Embrace your influence
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 10, 2021
Embrace your influence
There is already a powerful role you can play today as a citizen, friend, and neighbor. And that’s just the start. This workshop will dig into the power of relational organizing (read: how to get other people involved), and help you start to develop your personal journey. We’ll explore not just what we can do, but how and why we should do it.
A workshop guided by:
Madeline Dyke (Climate Changemakers)
Sophia Longsworth (OurClimateVoices)
Full transcript
Cody Simms: So in this next session, we'll learn about the power of relational organizing, which is really how you can leverage your own strength. To start your journey and bring people along with you. So I'd like to welcome back Kristin Winston from The Regenerates who was our host yesterday as well as Madeline from Climate Changemakers and Sophie from Our Climate Voices. Kristen, over to you.
Kristen Winzent: Thank you Cody. And just as Carol powerfully set up we all have a really important role that we played today, and that is the role of citizen and that role of citizen. Isn't just about your relationship with the government, but it's also about your relationship with neighbors and your community.
And so in this workshop also hinges off of the great talk from Indiana. We're going to talk about how we can actually leverage those relationships. To create change to policies, to rulemaking, to all of that. And so I have joining me today. Sophia Longsworth, who is the director of written content at Our Climate Voices, as well as Madeline Dyke, who is a co-founder at Climate Changemakers.
Sophia is a proud native of Granada, the spice islands of the west Indies. She's an environmental justice and climate change activist living in New York. She's currently an environmental science lecture with the city university of New York. She enjoys exercising, watching documentaries and spending time with her family.
The work that she does at Our Climate Voices helps to humanize the climate crisis through storytelling. So putting the voices of those most impacted at the forefront of the conversation and also helping to connect people with ways to support community based solutions. And then Madeline Dyke is a co-founder at Climate Changemakers, which is a community of volunteers that helps connect people.
Connect climate concern, people with weekly opportunities to take simple, productive political action. And so their organization helps people understand their unique spirits of influence so much like Carol was teeing up, that could be in your community as organizational leaders, and most importantly as citizens.
And Climate Change Maker community members meet every week to take action in a super simple one hour format and they work to pressure leaders for government action on the climate crisis. So in this conversation and we're first going to learn about Sophia and Madeline's personal stories, how it was that they moved from being just aware of the climate crisis to active in the conversation and how that shapes their work today.
Then we're going to talk a bit about why our stories matter, for something as big complicated and planetary life climate change. How is it that it can be so powerfully affected by something as intimate and small as our stories. And then we're going to start actually workshopping our own individual stories.
Sophia has provided a handful of prompts for us to consider, and then Madeline is going to talk us through the first steps that starting to share those stories and how that can also help move others from awareness to action. Madeline, I'd love to open and hear your story about how you became involved in this space.
Madeline Dyke: Thanks, Kristin. Hey, everyone is super excited to be here. I want to start by saying that I'm 22 years old and that means that as a gen Z or I've the climate crisis has been on my radar since grade school. I've been worried about it since I six more or less. So for me there, wasn't a moment when I realized that the climate crisis was real urgent, et cetera.
I've always known that. I think instead I'm going to share a little bit more about how I decided that was what I wanted to work on. So that moment happened in, in college, halfway through undergrad In high school and in middle school, even I was part of the campus green team.
We did a lot of composting, it was super important work. I helped, even at my college, I helped get a compostable cup pickup spot added to the library, for example. And I focused on tangible sustainability efforts knowing that was related to the climate crisis, but I hadn't yet connected.
My own agency and my own action to this like larger beast of the climate crisis, which is obviously has to do with carbon dioxide pollution and big systemic issues, like the way our economy runs and the way our government acts. So I made that connection that the climate crisis is a systems level issue that is political in nature.
I had that understanding. A couple of years ago, I was a biology major in college. So I was working at a biotech startup doing protein stuff, molecular biology, working with my hands in a lab. And I was surrounded by the most incredible and passionate colleagues who were deeply committed to changing the history of human disease.
