of my staff, male, opened the door for her, said, “You guys don’t need to open the door for me.” Coming from her, it didn’t surprise me, because that’s something that’s very American—you know, to show our ability to be independent and that we can do it ourselves. And I said, “I’m sorry that he did that. But this is what we do in Puerto Rico. We open the door for each other.” I said, “I could tell you of countless times that I’ll open the door for him, and I’ll say ‘after you’ and he’ll say ‘no, no, after you,’ and we get caught up in that whole ‘after you’ thing. But that’s how Puerto Rico is in general.”

I can give you a number of examples. Just yesterday alone—my family went to take my mother to dinner, and I remembered it because, as I opened the door for another family to come through, my family moved to the side, automatically. I didn’t have to tell my family to move to the side—they moved to the side on their own. The other family came through, and then I was going to hold the door for the husband to come through. He says, “No, it’s my turn.” And then we all went through. And then he left. We still live in that sort of world that existed in the U.S. in the forties and fifties, where there were gentlemen and there were ladies, and chivalry was a good thing. All of that still exists here in Puerto Rico.

CS: I think there’s a name for that. Welcome culture? My ex-husband is from Sudan, and in Sudan it’s the same thing. When we used to go visit Sudanese people when we lived in California, whenever you went to a Sudanese person’s house there were sweets and the best food. Everything that was the best was saved. And you could only eat it when guests were there. So the kids would get all happy when there were guests. I’ve been to Sudanese people’s homes where they insist that we sleep in the master bedroom, because it’s the nicest bedroom. And I’m like, “I can sleep in another room, the kid’s room.” And it’s this thing—they always say you give the best to the guests. I remember when I saw that I thought, “Oh, that’s how Puerto Ricans are.”

When I lived with my mom, people would just show up. A whole bunch of people would just show up on Saturday, and the whole day would be changed. Whatever we were doing, now we’d just be entertaining this family all day. And we would be doing it happily. And I remember when I lived in California, one time I stopped by a friend of mine who lived on the same block, and just knocked to see if she was there, because she had a kid that was friends with mine. And she was upset that I didn’t call first. And I thought, “Oh, so I have to always remember that there are these different cultures.” So, there’s a name for it. It’s not “welcome culture.” But you give the best to the guests. Or to other people, you know? There isn’t a thing about, you know, hiding things when the guests come, you know what I mean? I’ve seen people that do that. And it’s just like, what?

Anon: What is that? We put out the best glasses when the guests come, you know? Once when we had guests, I accidentally grabbed these metal cups that I get a kick out of drinking from, because they stay cool. And my wife goes, “No, what are you doing? Put out the best glasses.”

CS: You’re like, “These are the best!”

Anon: Yeah, I’m thinking in my mind, “These are the best.”

CS: So what are you doing now? When did you leave your previous job?

Anon: I left some time ago. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Currently, I’m working with a foundation and continuing my work.

CS: There are so many different people that I’ve talked to about this, but you have such a different take, because you’re in the middle of all these different systems: the community. . . and you get this nonprofit sector, the people, the funders.

Anon: I think it’s really good work, the work I’m doing now. And it’s given me a lot of peace in terms of economically stabilizing my family. I gave 120 percent of me, you know?

CS: That’s all? I think you gave more than that. At least 150.

Anon: Yeah. And that means I put my family in a certain difficult place economically. But I believed, and still do, in everything we were doing—with a passion that I still feel today.

CS: You miss it?

Anon: I miss it hard.

CS: What do you miss about it?

Anon: I miss being with all the members in the community. I miss having them telling me what to do all the time. I enjoyed that. You know, leaders don’t generally want people telling them what to do. I wanted it. I welcomed it. I’m glad you got to see it.

CS: I’m glad I got to see it, too! I want my son to experience Puerto Rico. He’s never been there. I have this thing about the different parts of Puerto Rico, you know, the different towns, and how they’re all like their own world. I never do itineraries, but I kind of want to now, because I want to make sure that I do things that really show him Puerto Rico. So, I don’t know, how do you cover Puerto Rico? You kind of can’t, right? You have to like, pick a few places.

Anon: Yeah, you can pick a few that will give him a good cultural perspective, where he can feel like he has connected.

CS: Do you know what those would be?

Anon: Yeah, for example, I would definitely take him to Isla Verde and see the beaches there, and maybe make some stops to see some of the environmental groups that are out there, and watch what they’re doing. There are environmental groups on Isla Verde and in Santurce that are doing really great work reestablishing dunes in the area, which is so important because of climate change. So, they plant vegetation in the area.

