Envisioning the World We Want to See: Climate Justice and Arts and Culture in New York City

an essay written by Thanu Yakupitiyage

On September 21st, 2014, I along with 300,000 New Yorkers, marched through the streets of New York City to demand action on climate change. The global day of protests was to put pressure on world leaders gathering in New York for a United Nations summit on climate change, which at the time was the first such meeting in five years. (A year later, due to the pressure, the Paris Climate Agreement was signed.) I was working at the New York Immigration Coalition at the time and had become the point person communicating the intersections of migrant rights and climate justice, and to get other immigrant rights groups involved in the march. This felt particularly important given that New York specific climate impacts like Hurricane Sandy in 2012 had primarily ravaged Black, brown, and immigrant communities from the Rockaways to Red Hook to Staten Island, leaving low income and undocumented immigrants without financial support and aid in recovery efforts. Now in early summer 2023, New York City is shrouded in a dangerous haze of smoke from wildfires in Canada, another reminder that the climate crisis is not of the future, but now.

As an immigrant to New York City from Sri Lanka who has seen how the escalating climate crisis impacts the most vulnerable communities in my homes in the Global South - when a few organizers from the People's Climate Movement reached out for partner organizations, I encouraged the organization I worked for to join in. It had always felt to me like our movements were so incredibly separate. And understandably, for those of us working to stop deportations imminently and pass comprehensive immigration reform, the impact of the climate crisis on communities who could and would become migrants because of it, wasn’t top of mind. We were dealing with immediate impacts. Yet, I persisted, insisting we be a part of it - because all our movements are interconnected.

People’s Climate March 2014, Youth Parachute “*Our future, our choice*. photo: Reuters, Eduardo Munoz

I remember the day clearly - I, along with a few friends, went up to Columbus Circle where the march was starting. I was immediately struck by the art and color of the march. There were frontline communities from across the country—Indigenous peoples, Hurricane Sandy survivors, communities of color—holding elaborate and beautiful signage that said “Climate justice now!,” “To change everything, it takes everyone,” “Climate change affects us the most!,” “Our future, our choice!”, “Youth choose climate justice!”, “Climate justice without borders!”, and more. The march was organized intentionally to have frontline communities leading. There was a youth delegation, Indigenous peoples, environmental justice advocates, Hurricane impacted communities, migrant rights groups at the front. We followed a graphic map put together by artist Gan Golan that outlined where we should assemble as part of the march.

I found myself under a colorful parachute that said “Migrant Justice is Climate Justice” running down 6th Avenue. It was honestly some of the most fun I’d ever had at a mobilization. What attracted me to the march was the art, it was the music, it was the possibility of a joyful and irresistable world. It was seeing that it was my communities, communities of color, who were the most affected, and who showed up in force. It brought me in, and it got me thinking.

In the “Like Waters, We Rise” publication put together by Raquel de Anda, Josh MacPhee, and LJ Amersterdam, depicting posters, photos, and objects from the frontlines of the climate justice movement from 1968 - 2022 - they write in the introduction, “We know the data: the temperature rising, the shores eroding, the species disappearing, the families migrating. The numbers tell the truth but truth doesn’t always catalyze people into action—meaning does. Culture does what science does not: hits you right in the gut, pulls your heart, makes you get out of your chair and join the march going by. It is the culture that gets you excited to take on the fight and enables you to see what you’re going to win, the future you get to be a part of.”

And that’s exactly what happened to me: In 2017, after almost seven years of direct service and immigrant rights policy work, with Donald Trump coming into office, and assaults on all of our civil rights and liberties escalating to a new level, I made a bold choice to shift from the primary work I had done in my twenties to doing more intersectional work on climate justice. When folks asked me why - I said it’s because the time was now to show that all these movements are interconnected. I didn’t see my shift to doing climate work in opposition to my work on immigrant and refugee rights, but an extension, primarily because the impacts of the climate crisis are fundamentally forcing people to migrate from the homes and lands they love and know. I also thought it was essential that immigrants like myself, folks with deep dedication to migrant rights, were deeply embedded in the climate movement, which in the U.S. is seen as a very “white movement.” And so I moved on to work at 350.org for a good six years doing national climate justice work. When I think about what made me make that jump - it was most certainly arts and culture. It was remembering the People’s Climate March of 2014. Beyond knowing the science, it was indeed arts and culture that catalyzed me into action and to wanting to support Black, brown and migrant communities most impacted by the climate crisis. It was culture that motivated me to want to shift policy. As I looked through the “Like The Waters We Rise,” publication - I was struck by the realization that the visuals of social justice movements are a huge part of what brings folks like me into organizing. They are often the critical—and colorful—entry point for stewarding people into deeper grassroots organizing and power building.

I went on to be part of the lead organizing and media teams for the People's Climate March 2017 in Washington D.C., the Rise for Climate march in San Francisco, and the Youth Climate Strikes of 2019. For all of these mobilizations, visual arts, music, and culture remained a big part of bringing people into the fold.