That's that was like the mission that their company set out to do. And I felt a little bit by the end of the summer, I felt very stimulated, but also a little bit frustrated because I had recently learned about the way the patent system worked in one of my political science classes. And I had realized that the issue with changing human disease or alleviating human disease suffering is not necessarily because we don't have the medications or the solutions to like the most rare diseases it's that the political system has set up a patent system. That doesn't get people access to the medications that already exist, think about incredibly high insulin prices or prep, which is an HIV drug. Millions and millions of people can't access the medication that already exists because of the way our political incentive structure is set up. And I don't know exactly what catalyzed that transition to climate in my head, but. Suddenly, I guess I was, I guess I do. I was listening to a lot of climate podcasts and reading a lot of climate Twitter, and I was still very plugged into the climate newsfeed if you will. And so like the day that I had my realization about my biotech job, that it was a political problem. I immediately realized that the same was true for the climate crisis.
And. I realized right then and there that I needed to be doing work that felt like it mattered and what mattered. Wasn't so much engineering new solutions because that wasn't where the biggest need was. What mattered most was making existing solutions available through political changes. From there that happened maybe a semester before COVID hit. And so when COVID hit and everybody got sent home from college and I was asked whether or not I want us to take time off or go back to school. I was like, okay, great. So I've had this big life realization that I meant to work on the climate crisis, that it needs to be focused on politics and policy, because that's what I think the biggest need is.
You could go back to school or you could try to get your hands dirty and do something because it was the 2020 election. Obviously climate was really on the line with the Senate majority, and I decided to take the plunge. I didn't know what I was going to do. So I applied to a bunch of jobs at big green groups, like the Sierra club.
And I also started reaching out to alumni from my college and I connected with one who said, "Don't go work on a campaign. Don't go work for an advocacy group. I have this crazy harebrained idea. A couple of us are working on it, and I think we could really use your youthful perspective. Maybe you can run our social media."
And that's how I met Eliza and Kristin and Cody. And some of the other folks who are putting this event together Eliza was a speaker on yesterday's panel. And we together co-founded Climate Changemakers. And I think from there, I've been able, I felt that fulfillment and that like ultimate passion that I was looking for, a couple summers ago when I was doing my pipetting in my lab research it truly feels like the work matters.
And I guess I'm still young. So I haven't had that many like branch points in my career path yet, but the fulfillment that I feel working, doing, organizing, doing political organizing at Climate Changemakers makes me feel affirmed that I made the right choice.
And so just that, that gut feeling that I'm doing work, that really matters. I think I'm going to use any way to guide me for the rest of my career.
Thank you for sharing that. And Sophia kicking it over to you. Same question. If you could share a bit about your climate story.
Sophia Longsworth: Sure. Like Kristen said, I'm from Grenada. I grew up there and it's in the Caribbean, so everything you expected to be right. Like really great weather every day of the year. It's a wonderful place to grow up and to live. And we never really had any sort of extreme weather events like every now and then there would be comical depressions and lots of rain and so nothing life-changing. And then on the, what would've been the second day of my final year of high school, we were hit by a category four hurricane. And it was it was really bad. There were 37 lives lost and the damage to about 90% of the private homes on the island. About 10 months later, we were hit by another hurricane.
It was not as severe. It was a category three, but the island is still rebuilding and still trying to, regain its footing from the previous hurricane. And I realized that it was a strange thing that my parents had never experienced such severe weather in their lifetimes, but here I was at like 15 experiencing two.
And under a year, and I wondered what was causing that and why is it that we're experiencing these extreme weather events and how much more are we going to experience? So that sort of guided my direction in education. I started doing public health and environmental management. I'm looking specifically at climate change. And throughout my education, I realized that climate change comes about as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. And that mainly comes from large countries, developing nations, where there's a lot of industrial activity. Now I'm coming from the Caribbean where we don't have a lot of industry.
