Two decades after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, four young organizers are turning their early memories into action, as reported by Teen Vogue.
Chasity Hunter, Chanté Davis, Jerome Foster II, and Alex Epstein are fighting for climate justice and environmental protections. Different experiences brought each to activism, yet the 2005 storm and its devastating, unequal impacts link their journeys.
Hunter was six years old when rising floodwaters in New Orleans, Louisiana, pushed her family to the roof of their public housing building, where a helicopter rescued them. After three years in emergency housing and trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, she returned home and later became involved with Sunrise Movement.
"I always wonder what my life would have been like if Hurricane Katrina didn't happen. Would I even have the accent that I have right now?" Hunter posed to Teen Vogue, thinking about how the storm changed everything, including her intonation after receiving speech therapy while living in Baton Rouge, away from her first home, its dialect and inflections.
Davis relocated to Houston, Texas, after the storm, then faced Hurricane Harvey as a teenager. The 2019 student climate walkouts inspired her to organize, including preparations for a 400-mile trek from New Orleans to Houston, demanding climate solutions.
Foster lived in Washington, D.C. during Katrina, but the storm filled his textbooks and classroom lessons. Learning about the hurricane's unequal impacts on marginalized communities and the power structures that fueled them led Foster to join the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, launched under the previous administration in 2021.
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Epstein traveled with his school from New York at the age of 15 to assist with recovery efforts nine months after Katrina hit. He saw short concrete barriers insufficiently defending Black and low-income communities, while wealthy and largely white districts had parkland built into their levee systems.
The four organizers tackle overlapping racial, economic, and environmental injustices. They educate young people, mobilize residents, and advocate for policies that protect at-risk communities from weather disasters and the interconnected problem of pollution.
Hunter told Teen Vogue she targets oil and gas corporations, the pollution from which damages ecosystems and human health while also driving the rising global temperatures that intensify hurricanes. Davis, another Sunrise member, has promoted green job infrastructure and climate programs at the national level — now she's also working on ocean conservation. Foster ensures youth perspectives reach federal policymakers. And through Root Catalyst, Epstein helps kids connect with outdoor spaces while training future environmental advocates.
Their organizing brings concrete benefits to neighborhoods and natural spaces. Stronger levees, renewable energy, and corporate responsibility can help mitigate extreme weather events and reduce harm to the communities that have been made the most vulnerable and to communities everywhere.
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Youth-led climate organizing can secure better conditions for future generations and motivate broader participation across age cohorts now, in part by demonstrating that environmental health and human welfare go hand in hand.
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