British Columbia

I'm Global Exchange's Independence from Oil campaign coordinator for Cascadia (aka the Pacific Northwest). I work on Global Exchange's oil education efforts, while pressuring campuses to curb their oil addictions and reduce their contributions to climate change by transforming their transportation infrastructure through conservation and greener vehicles.

I've been heavily active in environmental and social justice causes for the past decade. I spent 6 months doing relief work in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, where I got a view of the damage climate change can do, and how poor people and people of color are affected by so-called “natural” disasters. There oil spills in residential neighborhoods were set off by hurricane storm surges made unnaturally large by oil industry canals through once pristine wetlands. The storm itself was fueled by global warming and hit a community with the highest rates of cancer in the country caused, you guessed it, by petrochemical industry pollution. Help was slow in coming in part because money and people were being used elsewhere, fighting a war for oil in Iraq. I believe that only by merging environmental and social justice movements into a common resistance movement can society be turned away from its catastrophic course. I give trainings in action planning, meeting facilitation, media outreach, and campaign organizing.