And our contribution to climate change is minimal. Because again, we don't have a lot of industry. And there's not a lot of greenhouse gases are being emitted everywhere, but not as many as the developed nations and we're experiencing more of the impact. We're more vulnerable than these developed nations that are contributing a lot greater.
And that just didn't feel right to me. I continued my education. I moved to New York about eight and a half years ago, and I was looking for a place where I can, do the work, volunteer, not just advocacy, but like looking at environmental justice. And I was very interested in extreme heat because when I moved here, there were hot summers, but I'm from the Caribbean.
So I'm used to the heat, but then it got hotter and hotter. And then there were like heat waves almost every year. And then this year we had like multiple heat waves. And again, that's not normal, right? So luckily I live in Washington Heights, so luckily I was able to connect with this really great non-profit organization.
That's called React for Environmental Justice, and I was able to volunteer with them to do cooling center audits, where basically we're looking at the spaces for people to go to find relief from extreme heat. And what we found is that many people in the community don't even know where the cooling centers are.
And some of the people who work at the cooling centers don't even know that these spaces have been designated as cooling centers. And then also what constitutes a heat wave, right? They say above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for three days in a row. Okay. But there are some people who are more vulnerable to heat when it's 86 degrees. So what happens to these people then? And then there is an equity issue because a lot of people in the summer they can afford to either have an AC unit or have it on constantly. Because the bowls do pile on. So I did speak at the city hearing last year, basically asking the city what are your plans for extreme heat.
We were in the pandemic and everyone was already at home and there are not many green spaces that we can go to. What are you doing for these vulnerable people who are not contributing to the climate crisis and the way that the city is, and the city has the power to do something, what are you doing to the people?
And then what are you going to do for them? So that also steered me towards our climate voices because I realized I'm living different stories, right? For us in a developing country, as a nation that does not contribute or other contributes to negligibly to the climate crisis. And then living in like a marginalized community where.
We are not looked upon as priority groups to be taken care of by the city. When we're dealing with extreme heat, there are many other issues, but extreme heat is the one that I'm most passionate about. With our climate voices, it's basically staring away from the facts and figures. All of the climate crisis because telling stories and sharing stories is more memorable.
And we hope that, it will touch someone, make people feel more connected to others who may have experienced something similar and, encouraged them to go out there and join an organization and do the work, maybe join a climate Changemakers and take the next steps to making change. So that's my story.
Kristen Winzent: So a quick question. So when you were, coming to realize your own voice and influence in this conversation, was there anything that helped you specifically or someone that helped you really realize the power of that? And I know you mentioned getting active in some volunteer orgs, where there is there like one person there who helped you realize the importance of.
Sophia Longsworth: I wouldn't say one person. I think that realizing the impacts that community groups can have once they work together, that was encouraging for me. As individuals, we all want to do something on our own. We all feel like, we can make a change, but, we can make a change, a greater change if we work together, like with a community group.
So yes, you can take those personal steps. To, live a greener life. But if you join with a community group, if you find like others whose goals are the same and they line up with yours, that your values all line up together, you can absolutely make a change.
Kristen Winzent: And then Madeline, since you, you use personal storytelling in a very different context.
And like when we think about, government policy and all of these things, emotions and personal stories, isn't necessarily something that comes to mind straight away. So I'd love to just understand, like from your work at Climate Changemakers, like what role does that storytelling happen.
Madeline Dyke: There we go. Okay. So I think that storytelling and being able to connect, being able to tell your own story and not just being able to craft a story, but being able to tell your story. And know which parts to emphasize for what audience is at the heart to being an effective advocate. Because the reason that people, the most, the reason that I often hear the most for why people don't talk about climate policy or climate change at all, with anybody let alone with their elected officials or with other people involved in the policy making process.
People are scared to do it because they feel like they're not experts. They're like, oh, but I haven't done the economic analysis. I haven't seen the figures. I haven't whatever. Or maybe I've seen it or read it. And I just don't remember. The reason that your personal story matters here is because you are the expert in your own climate concern.