There are groups that take care of the leatherback turtle. And when the leatherback turtle comes in and nests, they take care of the eggs, and then form this pathway for the hatchlings to come out into the ocean. And then that becomes this whole spiritual moment with the community. In some cases, they’re just quiet, and just sharing energy with the hatchlings as they catch the waves. It’s the coolest thing. I remember I took my daughter to one. She would scream every time a turtle hit a wave. She’s like, “Aah!” And I remember the folks there started saying, “Shhh.” It’s very spiritual, very awesome. And I think you and he would love that. It’s a very powerful spiritual moment, seeing these hatchlings going out and experiencing life for the first time. And slowly trying to get to the ocean to start living its life. It’s amazing.

Another awesome place—it is a heck of a drive, though—is Casa Pueblo, a nonprofit community group in Adjuntas. Along with the social justice work they do there, they also have all sorts of gardens, a butterfly habitat where they raise monarchs and grow their own coffee. You can buy a packet of coffee there, which is great.

I would take him to Loíza, and if there’s a bomba group playing out there that night, I would take him there, and tell him the story of how Loíza was created, and how the people live. I would take him to Old San Juan, definitely. And take him to El Morro and tell him the story of El Morro and the story of Old San Juan.

What else? I would even take him—and this sounds lousy, but there’s a reason for this—I would take him to the malls. Because I think sometimes people think that Puerto Rico is this “third world” country where we’re still wearing, you know, leaves for pants and stuff. We also need to put things into perspective—you know, it’s still just as fashionable as the U.S., and still just as “in” as the U.S. There are just things that are different about Puerto Rico, that’s all. Culturally different?

And I would take him to Piñones—hardcore. Piñones is a must-stop.

CS: Why?

Anon: Because there’s a culture there…it’s part Puerto Rican, part Dominican. They make frituras……. When

folks in the U.S. picture a restaurant that they want to go to on an island, it’s something like Piñones.

CS: When I was there one time I went through the mountains on the pig mile. And even though I’m a vegetarian, it was so beautiful up there! And there were all the places to eat and dance. It was just so beautiful. I love the mountains.

Anon: There are two more places that I would suggest happily. One would be El Yunque.

CS: Is it open all the way now? I went there back in—oh my God, it was so beautiful.

Anon: It’s not completely open. If you go, you can call ahead of time and make reservations and buy your tickets.

CS: What about Camuy?

Anon: Cavernas de Camuy are really amazing. I would definitely put that up there. It’s an awesome experience. It’s him in the environment and really appreciating nature. I think that’s a beautiful place to take him.

And if there’s another place that I would definitely say to go to it’s Cabo Rojo. The salt flats of Cabo Rojo. And the beach is called Playa Sucia. This is going back as far as the Tainos, who were the first to access salt from the salt flats in Cabo Rojo. And since then, that was an industry that we had. Currently, there is no industry there in the salt flats—now it’s a reserve. But it’s dealing with some challenges due to climate change, and it’d be great if you could see that before it starts to disappear. And the spot that I would suggest is Playa Sucia, where the salt flats are, because it’s an enclosed beach. It’s the saltiest salt water you’re ever going to swim in, but it’s clean and clear. And then at the very top on the right-hand side, there’s a reef with a cliff, but with a lighthouse on it that’s closed. It’s now owned by the municipality. And you can take pictures in front of the lighthouse, and then on the other side is just a cliff. And you can sit there, and you feel like you see the world, you know, and it’s just ocean, all ocean. It’s amazing. It’s a place where you feel serenity, you feel peace. You feel connection with the environment that to some extent you feel with the beaches out here, but you really feel it there. It’s my favorite place to go. So when my wife says, “Hey, what do you think if we go to Cabo Rojo?” I’m packing already, you know what I mean?

CS: That’s so cool. I think if I was in Puerto Rico, I would want to go to all the towns. I just find the whole thing so fascinating, that there are so many towns that have their own character and festivals. Thank you so much. This is great.

Anon: You’re welcome.

CS: It’s so great to hear that you’re doing well and that your family’s doing well. I’m just really happy for you guys.

Anon: Thank you. And Cyndi, you know, there’s only one ask I will ever, ever, ever, in my lifetime, have of you. And that’s that, whatever you do, keep blasting Puerto Rico.

CS: I try, you know? My work has grown so much, and I feel like I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that. When I first started covering it, people were like, “What? Why is this [being covered] here?” And I would say, “Okay, first of all, not only is it part of the U.S., but it is at the forefront of almost every issue that we’re dealing with.”

Anon: Right.

