Aditi Mayer, a climate justice activist joins Cheddar News to discuss her partnership with DoSomething.org and how a new PSA is working to shine a light on environmental racism. 

Cheddar Politics

Climate Justice Advocate Aditi Mayer on Address Environmental Injustice

Welcome back to Cheddar politics. It's now time for Cheddar changemakers where we spotlight young activists, making a difference in the world and speaking up on issues regarding climate education and voting. Climate justice activists. Aditi Mayer and do something dot org are teaming up to bring attention to the Environmental Protection Agency's lack of urgency to address critical issues of climate injustice and environmental racism. They're launching a new PS A called CS Hear us Climate justice to get young people involved and share their vision for a greener future. Joining us Now to discuss this further is Aditi Mayer. Climate Justice activists. Welcome so much. Tell us a bit more about this partnership and how you got involved. Hi Megan, thank you so much for having me. Well, I have been a do something members since I was in seventh grade. I think like many folks of my generation, this was a time where I was getting more active on the internet and learning about a host of different issues and do something really allowed me to have the tools to learn about different issues, but have actionable steps and media and I think it's so important for this generation that is saturated with so many issues every day to have the steps to feel that they have steps for involvement and can also center their own personal stories, which is so incredibly important. Yeah, when you're young, it can feel a little bit overwhelming right to how I want to do so much, but how do I get involved? And it's nice to have those steps when watching the video. I was struck by a couple of things and we'll talk about a lot of them. But I was particularly struck by your dedication to environmental justice, which is bigger than just sort of environmental rights. It's more about making sure that different communities, particularly communities of color, receive the same benefits of fighting against climate change and are not disproportionately hurt. And I want to ask you why that is so important to you personally. Why why did you get so involved in helping communities of color to make sure that there is justice in this climate crisis movement? Yeah, well we know that environmental racism is nothing new to the U. S. And its communities of color that are more likely to be situated near power plants, oil refineries and toxic waste sites. And for me personally, when I grew up and looked at the environmental movement, something that I noticed is that the environmental movement did not do a good job about centering people and issues of justice. And when you think about marginalized communities or folks that grew up in urban centers, you may not grow up, you know, having access to green spaces, but you do have an acute awareness of the injustices in their communities, whether that's AARP a lucian which feeds issues of the health, which is all tied to socioeconomic status. So it's incredibly important for me that our environmental movement is focusing on these issues through an intersectional lens and that's why I think this partnership was so important for me to kind of participate in, because it gives language to a lot of these issues that communities are facing. And I think what's incredibly special is that this campaign is spearheading a youth climate map where folks can document their stories of climate and justice. So not only are we kind of addressing, you know, the failures of folks and power at the top, but we're also building power from the bottom up. Part of this particular campaign is about hearing stories from people who are affected by climate justice issues. And I want to ask you as someone who has been really involved in these stories, what is one that really really sticks out to you that you want to share? Yeah, well there are a host of stories that folks can read because of the youth map of climate injustice that do something has created. And I think what really struck me is the way that youth have been aware of the ways that air pollution and other forms of environmental injustice is concretely tied to their socioeconomic status. And so often, you know, there is this myth that youth are not involved in what's going on in their communities, but I think you'd have a sense of vitality and a sense to reimagine the systems that aren't working currently, and so there are a host of you know, stories of this manner from folks in Los Angeles to florida So to see the way that this conversation has become, you know across the U. S. Has been incredibly inspiring to say why do you think that this is such an important issue to young people in particular? And this really does cross across, you know political ideology. Young people in this country in particular are very concerned about a warming climate, about a changing climate. Why does it stick out so much to to young activists like you? Yeah, I think young activists feel burdened with the sense of responsibility because of the inaction of the generations before them. You know, the climate crisis is not a distant abstraction, it is a reality that we are currently living. And so when you grow up seeing the impacts of climate change to our natural environment, to the way that it intersects with, you know, the global pandemic, there is a very strong sense of urgency that the youth really experience because again this is our current reality. So I think it's really important that campaigns like this especially target the youth because you know, we have to transcend this language of youth, being the leaders of tomorrow, but really looking at the ways that we are the leaders of today. So my last question for you is going to be about fashion, because this is actually part of the way you got involved and it's been a big part of your activism is the idea that fashion needs to be sustainable as part of a larger global conversation about climate change. Talk to me a little bit about how you got involved in that and what you advocate for in the fashion space. Yeah, so I got involved in the sustainable fashion movement about eight years ago when I learned about a factory collapse in Bangladesh and this kind of was the catalyst for me to look at the fashion industry, from a variety of different angles from the politics of labor to the environmental impact of fashion. And I also saw the way that fashion was a very important tool for us to connect visually, you know, and I think this is just one of the many examples that we need more touchpoints for folks to get involved in the climate movement at face value. You might not think that fashion has a lot of ties with climate change, but there are a lot of ties between how communities are extracted from to where fashion is produced and the impacts of factory run ups and waterways, to the ways that, you know, synthetic materials are becoming the number one material we see in the fashion industry, which is directly tied to the fossil fuel industry. So for me, my work and fashion is all about reimagining how we view labor, how we can reimagine a more ethical system to really looking critically about the environmental impact of fashion and how it can be a more regenerative practice. If we look at native ecologies of textiles and fabrics that we're planting, um and also kind of looking at our consumption as a society, right? We've been fed this narrative that you constantly need to consume, but kind of taking a step back and questioning these narratives um to question what we really need. So fashion for me has been a tool to reimagine systems at large, and I think this campaign is kind of a subset of this thinking of, we know the issues that plague our society today, but how can we reimagine those and involve the youth in that process? It's fascinating how interconnected everything is A. D. T. Thank you so much for joining us. Aditi Mayer is a climate justice activist now to join in the fight with her and others for justice, visit do something.org or text climate to 38383.