Today Catch Checktheweather.net Co-founders, Ellen Choy and Kari Fulton repping for Climate Justice at the USSF

10-12pm Kari Fulton is partnering with the Energy Action Coalition and Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative for a workshop on engaging youth with Climate Policy. This workshop will be held at Woodward Academy room 1437 Woodward is right off of Lafayette and 1-75

Then from 3:30- 5:30- Ellen Choy will be partnering with Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice to present Youth and Climate Justice. This workshop will feature a panel discussion featuring amazing Youth Climate Justice Leaders from the Bay Area! This is going down at the Woodward Academy room 1472!

Then Check out our partners for Justice at the Ecological Justice PMA! From 1-5 in Cobo Hall Room D2-08!

Jump with us for Climate Justice!

For More information visit USSF2010.org

This weekend, youth from around New York City and the country will gather together for the first ever New York City Youth Climate Justice Summit. The event will be held at Urban Assembly High School For Green Careers 145 West 84th Street on  April 16-17, 2010.

At the summit attendees will be able to partake in art presentations, free concerts from great NYC based artist such as Rebel Diaz and Climbing Poetree,  skills trainings and workshops on a wide range of  urban climate change issues including transportation, food, green jobs, immigration and gentrification.

This two day summit is hosted by Brooklyn based United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park (UPROSE) with support from a number of leading  social justice and environmental justice organizations. Founded in 1966 UPROSE is Brooklyn’s oldest latino-community organization. They utilize an intergenerational approach to organizing that helps community members think about their own lived in environment (what is the environmental impact of the concrete we walk on really?).  Check out this video profile from Brooklyn Independent Television on UPROSE’s hybrid bus environmental justice tours through the Sunset Park Neighborhood of Brooklyn.

UPROSE’s work has gained the attention of major environmental and political leaders including EPA administer Lisa P. Jackson. Jackson will give a video address during the summit commending the youth and offering a call to action for the future of our planet.

This is definitely the dopest event in NYC this weekend and ITS FREE!. Hurry and register The first 100 folk to register online get a free T-shirt!

For more information and to register for this FREE event visit http://uproseyouthsummit.blogspot.com/

Check out the new Green Launchpad program at City College of SF.

For more info visit the CCSF Green Launch Pad on Facebook

via grindforthegreen.com

In case you missed this season’s issue of Race, Poverty & the Environment, the amazing folks at Grind for the Green were featured in a piece about youth of color who are using hip hop to spread environmental awareness in Bay Area hoods. Check it out below.

And in the same issue, ChecktheWeather.net’s co-founder Ellen Choy co-authors an article on Richmond, CA’s Chevron refinery and climate justice organizing! Get the whole issue online here.

Youth in Action: Greening Hip Hop

The Greening of Hip-Hop: Urban Youth Address Climate Change and Sustainability

By Eric Arnold

Twenty-year-old aspiring rapper Tre Pound was born in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, a predominantly low-income community of color with the dubious distinction of housing the two most toxic Superfund sites in the United States, as well as power and sewage treatment plants. Asthma, cancer, and diabetes rates in that area are all disproportionately higher than in other parts of the Bay Area. “I kinda knew where I was living wasn’t environmentally safe,” says Pound, but the public school he attended provided little information about industrial pollution or climate change.

Pound says he frequently incorporates socially-aware themes into his music, but he had never made an environmentally-aware rap song until he signed up to compete in Grind for the Green’s (G4G) Eco-Rap battle. He ended up winning the competition, earning a $1000 prize and studio time, by outpacing several other contestants with his eco-friendly flow during G4G’s second annual free concert at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

Pound is just one voice in the growing number of youth voices engaged in community organizing for social change. Millions of young people around the world participate in social activism. According to Wiretap Magazine, there are more than 600 youth-led community organizations currently creating green jobs, removing toxic waste, combating corporate pollution, and fighting against violence in their communities.

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“Green is NOT white!”

So then why does it feel like only the rich countries like the U.S, Australia, Canada, and the European Union are dominating this Climate Conference and shutting out over 100 countries from the Global South!? This feeling is common in both the adult delegation as well as the youth. The adult delegation of these 100 developing countries has been threatening on several occasions to walk out of the Bella Center because of the lack of being heard and the US decision to stall negotiations. There has also been lack of communication from the US youth delegation towards other youth delegations of color.