CS: And so people got really interested in it. And then other work happened. So, I’m thinking, okay, how do I stay in touch with what’s happening in Puerto Rico? I know people in different institutes and stuff, but that’s not always the voice that I want. I need one or two people to cover what’s going on, because so many things have happened and I can’t track it all. After Maria, there were so many things happening democratically, so many movements that I wanted to cover. But I would have had to focus just on it. So much was going on. And I wasn’t there. So it became hard.

Anon: I can also share news I come across with you. If I could be a help that way, a resource . . . because the power that you have to highlight what’s going on here is amazing.

CS: I want it. And people want to hear that.

Anon: Definitely.

CS: I wonder what’s going to happen, and what’s the future of Puerto Rico. I mean, I hope it’s good. I hope that there’s good stuff in place. And that there’s some kind of normality, whatever it becomes.

Anon: It feels like it’s maybe still a decade away.

CS: What do you think has to happen? Is it about the politicians?

Anon: Part of it is the politicians. I think we need to continue to build strong movement. But I also think that the foundations here need to start thinking differently about the types of programs that they fund.

CS: How do you think they should be funding?

Anon: I think sometimes they play it too safe and don’t fund work that is movement based. They fund after- school programs, which are important. They’ll fund other programs that are equally important, but when it comes to movements, organizing, and that sort of stuff. . . .

CS: No one’s funding that?

Anon: It’s rare to see foundations funding it out here. There are very few that fund it, and there are very few dollars for it. And that’s why when you get opportunities from foundations in the U.S., that can find a way to have the structure to be able to support a program in Puerto Rico, you love it, because they’re not going be shy about funding movements.

CS: So, U.S. foundations will fund movement.

Anon: U.S. foundations will fund movement.

CS: But not the Puerto Rico ones.

Anon: It’s not always the case in Puerto Rico.

CS: Interesting.

Anon: And the dollars are a lot less here.

CS: Do you know any funders in Puerto Rico that are funding movement?

Anon: The Puerto Rico Community Foundation. They’re one that will fund this kind of work. But other foundations just straight up won’t.

CS: And in U.S.?

Anon: There are many that do. They’re really good for that. So, thank God for foundations like those that are willing to fund programs like that. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re looking for.

CS: If you had that money, what would you create?

Anon: I would create a social justice organization that’s able to do several things. It would have to do some work on electoral reform. It would do some sort of work around public education, the quality of public education. It would do something around climate change and the environment. And I know, these are some key topics that I’m mentioning, but I think that there are topics that we don’t have enough people working on in the ways that they need to.

CS: How much money would you need to do that?

Anon: I think something like that can be done in Puerto Rico with five to six hundred thousand dollars a year, easily. Whereas in the U.S., that would be in the millions, probably.

CS: I would love to see this. You are so awesome. I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much. Anon: Thank you, Cyndi.

Notes

1. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], August 2021), www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

This article is from the Fall 2021 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Climate Justice: A Movement for Life.”

When I was a child, my mother would often tell me stories about her experiences growing up in Sioux City, Iowa. She described playing childhood games around the city dump, which had been parked in her neighborhood. The community’s trash had to go somewhere, and the powers that be chose to send it to the part of town that was predominantly home to people of color. There were people of means and people of limited means in the community; because of segregation and discrimination, both lacked political clout.

It is said that the sense of smell is harbored within our most vivid memories, which may explain why that dump found its way into the stories my mother shared with me.

In 1979, when I took my first job out of college, at the Environmental Protection Agency, I saw up close how my mother’s experience was far from happenstance. In neighborhood after neighborhood, I witnessed people who looked like me living in disinvested and redlined neighborhoods standing in the shadows of chemical plants, refineries, and toxic waste sites. I saw air, land, and water pollution resulting from mining activities. And I was routinely assaulted by the same pungent odors that would have been constant in my mother’s childhood and that poisoned generations of Black and Brown children.

Not unexpectedly, these communities faced a host of other challenges linked to environmental hazards that were part of their daily lives. They dealt with chronic health problems and disparities regarding healthcare access and treatment. They dealt with failing schools and economic dislocation. They had little or no opportunity to influence or reverse the decisions that had led to these conditions.

Those early experiences have stayed with me throughout my career and have shaped my environmental justice journey, which now spans five continents and more than four decades. Along the way, they’ve fueled an ever- growing sense of urgency as I witness the burgeoning threat of climate change inflict increasingly disproportionate damage on already marginalized communities around the globe.

Climate Justice: Not a Stand-Alone Issue

Over the past eighteen months, Black Lives Matter and the COVID-19 pandemic have shone a spotlight on systemic racism here in the United States and across the globe—and put an even finer point on the idea that we must act differently if we want to achieve change. Never has it been more apparent that environmental justice cannot occur in a vacuum. Around the world, there is a growing understanding that we cannot even begin to address the disproportionate impacts of environmental and climate change on people of color, women, and the poor without also addressing the overlapping and intersecting factors of economic, racial, and social justice.