While I’ve been focused on more national level climate policy for many years now, the realities of the climate crisis are extremely local. As a long-time New York City resident (12 years and counting), the impacts of rising sea levels, stronger storms, changing weather patterns, extreme heat, and more has serious impacts on this city’s residents, especially low income folks and people of color. So when I was asked to join a convening on October 19th, 2022 at the City Lore Gallery in the Lower East Side with New York based climate justice organizers working across the city, discussing the role of arts in their organizing, I was glad to reconnect to local climate justice organizing and its relation to culture making in this deeply complicated city that I love. Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY (NOCD-NY) had brought people together in a peer learning exchange to talk about issues in their specific communities in New York and how they utilized arts and culture as a tool to mobilize people to action, and spread the word about their causes.

Arif Ullah of South Bronx Unite (SBU) presented on the work happening in the neighborhoods of Mott Haven and Port Morris, where communities are deeply impacted by environmental racism, lack of access to green space, and urban heat island effect in hotter summers. High levels of pollution from a combination of waste facilities, major expressways and highways, delivery warehouses, have made the South Bronx an “asthma alley.” Toxic air pollution exposure has led to cognitive impairment, dementia, lack of maternal health, infant mortality, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Ullah said that while he skimmed “Like the Waters We Rise” publication, he was struck by the reality that “the environmental justice movement is often seen as a white movement, but it’s clear that the environmental justice movement has been led by people of color and Indigenous peoples for a long time.” The work of SBU in and of itself demonstrates this reality.

A community discussion with South Bronx Unite. photo: c/o South Bronx Unite

To address these serious issues in a way that doesn’t overwhelm and paralyze people, SBU organizers incorporate arts and culture. Ullah talked about a project where a giant puppet called “Little Amal” walked to the South Bronx waterfront, as a way to highlight the need for green space. SBU is also trying to turn a derelict building into a community center called HEArts (Health, Education, and the Arts) to engage communities through arts and culture programming. Arts and culture not only is a vehicle to engage communities to understand the issues at hand, but is part of the practice of sustaining the community as a whole. When talking about the role of arts in their organizing, Arif Ullah said, “What is culture? Culture is an expression of our values; art is a part of culture. If art is culture, art is everywhere. Once we understand art as being embedded into everything, it’s not separate from the work we do.”

“What is culture? Culture is an expression of our values; art is a part of culture. If art is culture, art is everywhere. Once we understand art as being embedded into everything, it’s not separate from the work we do.”

Strategies at GOLES have included cultural community gatherings and a LES Ready! mural partnership with artist Raul Ayala and Downtown Art and .

Damaris Reyes, an organizer with Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), says their organization is known primarily for housing work, but is multi-issue including addressing land use, disaster preparedness, climate resiliency, and senior citizen support. Reyes discussed the long history of activism in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a waterfront neighborhood with a large amount of public housing that has been vulnerable to climate impacts such as Hurricane Sandy. It’s also a fast gentrifying neighborhood. Reyes says, “We thought we’d be fighting greedy developers. We didn’t think we would also have to fight against climate change.” She said that using arts and culture, including theater, became an important way to engage people on cross-sectional issues from gentrification to disaster preparedness. “We’re not artists, we just try to use art, and we try to use art that is accessible to us.” GOLES has worked on projects like the revitalization of the waterfront, pushing the city to make Pier 42 into a green space for Lower East Side residents and to support the reconstruction of East River Park through the East Side coastal resiliency program to protect it from flooding. Reyes said about engaging people around the intersection of environmental/climate justice and gentrification, “How do you talk about climate, resiliency, the water and attract people to take action? We’ve tried to use everything at our disposal, including arts and culture.”

Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, artist in residence at THE POINT CDC, based in Hunts Point in the Bronx, spoke about the challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and mobilizing people to action. Ramos-Fermín said, “After these two years of being in our apartments, all disrupted, how can we retake public space with culture in a joyful way...while at the same time, fighting for the things that we need?” He talked about the revival of the Fish Parade in Hunts Point, as a way of celebrating the cultures of the Bronx and highlighting environmental awareness and community revitalization needs. “This is a great example of bringing arts and culture into organizing.” THE POINT CDC is dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of Hunts Point, an area in the South Bronx that has been an industrial zone for decades.

An artmaking workshop with Girls Write Too! at THE POINT’s Fish Parade 2022 to inform the Bronx People’s Platform.

El Puente, a community organization based in Brooklyn, has been working on the intersection of economic and environmental justice, housing insecurity, and anti-gentrification efforts for decades. Masoom Moitra, a community planner, designer and former Director of the Green Light District and Our Air! / ¡Nuestro Aire! campaign at El Puente, discussed the work the organization has been doing in South Williamsburg and Bushwick—the Los Sures neighborhood—where primarily Latino communities are being impacted by environmental racism and housing insecurity.

