When Hurricane Sandy hit Vic Barrett’s home, he was 12. It was the first time the weather had genuinely scared him — all his running water stopped working, and his mother also seemed scared as she bought jugs of water from a grocery store with nearly emptied-out shelves.
It wasn’t just his community. Watching the news, he remembers seeing the New York City subway flooding and damage across New York state and New Jersey. He says it felt almost apocalyptic.
“I was just a young, scared person wondering what was happening,” he says.
Only later did he connect the experience to the issues of climate change and climate injustice. After moving to Westchester from New York’s Hudson Valley, he started going to high school in Manhattan. Barrett, who is Black, first-generation Honduran-American, and transgender, says the area he grew up in was very white and conservative, and he often felt out of place. He wanted to learn more about social justice issues that affected people like him. His freshman year, he joined Global Kids, an after-school program which helps students build activism campaigns around human rights-related issues. Barrett was initially confused when his group decided to focus on climate change.
“What does climate change have to do with human rights?” he remembers thinking. But before long, he started to see their point. Barrett learned that during Hurricane Sandy, a huge number of the people most impacted were poor, Black, and Latino. He also learned that hurricanes like Sandy often devastate low-income housing communities, which tend to be built in areas that flood easily. And as climate change takes affect, extreme storms like hurricanes are likely to become more intense. Even having experienced it firsthand, Barrett suddenly started to view Hurricane Sandy much differently.
He also learned that around the world, the communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change also often deal with racism and poverty. In many cases, those most impacted by climate change have done very little to contribute to it. Barrett realized that his own grandparents, who are part of the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna people in Honduras, would be particularly impacted by climate change and come from a community that already faces issues of poverty, food insecurity, and racism. Garifuna communities are also located mainly in coastal areas, like the Honduran departments of Cortés and Gracias a Dios, which are particularly vulnerable to flooding and extreme weather. These perspectives informed Barrett’s intersectional approach to environmental activism, which focuses on the way different aspects of a person’s identity, like race, class, and gender, impact the way issues like climate change will affect them. Having so many intersecting aspects of his identity, including being Black, Latino, first-generation American, transgender, and having Indigenous ancestry, it’s a perspective Barrett says is informed by empathy and personal experience.
After that, Barrett started to get more involved with climate change activism. He became a fellow and then a senior fellow with the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), a program which educates students about climate change and activism. Barrett would often make speeches to local elected officials on the organization’s behalf, and in 2015, he was invited to attend the Paris Climate Conference with ACE.
But despite these opportunities, Barrett often felt like the only thing that he and other young activists got for their efforts were “pats on the head” from elected officials. Barrett didn’t want validation — he wanted to make a real difference. So ACE connected Barrett to Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit law firm in Oregon which represents youth in legal cases asserting their right to a stable and safe environment. In 2015, Barrett became one of 21 plaintiffs, represented by Our Children’s Trust, suing the U.S government for environmental degradation related to climate change in the Juliana v. United States lawsuit. Through enabling industries, like the fossil fuel industry, that contribute to climate change, the plaintiffs argue that the U.S. has infringed on their basic rights to life, liberty, and property in a future of increasing environmental degradation.
Right now, the lawsuit is in a kind of limbo. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted in January to dismiss the case, but in March, the plaintiffs requested something called en banc review, in which a case is reviewed by all the judges in the court rather than a panel of selected judges. Judges have not yet decided if they will re-hear the case. Over the five years since the case began, Barrett says he’s acted as a spokesperson on its behalf, and has developed a close relationship with the other plaintiffs. “It is really like a family,” Barrett says. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs.”
Now, Barrett works as a democracy organizer for ACE in Madison, Wisconsin, where he’s taking time off from attending college at the University of Wisconsin. He says working with the organization makes him feel like he’s come full-circle. The job focuses on getting young people, particularly young people of color, to vote. Barrett says he’s also excited, but not surprised, to see more young people of color in climate activism. In many ways, feeling like the odd one out is what drew him to the movement.
“When you have this lived experience of feeling unheard or unlistened to, or ignored, you kind of want to prevent that for other people,” Barrett says. “I think the climate movement is a really good home for that.”
We asked Barrett about what he would tell other young activists based on his own experiences.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1) What’s one piece of advice you’d give young people looking to get involved in activism?
“I would say one piece of advice I’d have is, don’t overthink it. I think especially with the way youth activism has been in the last few years, you could feel like to be an activist you have to set up the perfect social media page and gain a bunch of followers and do all of this stuff. But I think that, really don’t overthink it. Think about what you enjoy. Think about what you want to protect. Think about how you could use what you like to do to protect what you love. And you know, do it.”
2) Why are young people integral voices in climate activism?
“I think young people’s voices are integral to climate activism because we’re going to be the ones who have to deal with it. I have tattooed on my arm, ‘370 parts per million.’ That was the amount of carbon that was in the atmosphere the year that I was born. And most scientists agreethat 350 parts per million is what you need for a stable environment… We’re aware of what we’re inheriting. And we have solutions in mind and innovation in mind. And if we just had the opportunity and the chance to make that heard, that’s what’s going to make the difference. So I think that’s why young people are so important to the conversation around climate change, because we have to own this world after.”
3) What are some tools or resources that budding young activists can use to inform and propel their activism?
“I think something I’ve been trying to get back more into is reading. I would definitely recommend maybe reading “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, it is an awesome book. I think imagining the future is a really important part of being a climate activist, and being able to design the future that you want and get imaginative with it. And just in general, doing a lot of educational work, doing work to unpack your own biases. That’s what a lot of nonprofits are focusing on right now. It doesn’t have to be super active, like you need to go out and do something — a lot of internal work is important too, to be effective in the movement, and to cause the least amount of harm in the movement.
And also, like I said, don’t overthink it. You can go on websites like the Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, Earth Guardians, Zero Hour — all of those organizations have local chapters. And you can find the chapter and just join it. Look at all of them, see which one has the types of people that reflect you best or the values that reflect you best. And then you can go to a meeting, see what’s up. I feel like that’s always a great first step.”
4) What would you tell someone who feels disillusioned with politics or the current state of the world? Why is it still important to get involved?
“I would say a lot of activists are disillusioned with politics. A lot of the ones that I know are, at least. And when you join the movement, it’s not all about what political thing are we going to try to change next, like, there was a huge pull there, do we have to push next? It’s also about the people right next to you that you’re fighting with. And I think that to me, the most fulfilling part of this work hasn’t been trying to fight against the man or anything like that, because every activist knows that it’s not all wins all the time. But the most thrilling part of the work is the people that you get to meet and the hope you get to have re-instilled in you that other people like you exist, and there is a world that can be a better place. And there’s people around you that want to build it, too.”