Author: apins

While working remotely for Sierra Club’s Massachusetts Chapter this summer has been a challenging, often isolating experience, the internship has also been incredibly rewarding. I applied to Sierra Club’s political internship program in late January, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything, with the hopes of better understanding how policy-making intersects with environmental justice and activism. In the first weeks of work, after being assigned to Erika Uyterhoeven’s State Representative campaign in Somerville, I really struggled with being confined to staring at my computer screen, in my house, an hour away from her district, while the rest of the campaign staff got their hands dirty building a grassroots movement. I had envisioned myself working in Sierra Club’s office or the Massachusetts State House, helping candidates and elected officials create and pass the critical environmental policies we need for a sustainable and livable future. Instead, I was sitting in my bedroom making phone calls and writing emails for a campaign fifty miles away.

However, I quickly became invested in Erika’s platform and, despite my challenges, began truly enjoying the work I was doing. Erika is a lifelong activist and community organizer who has spent her career fighting for affordable housing, vibrant public education, healthcare for all, racial and economic justice, and–most relevant to my interests–a bold and substantial approach to mitigating climate change. As I spent my days calling voters and volunteers, drafting social media and digital content, fundraising, conducting policy research, and writing about the need for a progressive voice in Somerville, I learned that I was a part of something bigger.

Although my days were exhausting, and it sometimes felt like I was doing inconsequential “busy-work,” I came to realize that the time I was putting in was actively contributing to building a better world. Social justice work is making change, and while I would prefer it to be a quick and painless process, pursuing justice takes time, energy, and a movement of people. By fighting so hard to elect Erika, a candidate whose values I believe in, I played a small role in making real change. If she is elected, I know she will fight for justice, give a voice to the oppressed, and work tirelessly to solve the challenges that our state, country, and world are facing. As a part of her movement, I also have a part in the outcomes she will create.

In reality, the work I was doing was not insignificant. Over the course of the summer, I made close to two thousand phone calls for the campaign, having hundreds of conversations with voters and advocating for Erika and the values she represents. I was named the campaign’s “Social Media Coordinator,” responsible for brainstorming, drafting, and curating daily posts on each of Erika’s platforms. These posts included fundraising asks, volunteer recruitment, sharing press releases, and announcing policy positions. I also created content for her webpage, wrote emails, applied for endorsements, and helped manage campaign databases.

The diversity of tasks I was assigned also gave me numerous opportunities to learn, as I was exposed to the complex and dynamic challenges of building a grassroots campaign. Each day was different, and while I was primarily interested in finding solutions to environmental issues, I was required to read about, research, and understand all of the policy areas that make up Erika’s campaign. Environmentalism cannot happen in a vacuum. Rather than simply protecting the planet and its biodiversity, we must also protect people and human rights. I grew to understand that environmental justice cannot be achieved if it is only focused on the environment and not also on the other issues our communities are facing. By working on this campaign, I learned a lot about what it means to pursue social justice.

Although this summer provided me with huge opportunities for personal and professional growth, I wish I had begun with a better perspective of the emotional burden of social justice work. The effort required to build a movement and advocate for your beliefs, especially when all of this is done virtually, during a pandemic, can make change feel impossible and hard work feel fruitless. However, by advocating for Erika, a Sierra Club endorsed candidate fighting for environmental justice, I am also fighting for environmental justice. This justice may be realized gradually, but without the movement of people behind it, change cannot happen.

A fundamental idea in my environmental studies education at Brandeis is that environmental issues do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they are intimately connected to our world’s social, economic, and political challenges. Too often, environmental advocacy approaches climate change and habitat degradation solely through the lens of biodiversity loss, or the potential for extinction of plant and animal life. While this is important to consider, and we must make an effort to conserve and protect our planet’s valuable wildlife, environmental movements must also take human rights and social justice into account.

In the Fall of 2020, I took a Brandeis course titled “Nature, Culture, Power” (ANTH 151b), taught by Professor Richard Schroeder. This class offered an overview of a niche field of anthropology–political ecology–which studies how political and historical dynamics inform human relationships with nature. Each week introduced a different topic of political ecology, reinforced by case studies. One of these cases assessed conservation in protected areas, including national parks and nature preserves, specifically questioning how the protection of wildlife can interfere with human rights. We read about and debated the controversial “shoot to kill” policies in Kruger National Park in South Africa, in which the government encouraged conservation officials to shoot individuals caught poaching endangered species. Traditionally, environmentalists would argue that the wellbeing of wildlife in the national parks should not be compromised. Poaching often only occurs when political and economic circumstances restrict the livelihood opportunities afforded to local populations.

I was exposed to a similar dynamic the following semester while studying abroad in Cambodia. During the program, my classmates and I took a field trip to the rural providence of Preah Vihear, where we visited a nature preserve in Cambodia’s rainforest. While interviewing park rangers, we learned that armed conflicts sometimes broke out between conservation officials and local populations. Due to civil war, colonialism, and oppressive governance, local communities are restricted to low-paying agricultural professions and many families live in debt. Therefore, trapping and poaching wildlife, which can be sold for large profits to alleviate their economic hardships, is a common strategy, despite its illegality. Environmental activists advocating for the protection of Cambodia’s rainforest habitats and its native wildlife loudly oppose the local populations’ poaching from the parklands. However, with limited economic opportunity, conservation becomes more ethically complicated. It is impossible to make environmental policies without considering the socio-economic factors that lead to poaching.