El Puente organizes art exhibitions, performances, film screenings and other arts related events, building community through cultural activities that engage the diverse communities of Los Sures. They also organize local Latino artists and artists of color, offering professional and pre-professional development programs for adults and young people through El Puente CADRE (Community Artists' Development & Resource Exchange).

El Puente at the People’s Climate March. photo: El Puente de Williamsburg Inc

Jorge Luis Berríos, a working artist with El Puente CADRE, talked about their program being a network of mostly Latino community artists, artisans, and cultural workers exchanging ideas and strategies for community sustainability. Their network collectively produces community murals, workshops, and coordinates the annual ¡WEPA! Festival for Southside Performing Arts.

All of these initiatives engage with climate justice on a hyper local level, incorporating climate concerns into a range of other issues that impact residents. They demonstrated what I’ve known all along (and why I got into climate work in the first place): that climate justice is inextricably linked to housing, gentrification, environmental racism and more.

New York City has been ranked the most expensive city in the world, with soaring rent prices, making it an already dire situation worse for communities of color who have lived here for decades. Furthermore, New York City is on the frontlines of rising sea levels and is vulnerable to stronger storms, with the city having taken little significant action on climate resilience over the last decade since Hurricane Sandy. Subways flood every time there’s severe rain, luxury buildings continue to be built on the waterfront, and low income communities continue to be pushed into more and more polluted zones.

I’m struck often that New York City can be many experiences at once and in fact many “cities” at once. For people of wealth and access, New York is a bastion of capitalism, fashion, institutional art, movement of money to the highest order. For low income immigrants and communities of color, it’s a place simultaneously of opportunity and insecurity. Community organizations like the four I’ve discussed here are critical to keeping the city and state accountable to the most vulnerable, yet they can’t do it alone and they can’t do it without resources. A lot of social justice organizing is still very siloed in this city - how do we bring it to the forefront for all New Yorkers? How do we engage more of the city with socially engaged art? And the age-old question - how do we get more people to participate and fight for collective benefits in a city that is ever evolving, with new, and often wealthier, people moving here daily?

In a city brimming with arts and culture, more must be done to resource local social justice organizations - organizations that have the skills, values, people power and trusted track record of serving their communities. Organizations and the artists they work with must be resourced further to create more socially engaged work, and public art that gets New Yorkers in conversation with each other, and through inspiration, potentially leading them to action.

The groups present at the gathering beautifully illustrated a practice of engaging with artists beyond a protest poster, banner or mobilization flier. Crystal Clarity, an artist present at the learning exchange, demonstrates a combination of using art as storytelling to create sites of meaning and illustrate histories of resistance. Crystal is a local New York artist, illustrator, muralist, printmaker, and visual strategist who works closely with social justice organizations, as well as leads on her own projects, through her Medicine Walls studio in Bushwick. She has trained and mentored hundreds of young people on the history and tradition of community murals, teaching youth techniques to use art as a tool in activism, organizing, and mobilizing. Her murals can be seen in dozens of neighborhoods across New York City where she uses public space to promote social transformations and help people visualize worlds free of exploitation.

Supporting more artists like Crystal Clarity to use New York public space as sites to envision care and justice would greatly benefit communities in New York. Intentional collaborations like the work named during the learning exchange have the potential to get more New York residents—old and new—in conversation about key issues from police violence to community care, climate justice and environmental racism to housing and food justice. New York City should be supporting this kind of work as a means to get communities invested in each other, their neighborhoods, and city. This is the type of creative movement building that can offer a pathway for New Yorkers to get involved politically and it can help the city understand what New Yorkers want and need to feel protected, prosperous, heard, and able to live well - it doesn’t have to be a side project that just non-profit organizations do, but integral to how to create a better and more just city in the midst of the climate crisis.

In 2014, the People’s Climate March brought me into climate organizing because I was able to connect the arts and culture of the march to a sense of meaning and what’s at stake for my communities if we don’t address the climate crisis in an equitable way.

Fundamentally, I’m left thinking about the huge possibilities for reimagining New York City in a way that works for all. In 2014, the People’s Climate March brought me into climate organizing because I was able to connect the arts and culture of the march to a sense of meaning and what’s at stake for my communities if we don’t address the climate crisis in an equitable way. As a huge art buff in general, I see a lot of potential for the arts to connect the dots for people who aren’t really sure how to contribute to social justice movements, but there’s still a lot of work to do. There’s great potential to elevate the art and culture-making of social justice organizations, but it requires resourcing this work to bring more people into the fold. I truly see the opportunity to create the world we want to see in New York City - one where everyone has access to housing, has access to fresh food and green spaces, is protected from climate impacts, from pollution, from police violence, racism, and more. Arts and culture can help envision that.

The Arts, Culture and Climate Justice gathering was part of Reimagining New York City, a citywide series of visioning sessions and exchanges to incorporate the wisdom, imagination, and creative practices of community cultural organizations, artists, and neighborhood residents in decision making and transformative change.