INTERVIEW
A CLOSER LOOK AT CLIMATE JUSTICE
VOICE IN CONVERSATION WITH ACTIVIST SAVI GELLATLY-LADD ABOUT LOOKING BEYOND SHORT-TERM, TEMPORARY FIX SOLUTIONS AND TACKLING CLIMATE CRISIS THROUGH ITS ROOT CAUSES
VOICE: Hi Savi. So glad to have this opportunity to speak to you. I’m always so inspired by young people who are organizing for social and climate justice. Wondering if you can start by telling me a bit about yourself and how you first began organizing for climate justice.
SAVI GELLATLY-LADD: I have so much gratitude and respect towards the young leaders around the world who are doing this kind of work. I’d like to start off by saying that I am a young, queer person of colour who comes from a working-class background. I think it’s important to give this information because my identities and social location in the world have shaped my perspectives of social issues and climate justice. Before I started with climate organizing, I had been involved in
various high school student movements such as Not Just Rumours, the Students Say No movement and #SexEdSavesLives (16 years old). I also became involved in the $15 and Fairness campaign to mobilize high school students to fight for a $15 minimum wage and decent labour laws. Through this, I realized how the struggles that each of these movements were fighting were interconnected. The systems of oppression that were creating low-wages, precarious work, high rates of poverty and systemic racist policing targeting Black community members were also defunding essential school programs and services. I first got involved in climate justice in 2019 near the end of
Grade 11 (16/17 years old) when I saw immense and powerful movements of youth fighting for their futures. Many young people were realizing the harsh reality that our futures are in a threatened, precarious position. It is really hard to grow up with the impending stress of environmental disaster that you took no part in creat- ing. Learning about how long we had left to address the climate crisis instilled a burning panic within me. However, the issues that struck me as most significant were not just about my future being impacted. This is where the “justice” aspect of climate action rose
to significance for me. The main thing I was angry and scared about was who would be facing these catastrophic disasters and life-threatening environmental impacts the most? Who was already being impacted? How could I fight for climate justice while also fighting for all the other issues I cared about? I thought a lot about these questions and had no idea how to put
them into action. I jumped around between a couple environmental groups near me, trying to get a sense of the groups and see where I fit in. Unfortunately, at the end of the day I did not feel as though I belonged in those spaces. The environmental activists I met were predominantly white with class privilege. I felt that these movements were not using intersectional perspectives to address the climate crisis. It was less about social justice and more about banning single- use plastics and meeting carbon emission goals. I am not saying that this aspect of environmentalism is not important, but it was leaving out crucial issues like Indigenous sovereignty, racial justice, issues of class, “ability,” gender and so on. I felt as though so many people were not given a seat at the table, even though they are facing the harshest impacts. I wanted to be part of a group that approached the climate crisis through a justice-centred lens. That is when I saw Climate Justice Toronto’s (CJTO) social media
shared on a mutual friend’s page. CJTO is a grassroots, youth-led group that is organizing in the Greater Toronto Area to tackle the root causes of the climate crisis, which are capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy.
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