This balance between environmental protection and social justice that I have studied in the classroom and in the field directly informs the work I am doing with Sierra Club this summer. As a political intern working for Erika Uyterhoeven, a progressive candidate for State Representative in Somerville, I have had the opportunity to organize for her campaign by recruiting volunteers, fundraising, and helping to craft aspects of her campaign strategy.

One of her top priorities, if elected to office, is the passage of a Green New Deal for Massachusetts. The Green New Deal is a broad piece of legislation that involves transitioning Massachusetts to 100% renewable energy, expanding access to clean public transportation, building green, affordable housing units, and creating new, union jobs in sustainable industries. While it primarily focuses on mitigating and reducing the impacts of climate change, the Green New Deal is holistic, ensuring that public health, economic justice, and human rights are centered as well. Advocates for the Green New Deal recognize that environmentalism and the conservation of wildlife and their habitats do not go far enough on their own. Environmental policy must take into account environmental racism and the disproportionate impact that climate change will have on communities of color, Native peoples, low-income populations, and migrants. Simply passing policies that protect our planet without protecting people fails to recognize the underlying political and economic causes of the climate crisis we are now facing. While policy makers must take decisive action to defend ecosystems and the species that inhabit them, this cannot come at the expense of people’s livelihoods and wellbeing, especially for our most vulnerable populations.

Learning about instances where environmental stewardship and human rights were at odds with one another has informed my experience this summer by highlighting the importance of advocating for candidates and policies that find a balance between these issues. Sierra Club and Erika’s campaign have deepened my understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment with social justice.

For the past several years, I’ve known that I wanted to work as a professional environmentalist. More than anything, I love being outdoors and find significant value in spending time in natural spaces. The idea that human behavior is driving climate change, and permanently altering the face of our planet – destroying ecosystems, exterminating wildlife, depleting natural resources, and making our communities unlivable – is deeply disturbing to me. However, I quickly discovered that protecting the environment for the sake of nature alone is impossible, and often problematic. Social issues including economic and racial injustices, access to healthcare and housing, and political participation are intimately connected to the environmental challenges our world is facing. Marginalized and oppressed populations are systematically exposed to greater environmental harm, have less access to environmental benefits, and as the effects of climate change worsen, they disproportionately bear the burden of our degraded world. Combating these injustices requires wide-scale political change, and the passage of progressive policies that simultaneously protect the environment and human rights.

Sierra Club is the largest grassroots environmental organization in the country, with nearly 100,000 members and volunteers in Massachusetts alone. They create environmental educational opportunities, promote access to nature by running outdoors trips for their members, and engage in political activism for issues relating to environmental justice. Most importantly, their mission is to “protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment,” centering human rights and social justice in their activism.

This summer, I’m working for the political arm of the Sierra Club, at their Massachusetts chapter, based in Boston. Their team and its members engage in political advocacy through several mechanisms, including organizing rallies, lobbying in the State House, phone banking and canvassing, and endorsing local politicians who reflect their values. As a political intern, I was assigned to work on the Erika Uyterhoeven campaign, a Sierra Club-endorsed candidate who is running for State Representative in the 27^th Middlesex District, representing Somerville.

Erika is a young, first-time candidate for elected office who is running on a progressive platform of structural reform, fighting for affordable housing, single-payer healthcare, fully-funded public education, a transparent democracy, and–most directly relevant to the Sierra Club–a Green New Deal for Massachusetts. She believes in a government that works for the many, not the few–referring to the powerful corporate interests that control our political systems and create social and economic injustices that leave marginalized and low-income populations behind. She is a grassroots activist for environmental causes, and her values and legislative aspirations closely reflect those of the Sierra Club. Therefore, as an emissary for the Sierra Club on her campaign, my role is to provide her with additional resources to help her win, ensuring that a progressive, environmentally-conscious candidate is elected.

Due to the fact that State Representative races are typically small-scale and low-budget, Erika’s campaign staff is limited, and she relies heavily on volunteers and political organizations to assist with the leg-work of campaigning. This means that I am fortunate enough to play a fairly large role in the day-to-day work of the campaign. My tasks have included curating her social media strategy, organizing fundraisers and volunteer recruitment, engaging in phone banking (the primary form of voter contact, due to the constraints of COVID), drafting policy platforms, creating content for the campaign’s website, applying for additional endorsements, and participating in daily organizing calls with the campaign staff. The diversity of work I have been assigned, in several different policy areas, has already given me a well-rounded understanding of the dynamic challenges faced by a candidate for public office.

I have been given an opportunity to have hands-on exposure to environmental and political advocacy, and I have been made to feel as though my work will have a tangible impact on electing a candidate whose platform I truly believe in. Although the fast pace of politics has definitely involved a steep learning curve, I am grateful for the experiences this campaign has offered me, and I am learning that the seemingly minor tasks I am doing day-to-day are substantive contributions towards creating policy change.