by Claire Martini, UPLIFT and Youth Engagement Coordinator, AmeriCorps
“Welcome to a conference call hosted by the Grand Canyon Trust,” the familiar robo-voice chimed. Slouching over my laptop screen, phone pressed between ear and shoulder, my fingers tapped out our attendance record. I muttered, “Let’s see…we’ve got Marcel, Maia, Montana…Kelsey…Frankie, Brooke, Rhea…and Leiloni is at work. All right, people, this is it! Our second-to-last call before Uplift!”
For nine months, this team of young organizers has been burning the midnight oil to plan the Uplift Climate Conference, an event put on for youth, by youth, to address climate justice on the Colorado Plateau. After meeting in person for a retreat at Kane Ranch, the Uplift organizers have kept in touch with the dream of growing Uplift’s reach from its inaugural event in Flagstaff last year.
Finally, all our phone calls are coming to fruition. This weekend, about 100 20-somethings will gather in the San Juan National Forest near Durango for trainings in creative advocacy, storytelling, film, art, and more to address climate change and advocate for climate justice. At the core of Uplift is the simple hope for a more connected community.
For a geologist turned community organizer like me, the challenge of sparking a youth-led movement is not convincing millenials why they should get involved. My generation was born with the “why.” When we entered the world in the early 1990s, global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) had already spiked. In the 25 years I’ve been breathing, the combustion engine has propelled our world to the brink (and some say over the edge) of ecological collapse.
Situate the graphs on the ground, and the “why” is easy. These redrock mesas, aspen-clad peaks, and scrubby pinon-juniper forests are uniquely threatened, and home to cultures and creatures alike. The lived experience of our changed climate will be—and already is—more visceral for some. This is the nature of injustice. We are organizing to protect a future we can inhabit.
Our real challenge is how to protect the plateau. How can we guide young people into deeper community engagement? How can Uplift impact decision-makers? How can we orchestrate a community gathering for the Colorado Plateau—organizing across an area the size of Finland? These are the kind of questions that can occupy a whole conference call for the Uplift organizers.
Earlier this spring, we held seven community meetings across the region, talking with young people interested in climate change and conservation. Since then, Uplift organizers and volunteers have contacted colleges and universities, conservation organizations and environmental consulting firms. We’ve put out the invitation on social media, on email, on the radio, on the phone, in person….and it worked! We’re expecting 100 young leaders to gather next week in Durango, Colorado for the Uplift Climate Conference.
The gathering is structured like a personal narrative: the first day focuses on “story of self”, the second on “story of us”, the last on the “story of now”. Accomplished advocates, activists and youthful community leaders are essentially donating their time to Uplift to make it all possible on a shoestring budget (meet the altruists who answered the call).
Uplift is the culmination of nine months of organizing efforts, and the beginning, we hope, of many more.
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