Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexia Leclercq.
Hi Alexia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up, I was always aware of environmental issues from being yelled at for playing in the acid rains to the hurricanes at my grandparent’s house. Yet, at school, environmental issues were glossed over at school and always framed as a future disaster that would mostly impact polar bears. While I care about the cute polar bears as much as the next person, we need to be talking about how communities of color and low-income communities are currently dying due to exposure to toxic chemicals and pollution. I was privileged to leave Texas and attend New York University where I was able to learn about systemic racism, colonialism, capitalism and bridge my lived experience with radical political theory. I then had the honor to intern and PODER, an Indigenous led grassroots environmental justice organization in East Austin, where I now work full-time fighting environmental racism. I’ve worked on a variety of issues, legislation, and campaigns including fighting the Tank Farms, addressing pollution due to aggregate mining, advocating for access to clean water, preserving the Colorado River, fighting land use policy and zoning that enforces race-based discrimination, conducting ethnographic research on climate health, to organizing mutual aid, youth programming, and shaping national legislation alongside members of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance. Additionally, in 2019 I created Start: Empowerment alongside my friend, Kier Blake. Start: Empowerment is a NYC-based social-environmental justice education non-profit and we work with youth, organizers, teachers, and community members to implement justice-centered education and programming. We’ve reached over 3,000 students, funding several student-led gardens, and are currently building a summer school with Sustainable Brooklyn!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Running a small BIPOC led non-profit has been really challenging, from established white-led org not taking us seriously to the lack of funding and having ideas and curriculum stolen. We also had to re-imagine education and ways to support teachers during the covid-19 pandemic. Lastly, working in the environmental justice space, whether its direct action and policy work with PODER or education work with Start: Empowerment is always a challenge, it is intentional that toxic industries are placed in communities of color, and that diverse voices are excluded from decision making.
We’ve been impressed with Start: Empowerment, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In 2019, Kier and I attended the Wallerstein Exposition in where we met with 100+ environmental education nonprofits and organizations. Shockingly none of them had any education and programming around environmental justice. Education orgs were not creating education and programming that centered justice, social-political perspectives, and those that are most impacted by the climate crisis and environmental issues. Start: Empowerment came into existence to fill that gap.
Start: Empowerment is a BIPOC-led social and environmental justice education non-profit working with youth, educators, activists, and community members to implement justice-focused education and programming in schools and community spaces. Our mission is to use education as a tool to achieve social-environmental justice and liberation for all.
Our work is different because we center justice, we collaborate with grassroots environmental justice organizers to create our content, and we bridge education and action by mobilizing youth to take action and tackle local issues.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
These are some of the books help guide my organizing & work!
We do This Till We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon
Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez
Dumping in the Dixie by Robert Bullard
False Solutions by Hoodwinked in the Hothouse
How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr
Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Pricing:
- Please donate to Start: Empowerment, https://www.
start-empowerment.org/ - We also sell curriculum to institutions, schools, and individuals (sliding scale), ~$1500
Contact Info:
- Email: info.startempowerment@
gmail.com - Website: https://www.start-
empowerment.org/ - Instagram: www.instagram.com/
start.empowerment - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/start.empowerment - Youtube: https://www.youtube.
com/channel/ UCAIkfzQ9JHlCv92bKpmrxgQ
Image Credits
The No Tank Farm photo is by James Ryan Alvarado The picture of me and my co-founder Kier is by Devin Deane