You don't need to be an expert in economics, in policy, in mitigation. Like none of that is necessary for you to be an effective advocate, right? Google is at your fingertips. What you need is the confidence and the purpose-driven motivation to go do something about it. So that's why spending the time to sit down and think about why you care about climate change and, maybe you get there by thinking about when you first started caring about climate change, or maybe you get there by thinking about, what parts of the climate crisis feel most immediate to you? Or there are plenty of ways to get there and that's coming later in this session, but however you get there, like there's a motivation at the core of why you're worried while you're here at climate con.
And being able to explain that fluidly convincingly passionately honestly, is what personal storytelling for advocacy is. And you can tell that story to a bunch of different types of people. You can talk to your friends and family that's called relational organizing. And that looks like talking to people in your immediate network about an issue or a candidate or a policy or climate change generally.
And that looks like explaining to them why you care about the candidate, about the issue, about the policies. And then hopefully inspiring them to think about why they care and about why they might want to act with you. So that's one audience that you can use your personal story with another audience is your policymaker.
There's a lot of data that shows that when you reach out to your policymakers, if you just sign a petition that a bunch of other people are signing, it'll get batched together. Or if you just write a one-line message that says, please take action on climate change. That's not going to go as far with the staffers who receive your correspondence as a short and pithy, but still emotionally convincing and persuasive piece of personalized messaging that says I'm modeling, I'm 22 years old. I'm from the bay area. And since I graduated high school wildfire season has gotten so much more dangerous. My dad who loves to go cycling, who has asthma, can't get outside all fall and can't do what he loves to do because the climate crisis is making wildfires worse. That message to my policymakers in California, versus I'm worried about climate change please act.
Is much stickier for the staffer who reads it, such that it will stick with them for longer. It'll have this ripple effect, federal inspire them to think about why they care. Why are they the climate staffer in the first place? Odds are, they were interested in it for some reason. And it's easy to get caught up in the sort of day to day job of being a hill staffer.
Anyway, it makes it stickier and more persuasive with your policymakers. And then you might also be reaching out to people who are involved in the policymaking process, but aren't lawmakers themselves. So we call them key stakeholders in the world of climate advocacy. So that looks like small businesses, trade associations, faith groups neighborhood organizations, anybody who's has a stake in the policy who would either benefit or be hurt by it, or can help affect the decision making process, but who isn't a policy maker themselves. So those three different audiences are all people to whom you can direct your personal story with a different goal in mind. But obviously you need to have a sense of why you care first, before you try to go talk to any of those people.
Does that answer your question, Kristen?
Kristen Winzent: Absolutely. And we're gonna get to how you actually find those people or consider who those people are toward the end of the workshop. So let's not forget that. Before we go into starting the workshop, our own personal stories with some prompts that Sophia shared with us Sophia, I wanted to just raise one of the things that our climate voices does is you put forward this idea about ethical storytelling.
And so I wanted to just see if you could explain that a bit more to us and why we should consider ethical storytelling when we're talking about stories about climate change or when we're sharing other people's stories about climate.
Sophia Longsworth: Yeah. So as ethical storytelling, it's basically the practice of honoring ourselves and others when we're sharing narratives. So it's . Recognizing that we all have our own stories and they can be beautiful stories. It can be sad, but they're powerful representations of us, of ourselves. And because we contain multitudes, we don't just have one single story.
I just told you, I have two types of stories because I lived in two different places. And then I also experienced it as a minority person living in a marginalized community. And I experienced it as a person who lived in a developing country, so different multitudes. And so we have our different experiences, our own narratives and complexities, which makes us all storytellers.
Whether we realize it or not. We're sharing these stories with our families or friends with strangers here today. And there are different pieces of the puzzle that fit differently. And as the storytellers, we have a right to decide how, and when we stare or share our stories and whether we want to share every part of it, whether we're comfortable sharing every single parts of it, it's basically taking ownership of it and recognizing that the storyteller has the power in sharing their narrative and they do it in the way that they feel most comfortable. And we are not trying to stare it in any one direction. If we have an idea of the type of story we're looking for, we're not going to change the course of the storyteller's story to suit what we're looking for.