For too long, government and philanthropy have approached climate change and climate justice as stand- alone issues. Climate injustice is a root cause of health inequities, and influences how children learn and grow. Environmental injustice amplifies—and is amplified by—economic, gender, and racial injustice across the globe. These are integrated problems that require integrated solutions—solutions that tap into the skills and knowledge of people and communities that have been experiencing these issues for generations. As we come to grips with the overlapping and urgent threats of climate change, racial injustice, and a worldwide pandemic, it’s time to take a comprehensive, coordinated approach.

Adopting an integrated approach to climate justice is difficult work—it requires a seismic shift in how we think about some of the most persistent and potent challenges facing our planet and all who inhabit it. It also requires a fundamental rethinking of the systems we use.

People of color are the global majority. They are the hardest hit by the issues, and the most affected by centuries of decisions made by those who do not share their interests. Those who have access to the power and money needed to make change must be willing to upend traditional, top-down approaches so we can design equitable, community-led solutions. Failure to do so will only continue to reinforce our historic inequities.

Ceding power might sound intimidating to those working in and under philanthropy’s existing structures, but there are a growing number of examples that offer a road map for how to create community-based approaches to climate justice that are embedded with racial, social, and economic justice. I offer three, here.

Puerto Rico

After Hurricane Maria, the Fundación Comunitaria de PuertoRico (Community Foundation of Puerto Rico)— working in partnership with philanthropy and government agencies—began an ambitious effort to help isolated, low-income communities create community-owned, solar-powered electricity systems designed to help them weather future catastrophic storms and create a path forward for scalable economic growth.^1,

Through the Puerto Rico Community Green Energy Corridor project, these communities not only get access to the tools to create their own electricity but also work closely with experts who help them organize, manage, and maintain these systems. Over time, these systems will help create new businesses and job-creation opportunities in long-overlooked rural communities that face high unemployment and poverty.²

This model is transforming lives in tiny barrios like Toro Negro, a rural community in the municipality of Ciales with a population of about one thousand people. Toro Negro went live with its power grid in the summer of 2018, after residents actively participated in its design and construction. The community now manage their own nonprofit, which owns the microgrid and is responsible for its future maintenance.³ The community make key decisions about the rate they are going to charge themselves, and identify other funding mechanisms to ensure self-sustainability for the long term. With a strong, locally managed electricity system, they are able to spin off new, locally owned businesses and create family-sustaining jobs while being able to weather future storms.

Toro Negro might be small—and the Puerto Rico Community Green Energy Corridor might be largely unknown in the mainstream United States—but imagine if philanthropy and donors began exploring how they could invest in replicating its model across the Caribbean. Scores of rural communities, most of which are poor, would become more economically viable. At the same time, it would mean investing in tangible projects that address the impacts of climate change, establish sources of green energy, and improve health outcomes. It would also help make these communities more resilient in the face of future storms—saving countless lives and billions of dollars in the process.

India

In Yavatmal and Dhar, cotton has historically been the most profitable crop, but livelihoods are now being threatened by climate change. Cotton happens to be one of the most water-intensive crops to grow, and changes to the environment have made water an increasingly precious commodity in these regions.⁴

The most obvious solution to this challenge centers on helping farmers develop agricultural practices that optimize water use. Yet when the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) began working with locals there to address this challenge, the water shortage turned out to be a canary in a coal mine of sorts: it exposed a series of other, interrelated challenges that had long vexed the region—in particular, issues involving gender equity.

ISC launched a project to enhance the role of women and address the region’s water shortage by designing and implementing regenerative agriculture, soil, water, and pest-management models through cotton cultivation training and demonstration programs; improving understanding of local water balance by involving farmers and village-level institutions in water budgeting and developing village water management plans; and strengthening women and advancing equity through gender learning groups and training women farmers and entrepreneurs.⁵

Still in its early stages, the project already shows what’s possible for communities when they take steps to embed gender equity in efforts to improve local economies and tackle problems created by climate change. For instance, focusing on promoting environmentally sound entrepreneurial opportunities for women (such as the production of compost and biopesticides) has created an open lane to encourage environmentally friendly cotton production, providing tangible examples of the vital role women can play in improving quality of life and economic conditions in their villages. Further, ISC’s expert gender learning groups augment understanding of the role gender plays in cotton cultivation and water management. Those learnings could have wide-ranging implications across India and elsewhere in agricultural regions that face the dual challenge of climate change impacts and a severe imbalance of opportunity and influence based on gender.