I for one feel that if the US youth delegation and any other delegation that comes from a rich country for that matter, don’t show solidarity with other delegations then there shouldn’t be a delegation at all. We have made delegations to get together, and to unite with each other for a better future that will affect all of us. We did NOT join delegations to support only our own countries, and not attempt to make people-to-people ties with one another.

Coming from the US, this is just embarrassing. We, as a whole, adults and youth, are not representing very well, and it has been observed. We are all making decisions that are not improving our status, and many people are depending on us to start doing something. I for one am going to do what I can.

Over the next several days I will be in contact with other youth delegations such as the African Delegation, and the Indigenous People youth delegation, and others from all over the world. I will also get the stories from other adult delegations that will emphasize on the US and communications and how they think things will go in Copenhagen. I will be recording some of these interviews and writing their statements down. I will then compose a letter to Obama and send him the footage to show how many people depend on him and the US to do start doing something about climate change.

Lupita Troncoso is a junior at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, and is a 2nd year member of ESLI’s Youth Advisory Board. www.eslisf.org/youthblog.

Dear UN:

We are losing faith in you quickly. Please advise.

With love,
Future Leaders.

As Copenhagen boils with anxiety about today’s mass climate justice action at the Bella Center, all I can do is lower my head at the United Nations in complete disappointment.

Shutting out thousands of representatives of civil society from entering the UN conference this week, without showing a drop of compassion, has put me teetering on the edge of renunciation. We came to the UN conference to represent ourselves, as young leaders from the US and youth of color who believe that our presence here matters, and that the story we share can benefit the international community. What we faced Monday night and Tuesday morning, standing in the incredible line of 2nd week registrants waiting to get their badges – waiting a total of 7 hours in freezing temperatures, was offensive. And, from what we found out, we were lucky that it was only 7 hours – people we interviewed had stood for 9 hours on Day 1, only to be turned away on Day 2’s attempt after another 3-4 hours. A pregnant women, a high-profile expert consult to the Mozambique delegation, waited both days only to be forced to leave because of fear of her and her baby’s health. And not once did we receive clear updates on our potential to register as we stood in line. Not once did they show any compassion to the thousands of dollars and false hopes these thousands of people had spent to make it merely 20-30 feet from the Bella Center, only to be told that the UN could not accommodate numbers anywhere near to what was expected. Many got on early flights home.

I write this post as an indignant member of the next generation of climate justice leaders, who had nevertheless held onto her faith in an entity who has practically failed to address climate change for the past 15 years of the UNFCCC’s operations. The democracy here in Copenhagen is quickly crumbling before me, before the eyes of the two ESLI youth delegates that came with me and before the rest of the international community. Not to mention, police raids and preemptive arrests targeting young people has turned Copenhagen into a place of fear. Access to UN climate negotiations was already assumed to be limited to civil society – but now we know that we are blatantly not welcome.

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Almost 100 African youth and representatives from intergovernmental organizations stormed the halls of the Bella Center where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is being held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The youth chanted “1 degree now, 2 degrees suicide”. This was reportedly in response to one of the lead negotiators of the Group of 77 least developed nations (G77) Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan walking into a meeting of non-governmental organizations from Africa crying. Di-Aping stated that the current state of the international negotiations would mean suicide for Africans. Checktheweather co-founder Kari Fulton reported that the African representatives and youth in the meeting walked out and began chanting “1 degree now, 2 degrees suicide”. This is major because many of the developing and developed nations including the United States have stated that 2 degrees of increase in global warming was an acceptable increase. Currently global warming has caused the temperature of the earth to rise 0.6 degrees celsius since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Check out some exclusive clips clips from the action and an interview with one of the youth leaders at COP15.

This past week on December 2, 2009 The White Office invited over 100 young leaders from around the country for a clean energy forum. Youth were able to speak and have their questions answered from everyone from Energy Secretary Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis.  Check out the Video from the event. If you look closely you can see Checktheweather co-founder Kari Fulton sitting in the front row!

For more information and videos click here

If having issues clicking on this link then copy and paste the link below into your web browser:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/youth-clean-energy-economy-forum-part-i