Stick to the authenticity of the storytellers experience and give them the power in sharing their stories.
Kristen Winzent: I love that. So this is all been very insightful. Just to quickly recap solutions and ideas are available. Access to them is a problem. And it's something that we actually can solve right now.
Our personal stories are matter. They matter where the expert in those where the expert in why we're concerned about climate change. We are all storytellers. It's a power that we all have. It's just human, super power, really. But it really is up to each of us to decide when and where. We want to share those stories and what the course of those stories are.
And so we're gonna switch gears a little bit now to develop some of our own prompts for us to consider, as we share our personal stories. I'm going to pull up a list so you can follow along and we're gonna. Have Sophia guide us through this next part, give some context to the prompts. And then if there are any other suggestions, you usually give people as they're developing their own stories.
Feel free to fill that in. We're going to take a few minutes, read through the prompts as you start to write your own. If you feel compelled to share or have questions, drop them into the chat, we'll be monitoring that and bringing that forward to talk a bit more. So I'm going to switch over to sharing screen.
All right. Can you guys see these, the bumps?
Do you to give us a bit of context about the prompts and how you suggest people use this?
Sophia Longsworth: Sure. Do you want to go through them one at a time or should I
Kristen Winzent: just however you typically.
Sophia Longsworth: Okay. So the first question is when did you first become aware of climate change? So this can be either you knowing what climate change was in that moment, or in retrospect, realizing that you knew what it was, but not the term climate change.
So when did you first become aware of climate change? I'll just go through all of them. And what has changed in the climate since you were born? So you can. Of whether you've looked at the data, the actual scientific data, or just, stories of what your parents have told you, they've experienced.
Other they've been able to bike ride every fall was in meddling. I cried in the fall for decades and in the past couple of years it's not a possibility or it's something that's uncomfortable. Does climate change disproportionately impact a community that you are a part of? So for me, living in Northern Manhattan, I actually used to live in the south Bronx and the air quality in the south Bronx, it's pretty much the worst in the five borrows. So if you live in a community that is disproportionately impacted, whether it's because of the ethnicity of the people have been living there or. The socioeconomic status of the people living there. Is there a disproportionate impact felt by the community members where you live or where you work?
Any kind of community that you're a part of. And if you were to tell someone how climate change is personal to you, what would you say? And for that one, don't think too much about it. Just. The first thing that comes to your head and the like, no, like deep thinking, what is the first thing that comes to your head?
If someone says, how is climate change personal to you? What would you say? And then do you feel comfortable sharing your climate story? Why or why not? That's pretty much straightforward.
Kristen Winzent: We're going to pause for a few minutes just to give people a chance to reflect on these and There are pages in your workbook where you can fill this out.
You can fill this out on your own note app. If you want to share anything in the chat, please go for it. If you have any questions as we go along the, of other prompts that you think are helpful, please feel free to share those. But you definitely don't have to feel pressured to share your story if you're not ready yet.
Pause until 10 35.
All right. If we want to start wrapping up on writing the prompts and if anyone wants to share anything in the chat, we can go ahead and do that. If you have any questions or observations that came up, as you were writing, I'm seeing someone sharing that this is hard, right? It's heartbreaking to think of the effect.
And our children, when it comes to the climate crisis, that's real. We all feel that for sure. Other, whether you are a parent or not a parent civil is sharing. Anytime we get some medium to extreme weather, I jokingly say climate change is real, but it's not really a joke. I remember this, especially when I was living in New York and we got blanketed by a really severe blizzard, or when I think about how much snow year it is now for my parents who live outside of Boston.
Or when I can't leave the house during wildfire season in north.
Madeline Dyke: Thank you for sharing your influence.
