“The climate crisis is a crisis of disconnection,” Dr. Manuel Pastor argues.
The solution, he suggests, is connection – community organizing and movement building. A Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Dr. Pastor has spent his career studying and participating in social movements. He directs USC’s Equity Research Institute, an organization that takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying the impact of environmental, economic, and social conditions on low-income urban communities. The Institute uses data, research, and storytelling to advance climate equity and support social movements driving systemic change.
Dr. Pastor recently sat down with Dr. Lande Ajose, managing director of Waverley Street Foundation, to share his perspective on how the people most impacted by climate change are best equipped to lead the way forward.
Lande Ajose: Thank you for taking the time today to be with us. Climate change gets framed as polar bears, ice caps, reducing your carbon footprint, existential threat. It rarely gets framed as, my child has asthma. So I am curious to know, do communities still experience climate change as this wedge issue or are people approaching it directly as ‘this is the cause of so many of the issues that our communities are challenged by’?
Manuel Pastor: Communities that experience it as asthma are actually the most concerned. I know when people think, what is an environmentalist? What they think of is a white guy in bicycle shorts throwing granola over his shoulders as he moves along through Berkeley. But if you want to know who really is an environmentalist, it's an immigrant mother whose child experiences asthma. It's a Black family that understands that there's environmental insults in their neighborhood, and hazards are way too close. The road to climate action runs straight through climate equity and lifting that up to animate the constituencies that care. I don't think these communities are confused about what's in their interest. It's about how do we form coalitions and make more mainstream environmentalists realize that climate equity is not something to be sprinkled on. It's something that must be baked into your policy and your organizing if you really want to affect change.
Ajose: You've mentioned this concept of interdependence and this concept of disconnection, and I'm curious how we can think about community organizing and movement building as solutions to disconnection and as reinforcing interdependence.
Pastor: The climate crisis is a crisis of disconnection from Mother Earth and from future generations who will inherit this Earth and who we need to steward this Earth. When I think about almost any problem, I come back to community organizing. When I think about shifting the balance of power so we can change the way we deliver power, that is to move to a clean energy economy. That shifting of the balance of power to change the system and how we deliver power – that takes community organizing and it takes movement building to make those communities more powerful in the policy discussion. How do we teach people that climate's not about polar bears, but it's about the refinery that's polluting right next door? That it's about green jobs and opportunities for you and your communities to actually benefit? That our fates are intertwined and interconnected? The practice of community organizing, the strategies of movement building, help us do that.
Ajose: So what advice do you have for philanthropies today as they think about solving the climate crisis – addressing the real life challenges that people face in their lives every day – and also solving for the sense of disconnection?
Pastor: The biggest thing I've learned in my academic career is to listen, to get close to community organizers who have brilliant ideas and to listen hard to what they're talking about, what concerns them and what strategies they're thinking about. When I think about the audience that I have in mind, I always think about my dad who had a sixth grade education, but was the smartest guy I ever met. I ask myself the question, ‘am I explaining things in a way that he would understand’? I know he's smart enough, he just might not have all the fancy words. And how is it that philanthropy could not get so caught up in the latest rhetoric and instead figure out how to explain things plainly?
The other advice I'd give to philanthropy is that it is important to think. I often tell people that one adage ought to be, ‘don't just do something – sit there.’ We shouldn't just frantically respond – but you should act after a while! You think about what you can bring. You develop hunches and then you make some bets. How do we make those bets on people, on institutions, on community organizations, without perfect information and without analysis paralysis. To say, this is the moment to be clear. This is the moment to have courage. This is the moment to make a bet.
Ajose: I will tell you that your words give me hope. I think as a foundation which is trying to work quickly, work at the speed of the challenge of the problems that we face, and yet work responsibly, that is a dynamic tension that we're always navigating. We don't have time for big words. Let's get to the business and also recognize that if there's any place we're going to spend extra time, it's going to be in communities listening to people, because that's where you develop the trust.
Pastor: I think one thing, weirdly enough, that gives me hope is a quote. Now I know that to say this is my favorite quote, I should be quoting Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. or Cesar Chavez, but I'm going to quote Lord John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist who, toward the end of his career, was giving a speech. And at the end of the speech, a young man came up to him and said, with this smugness that young academics can have, ‘Lord Keynes, there's something you said in your speech that contradicts something that you wrote 20 years ago.’ And Lord Keynes looked at the young man and said, ‘Well, when I'm wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?’ I think the understanding that sometimes we're going to move along because we need to, and that we'll make a mistake and that we can come back, change our mind, and move in a different direction to understand what's going to be most effective at this time. To not let the fear of making a mistake lead to a hesitancy against the action that we need, so that our communities can resist this onslaught and preserve the hope of a better, more sustainable and more equitable tomorrow.
Ajose: Well, I can only say that you inspire me. We don't do the work. Other people do the work. We are merely midwives – hopefully midwives – to change.
Pastor: Around here, we try to remind ourselves that we don't make change. We work with communities that make change. We provide data and analysis, and they provide the power that actually creates social change. So knowing what part of the ecosystem philanthropy sits in, data and research sits in, and how we serve these heroes at the front lines, helps keep it real.
Ajose: Let's keep it real. Thank you.
Learn more about our grantee partner, USC’s Equity Research Institute.