(Solar) Power to the People, With Elizabeth Yeampierre
On A People’s Climate: The path to climate justice is local.
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(Solar) Power to the People with Elizabeth Yeampierre | A People’s Climate
In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Elizabeth Yeampierre, veteran organizer and executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, to explore how frontline communities are taking climate action into their own hands.
In a capitalist world that prioritizes bigger, faster, and more, Elizabeth’s work takes a different path. Small, hyper-local solutions like a community-owned solar grid have huge impacts. Residents of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, where UPROSE focuses its work, are seeing lower energy costs, good green jobs, and local ownership. All while creating a blueprint for other communities to follow.
Elizabeth also takes us beyond the buzzwords of “green economy" and “clean energy” to show what a Just Transition really looks like. Mainstream environmental efforts often focus on the end goal: shifting to renewable energy. But they fail to ask “at what cost and to whom?” Elizabeth’s work ensures community members aren’t left behind.
This episode is a masterclass in how grassroots power can transition us to a just future.
Key Topics
- A Just Transition: Shifting to renewable energy while protecting workers and communities historically harmed by pollution
- The community-led renewable energy Grid Project
- Resisting extractive economies and reclaiming industrial spaces without displacement or gentrification.
- The importance of building an intergenerational movement
- How Trump-era policies have dismantled climate protections and undermined renewable energy incentives
- How disaster capitalism exploits crises and how community-led responses offer real solutions
Resources
A new solar project in Brooklyn could offer a model for climate justice
US Spending On Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year
The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein)
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In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Elizabeth Yeampierre, veteran organizer and executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, to explore how frontline communities are taking climate action into their own hands.
In a capitalist world that prioritizes bigger, faster, and more, Elizabeth’s work takes a different path. Small, hyper-local solutions like a community-owned solar grid have huge impacts. Residents of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, where UPROSE focuses its work, are seeing lower energy costs, good green jobs, and local ownership. All while creating a blueprint for other communities to follow.
Elizabeth also takes us beyond the buzzwords of “green economy” and “clean energy” to show what a Just Transition really looks like. Mainstream environmental efforts often focus on the end goal: shifting to renewable energy. But they fail to ask “at what cost and to whom?” Elizabeth’s work ensures that community members aren’t left behind.
This episode is a masterclass in how grassroots power can transition us to a just future.
Key Topics
- A Just Transition: Shifting to renewable energy while protecting workers and communities historically harmed by pollution
- The community-led renewable energy Grid Project
- Resisting extractive economies and reclaiming industrial spaces without displacement or gentrification.
- The importance of building an intergenerational movement
- How Trump-era policies have dismantled climate protections and undermined renewable energy incentives
- How disaster capitalism exploits crises and how community-led responses offer real solutions
Resources
A new solar project in Brooklyn could offer a model for climate justice
US Spending On Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year
The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein)
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The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Reframing Resistance (Live from NYC Climate Week) | A People’s Climate
For this special season finale, recorded live during NYC Climate Week, host Shilpi Chhotray convenes a powerful storytelling event with three frontline media makers: Chantel Comardelle, Alexandra Norris, and B. Preston Lyles.
This is more than a conversation about films or campaigns — it’s an intimate window into the lived realities of climate and environmental injustice. From Indigenous land loss in Louisiana, to the ongoing fight against the petrochemical buildout in Cancer Alley, to exposing the violence of toxic prisons, this discussion centers the human stories too often sidelined in mainstream climate narratives.
Our guests speak candidly about their experiences, what sustains them in the face of systemic harm, why frontline voices must lead solutions, and how storytelling itself becomes a vital tool of resistance, survival, and collective power.
This live storytelling event was made possible in partnership with Dr. Margot Brown, Senior Vice President of Justice and Equity at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Frontline Resource Institute. Special thanks to Chess Jakobs, Counterstream Media’s Impact Producer, who produced this event.
Key Topics
- Frontline climate and environmental justice: Stories from communities directly impacted by the climate crisis and extractive industries.
- Indigenous displacement: The Isle de Jean Charles Choctaw Nation and climate-driven migration.
- Sharon Lavigne’s fight against petrochemical expansion in Cancer Alley
- Toxic prisons: The intersection of mass incarceration, environmental harm, and systemic injustice.
- How spiritual grounding and faith sustains organizing. Using film and media to reclaim narratives and highlight underrepresented stories.
- Narrative power: How media shapes perception, policy, and the climate movement’s priorities.
Resources
Isle de Jean Charles Choctaw Nation
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