Kristen Winzent: Okay. So boxing on that, ash acting, if it's odd to say, since Al gore, I live in the desert and the seasons have not been predictable. It's November, there's still days that reach 80 degrees. I couldn't answer it. Bullet number three, if I wanted to bulletin before climate change, isn't about saving the planet.
The planet will be here, orbiting the sun long after us. It'll restart itself. It's about saving us humans and ash. It's very comfortable with sharing. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing screen and okay. So Madeline, we have our stories and we're working on our stories and once we're comfortable sharing our stories, what do we do?
Madeline Dyke: Okay. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I want to provide a little more context for this. At climate Changemakers, when we take on an issue to advocate for maybe that's ending fossil fuel subsidies. So getting the government to stop propping up the fossil fuel industry with cash transfers, tax benefits basically.
That's a fairly long key issue, right? We're talking about taxes and like government transfers to the fossil fuel industry. We break all of that down by advocating for it over the course of an entire month. Each week, we do a different action that sort of builds up in intensity, but they all start with.
Week one, which is connecting, we call it writing, personalized talking points, but that's really writing down and thinking about your personal story, particularly as it relates to fossil fuel subsidies, not just climate change more broadly. In week one, we learn a little bit about the issue so that you're not going in totally cold.
We explain what fossil fuel subsidies are. A little bit more detailed. We provide several different lenses. So maybe you're concerned about How quickly this will get us to net zero decarbonisation maybe you're concerned about jobs. Maybe you're concerned about human health. We provide several different angles.
We get educated. Then we take quiet time, just like you've done, except we do it for a little bit longer. We take quiet time to write down why we care in our own words. Maybe some of that is reusing or re articulating some of the material from the educational section of the hour. But a lot of it is infusing your personal story with this policy issue.
And then at the end of the hour, we start to talk to our family and friends. Now depending on how quickly some people move, they can do that in the hour. And then for other folks, they do it as homework, as a takeaway. And the way that we talk about having those relationships, those personal conversations with your friends and family, the way we talk about doing that relational organizing is we talk about building a connection as being the primary goal of the conversation.
The goal is to get invited back for a second conversation it's to build trust and a rapport around that issue about say Kristin and I haven't really talked about climate before. I'm not sure how she's gonna take it. I approach her and I say, I'm really concerned about climate change because, and I talk about my dad and how much he loves to ride his bike and how he can et cetera.
I share I'm part of my personal story. And then I say, I've recently become aware of fossil fuel subsidies and how crazy and messed up they are that like my tax dollars go to prop up the fossil fuel industry that makes me incense because I make all these sustainable choices in my daily life. And yet my tax dollars are being spent in a way that I don't agree with.
I'm conveying my passion and my enthusiasm, because that's what I'm an expert in. That's my personal story. And Kristen is okay, great. Thank you for sharing. I wasn't even aware of this. I wasn't thinking about this very much. I'll send you an article next time I come across there. Can you send me an article that we can talk about next time, that the idea is to open a door to future interaction and future engagement by using your personal passion rather than trying to educate Kristin or saying, you need to do this, or you need to think this, or this is the right way to view things. Leading with empathy, like a radically open heart first is the goal of these relational organizing conversations. Pause there for just a second and say that's step one.
After you do that, then you can graduate to talking to your policy makers and stakeholders. But I want to give folks a second to just write down on pen and paper, like one or two people who they might want to have a climate conversation with using the talking points that you've cultivated today.
So I'm just gonna count down from 15 to give you all a few seconds.
Kristen Winzent: I love that emphasis. You just brought up about the relationship part of all of this. Like it's the start of a conversation, I think often we can get caught when we think that we're trying to persuade or convince people all in one conversation rather than just inviting them to talk to us more.
Madeline Dyke: Totally. So hopefully you have a couple people written down on a piece of paper who you'd be open or interested in starting a climate conversation with after the session is over. We want to leave you with 10 tangible things to do at the end of the session. So that's one tangible thing. Go have that climate conversation with those people who you wrote down, maybe it's over coffee or dinner or whatever.
