YUCCA (Youth United for Climate Crisis Action)
We are the Steering Committee for YUCCA (Youth United for Climate Crisis Action) which is coordinated by Earth Care -- a local nonprofit that trains young activists in social and environmental justice organizing and supports intergenerational campaigns to advance climate justice, transformative education, sustainability, democracy, and civil rights. Earth Care's work is focused on growing grassroots leadership and civic infrastructure from the ground up.
The Steering Committee is comprised of young leaders trained in organizing who represent the diverse communities of northern New Mexico including Indigenous, Latinx, Chicanx, and low-income communities.
We launched a Climate Emergency Campaign this summer, led the 9/20 Climate Strike and 7 Days of Disruption to Follow, and have continued organizing a strategic campaign to advance our demands. Our campaign is rooted in the needs of our communities in NM but we coordinate with national and international movement efforts including Sunrise and the FridaysfortheFuture Climate Strike movement. We coordinate the northern NM Sunrise Hub.
We are from Santa Fe, Española, San Felipe Pueblo, Kiwa Pueblo, Picuris Pueblo, Dińe Nation and Las Vegas, NM. We meet weekly as a Steering Committee but host open campaign planning meetings, trainings, and actions every month. Sign up on our mailing list to join in our movement-building and campaign activities.
We began our work this year with the School Climate Strike in March and the Green New Deal Townhall in Santa Fe.
This work follows a long lineage of climate organizing by fellow youth leaders of Earth Care.
Our fellow youth leaders at Earth Care helped draft the original Sustainable Santa Fe Plan in 2009 and organized community forums to update the plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 in 2018.
For 3 years, our fellow youth leaders at Earth Care were the lead organizers for the international day of action on climate change here in Santa Fe. They coordinated the giant 350 photo project, organized marches down to the roundhouse, and organized a community-wide skillshare.
Our youth organized in solidarity with Standing Rock, helping to lead two rallies and Bank of America and Wells Fargo protests here in Santa Fe with hundreds of local supporters.
For the last several years, we've been working closely with New Energy Economy, one of Earth Care's closest partners, to take action against further coal investments in the state of New Mexico. Our members testified in front of the Environmental Improvement Board in 2010 - helping to win the short-lived victory to cap emissions in NM (overturned by Governor Martinez's administration). More recently, our members helped put pressure on the City Council to weigh in on the replacement power case and ratecase and the NM Public Regulation Commission.
In addition to raising awareness and building public pressure for action on climate change, our members have made solution building a priority.
We've worked on the community solar initiative which we hope will finally result in the passage of Community Solar legislation in 2020 (it's one of our demands).
And we won a grant and organized a bike-a-thon in 2014 to raise the funds necessary to solarize the City building we call home - Zona Del Sol.