The United States

In the United States, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the irrefutable link between climate and racial justice more than nearly any other environmental catastrophe. For it is out of that August 2005 tragedy that one of the most consequential movements for racial and social justice was born: Black Lives Matter.

On the tenth anniversary of Katrina, Slate magazine published a piece titled “Where Black Lives Matter Began.” In it, author Jamelle Bouie traces the roots of the Black Lives Matter movement to the stark inequities that those category 5 winds and relentless rain laid bare for all the world to see. People desperately huddled on roofs and crammed the damaged Superdome. Bodies floated through flooded streets. Entire neighborhoods were left in ruin. The faces of suffering the world saw were disproportionately, predominantly Black and Brown—people whose limited means and historic disenfranchisement had destined them to live in the most vulnerable sections of New Orleans.

“When we look at the first 15 years of the 21st century, the most defining moment in [B]lack America’s relationship to its country isn’t Election Day 2008; it’s Hurricane Katrina,” Bouie wrote. “Black collective memory of Hurricane Katrina, as much as anything else, informs the present movement against police violence, ‘Black Lives Matter.’”⁶

Katrina offers an accessible and familiar touchstone to make the clear connection between climate justice and racial, economic, and social justice. In post-Katrina New Orleans, the interconnectivity between the health of the planet and the health and well-being of its most divested and exposed citizens is undeniable. The scope of the catastrophe, and the wall-to-wall media coverage it attracted, laid bare the depths of Katrina’s impacts. Without both, what happened to mostly Black and Brown people might not have been so clear.

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Enormous opportunities for transformative change exist at the intersections of climate stabilization, racial and economic justice, gender equity, health, access to safe and affordable housing, transportation, and social mobility. To effectively meet the present moment and lay the groundwork for a more just future for all requires that we embrace fully the connectivity of our challenges, in ways that encourage and energize community- based solutions that reach beyond a singular focus.

Our most pressing challenge lies in the fact that countless catastrophes of significant scope inflict damage in far more covert and sinister ways around the globe. Factory emissions vanish into the sky; toxins silently permeate soils and groundwater; pervasive ozone gases are unseen, and to most, abstract. I suspect that in my mother’s childhood home of Sioux City, ways may have been devised to mask the stench of that landfill. But that does not answer the question as to what remains beneath the ground or in the air around the dump—and how it continues to affect those who live nearby.

Notes

1. Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, News, “Fundación Segarra Boerman e Hijos supports study on potential development of the Community Green Energy Corridor of Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico,” April 2, 2020, fcpr.org/2020/04/02/fundacion-segarra-boerman-e-hijos-supports-study-on-potential-development-of-the-community-green-energy-corridor-of-fundacion-comunitaria-de-puerto-rico/.
2. Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, “PROJECT PROFILE: Arizona State University 5 (FY2018 Photovoltaics),” accessed September 29, 2021, energy.gov/eere/solar/project-profile-arizona-state-university-5-fy2018-photovoltaics.

3. Simeng Deng et al., “Evaluating Viability of Community Solar Microgrids for Resilience in Puerto Rico,” Master’s project, Nicholas School of the Environment of Duke University, April 26, 2019, dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/18460/EVALUATING%20VIABILITY%20OF%20COMMUNITY%20SOLAR%20MICROGRIDS%20FOR%20RESILIENCE%20IN%20PUERTO%20RICO.pdf.

6. Ravikant Kumar, “In Response to Climate Change, Cotton Farmers Work to Understand and Conserve Water Resources,” Institute for Sustainable Communities, August 19, 2020, sustain.org/in-response-to-climate-change-cotton-farmers-work-to-understand-and-conserve-water-resources/.
7. “Women + Water Alliance,” Institute for Sustainable Communities, accessed September 29, 2021, sustain.org/program/women-water-alliance/; Divya Nazareth, “Leading Action on Climate Change: Why Rural Women Matter for Equitable Adaptation,” Institute for Sustainable Communities, August 14, 2021, sustain.org/leading-action-on-climate-change-why-rural-women-matter-for-equitable-adaptation/; and Promoting Water Stewardship in Cotton Growing Communities of Yavatmal and Dhar Districts, Women + Water Alliance, Institute for Sustainable Communities, accessed September 29, 2021, sustain.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Water-Women-SUMMARY-sheet-9-16-19.pdf.
8. Jamelle Bouie, “Where Black Lives Matter Began,” Slate, August 23, 2015, slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/08/hurricane_katrina_10th_anniversary_how_the_black_lives_matter_movement_was.html.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.