And then once you've done that, you can reach out to your policy makers. We do this on an hour of action at Climate Changemakers. So I would a hundred percent recommend if you're nervous to do it for the first time. If you have trouble carving out the time on your own, or if you just want to do it with a bunch of other happy smiling, like minded people on a big zoom call, definitely join us for an hour of action.
We almost always have a policymaker breakout room going And if you don't want to do that I'm going to put them and just a second, I'm gonna put the number to the congressional switchboard in the zoom chat, which is a number where you get connected to Capitol hill. And they're like, hi, this is the Capitol hill switchboard operator. How can I help you? And you say, I'd like to be connected to, and then insert the name of your representative. And then they'll literally patch you through and it'll probably go to voicemail and you can read out your talking point that you wrote your personal narrative and you can say, and for that reason, I want you to take bold climate action in Congress.
And they'll know that you're talking about the big legislation that's pending right now, but you can also.
Kristen Winzent: I can say as the person who's been on the other side of that phone, answering the calls on Capitol hill and the offices it's awesome. When people actually do have something to talk to you about.
Cause oftentimes there's these robo calls that go out and people answer the phone. They're like, wait, why are you calling me on the other side as the staff where you're like why are you pulling me? That's awkward. And then you get a lot of people too that are just clearly reciting like that one line about, I care about climate change.
And then they hang up and, but the real magic that happens is when you actually can have a conversation with people and people in the offices really do want to hear from their constituents. It's why, that's why we're all there. We're there to serve. We're there to make life better for the communities that we represent. Just to share.
Madeline Dyke: 100%. So your policymaker is prime audience. Number two, prime audience. Number three is stakeholders. Like I was talking about earlier. These are people who are faith groups or business leaders in your community, et cetera. These are people who have a stake in policy change, but who aren't the lawmakers that decision makers themselves We do this on an hour of action.
It's a little bit more advanced. So I would definitely recommend coming to see how it's coming to an hour of action to see how we do it. But it's really as simple as just talking to leader in your faith group, if go to church or synagogue or however you practice or like your favorite local coffee shops, you think Hey, I'm super climate conscious, super fired up.
What are you guys doing? Can I support you? Do you want any help? How can we together get this business that I love and that you run to be more climate forward? Cool.
Kristen Winzent: Thank you for that. So yeah, just because you had shared that your experience of actually getting up and talking to city leaders about cooling stations in your community can you share with us what that was like?
Sophia Longsworth: It was during the pandemic. So it was via zoom. And I don't think I was nervous because I think once you care about something, It translates. And you're able to speak from your heart about it. Granted, I did have a prepared statement, but it's something that I cared about.
So I felt confident in my passion and I believed in the message that I was sharing. So no, not nervous. I don't because it was via zoom, you can't really read their reactions and how they take the things that you say. But I was proud to speak on behalf of my community, especially because not everyone is going to take the same sort of action.
Some people like to be in the background, some people like to do the research and, some people like to be on the forefront. I'm like, either or, and regardless of where I'm from. So I'm not a native New Yorker, but I now live here. And I have stake in my community and it's important to me that my community is healthy.
So I'm going to do what I can do to make that happen. And wherever I live next, I'm going to do the same thing because we're sharing the space that we live in. And what happens in one area? Doesn't just stay in that one area. It definitely impacts other places. So emissions and no, the air quality from the wildfires in the west coast, we saw that it started to impact.
Other parts of the United States, right? So we can to just be isolated in our thinking and interaction. And maybe you may have a representative who is progressive on climate actions. So then maybe you start working on another representative, right? You want to help out anybody? We can, we don't just want it to be where we live and our immediate environment.
We want to help out everywhere and other communities that may not have the voice to do that.
Kristen Winzent: love it. We're at time. Thank you both so much for sharing your stories for doing the work that you do. And for being here with us today.
