Principles and Values | Youth United for Climate Crisis Action

OUR MISSION, VISION, AND THEORY OF CHANGE

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Youth United for Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA) is part of an intersectional and intergenerational movement that is emerging from a long legacy of environmental justice organizing across New Mexico, the United States, and the globe – we know that we stand on the shoulders of giants in the movement for environmental, social, and economic justice.

Our struggles are intertwined with those of the elders and movement leaders who came before us. Thus, YUCCA's formation and ongoing work is informed by the history and principles of the U.S. environmental justice movement, which guide our path on a daily basis as we engage in this work. These values and frameworks were born out of long legacies of leadership and organizing by BIPOC communities–they include the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, the St Paul Principles, and Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. You can learn more about these principles here.

OUR MISSION

YUCCA is building power with young people and community members across so-called New Mexico to organize for climate and environmental justice.

We’re committed to empowering the next generation of youth leaders to engage and stand in solidarity with communities across so-called New Mexico who are fighting the polluters, profiteers and people in power that have – and are – currently extracting from and harming us.

Inspired by Indigenous movements across the globe, we are committed to advancing meaningful environmental change through disruptive direct action, policy analysis, community care, and political education. By centering intergenerational organizing and community-self-determination, we will put an end to the extractive systems harming our communities and the Earth.

OUR VISION

We’re fighting for a future where our communities – not corporations, billionaires, or those in positions of structural power and privilege – control the decisions shaping our lives.

We envision a future beyond the products of the systems of oppression that have extracted and profited from the colonization of so-called New Mexico and the Global South for generations.

A future where extraction is no longer the definition of global economic success and where land, water, and air are treated as sacred responsibilities that guide the path towards collective liberation and environmental sovereignty.

OUR THEORY OF CHANGE

The climate crisis is not an isolated issue, but the result of interconnected systems of harm designed to concentrate wealth and power at our expense.

To create the just and livable future we know is possible, we must both fight to dismantle the systems causing us harm and build the community-centered alternatives that will replace them.

At YUCCA, we believe transformational change happens when our communities have a shared understanding of the systems shaping our conditions, are organized at scale, and are willing to take collective action to challenge them, while building the living alternatives that prove the future we’re fighting for is possible – a fight that will continue until we win collective liberation for all of us.