Welcome to Uptown Chats!

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaren Burke, and. [00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm your other co host, Lonnie Portis. And we both work at we act for Environmental justice, an organization based in northern Manhattan with a mission to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. That is a lot. So, Jaron, what do we actually do? [00:00:45] Speaker A: It's a great question. Well, we act has been around for about 35 years, and in that time, organized and worked on a lot of different campaigns to really to protect the health of people living in northern Manhattan. And so to do that, we do advocacy around policy issues. We do research on the different environmental health impacts of our community. We organize people, we bring them together to unite on the front to address these issues. And last but not least, we do education and inform people about the different things that are impacting them in their community. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Again, we do a lot. So why do we need a podcast now? [00:01:22] Speaker A: Well, first and foremost, we need a podcast because all the other podcasts out there suck. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, though, there are a lot of podcasts out there that talk about justice, that talk about the environment. But unfortunately, not a lot of those podcasts talk about environmental justice, or they don't talk about the experience. For everyday people. What does it look like? What does environmental justice look like? For someone who's not an expert, who's not a researcher, for someone who's dealing with it on an everyday basis, you probably won't hear a lot of that in a podcast. So part of our goal is to bring that voice to you. [00:01:58] Speaker B: Exactly. We hear the technical stuff from academics all the time. We want a space for people who are on the ground doing the work, to talk to us like everyday people. Also give us a chance for listeners can learn about environmental justice and what they can do to move the work forward from people with lived experiences and people who are knowledgeable about environmental justice, including some of our own staff members. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Also, we're here to have a great time. It's going to be a fun time. We're here to learn some things, to laugh. And of course, I want to mention that we do not represent all the people in the EJ space, not at all in environmental justice. We are two cisgender men and are just here to make sure that we uplift the voices of people who are living in environmental justice. Communities who are working in environmental justice, communities who are just existing and trying to go about their day. So, with all that said, what are we going to talk about on this podcast? What are we here to do? Are we just going to talk about our feelings? Maybe a little bit. But actually, we're going to be here every month giving you some interesting topics in the space of environmental justice. You can treat it as a bit of like a tasting menu, a sampler of all the different topics out there in environmental justice. And we're going to provide some opportunities for guests to come on the show and talk about what that looks like in their community, how they're dealing with it on a daily basis. And we've got a bunch of different topics lined up for you. Lonnie's going to tell us about our first couple of topics that we have coming up. [00:03:24] Speaker B: I definitely love a good tasting menu. So this is. Gotta love it. If you love a tasting menu, this is the podcast for you. And we're gonna talk about our feelings. We will. We're gonna get there. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Because you can't just know one thing. You gotta have a little bit of know. It's like family style at the restaurant. [00:03:38] Speaker B: That's why we here. That's why we work at Wex. We can do a little bit of everything. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Yes, this is the family style restaurant of podcasts. [00:03:45] Speaker B: That's a good way to put it. That's exactly how it is. And a couple of things that we have coming up alongside talking about our feelings. We're going to be talking about waste and sanitation. How does that even impact environmental health, environmental justice? Like, how is that even kind of coming to the conversation? A lot of people don't realize that that is a EJ issue that we work on here at weact. And then we're also going to be talking about toxic chemicals and personal care and beauty products. There's some really bad stuff in a lot of the things that we use. And we really got to make sure everyone's educated and know what those things are and what do we do and what's going on, and how do we get rid of those? And also, we're going to be talking with women of color in EJ. I think it's really important to uplift women of color who have been doing this work for much longer than either of us sitting here. And I think we should have those talk and those conversations with those people. [00:04:35] Speaker A: We're going to have lots of different topics to cover. We're really excited to bring those in a timely fashion. Around different times of the year that we think that will be most relevant and with that in mind, raises a question of why are we here? Why are we here doing this podcast for you? Why are we motivated to be in this space of environmental justice? And just to give you a sense of how we got here, we'll give you a little bit of background about ourselves. I'll start. So I actually grew up not in New York City, I grew up in Seattle. And mostly, at least, I spent most of my adult years there. And during that time, I went to college. I studied public health at the University of Washington and learned about all the different exposures that people deal with, what public health is, which many of us learned about a lot over the last couple of years. But after I graduated, I moved to Virginia to start my life on the east coast. And I worked for a really small nonprofit during that time and ended up having a really long drive to work, about an hour each way on some really small roads, and gave me a lot of time to listen to podcasts. It really started my podcast journey, listening to podcasts all the time, because when you have a long drive, you listen to music for a little bit, but after a while you're like, I got to have something else and podcast naturally where it returns to you. Audiobooks didn't do it for me. So here we are on the podcast space. But the podcast I was listening to, at least a couple of them, were talking about climate change, climate justice, and it really spoke to me. It really hit home, and I realized that that's what I wanted to do. That's what I really cared about. I wanted to be in that space, work on climate policy. And so I went back to school. I applied and got into Columbia University in New York City and studied environmental health and policy. There looked a lot of air pollution specifically, which we'll definitely talk about later in the podcast. And after I graduated from there, I worked with some environmental nonprofits, but none of them were really focusing on the justice piece, and I feel like that was really missing. And long story short, I ended up here now at react for environmental justice, working on those exact things, working on environmental justice, on climate justice. And I'm having a great time. A really, really great time. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Lonnie to introduce himself. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Well, I'm glad you're having a great time, because we both work at weact and we both share an office, so I hope you're having a good time. [00:06:55] Speaker A: I would tell you if I wasn't. [00:06:56] Speaker B: We also both live in Harlem, not too far from each other. [00:06:59] Speaker A: We're neighbors. [00:07:00] Speaker B: So we're going to be spending a lot of time together because now we have a podcast, and this is going to be a fun ride for everyone involved. So you guys are basically in this car with us as we go along and do this. But I am also not a native, but I've been in New York City for over 15 years, so I'm definitely a New Yorker at this point. Did my undergrad here in New York City and grad school here in New York City. We can skip over the undergrad stuff that's a little messy as far as my career is concerned, so we can skip that and we can just talk about the fact that I did some various internships in the policy world, doing some policy work, advocacy work, lobbying, before I got to grad school, which was the new school, and I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go in the policy world. Did I want to do health? Did I want to go into education? Did I want to do climate? Do I want to do environment? There's so many options. Again, back to that tasting menu buffet that we all love. But you got to settle on something when you actually go to school. And so I went to new school, studied urban policy analysis and management, got exposed to a lot of different types of policy. And part of my time there did some consulting work with a council member about renewable energy and sustainability and food policy as well, and mass scale farming for the urban area. And that kind of got me really interested when I had to have interviews and conversations with people who were doing environmental justice work. That was the first time I really kind of heard that term, or what that actually meant and dug into it a little bit deeper. And I was like, this is kind of dope. I like what this is happening, what's going on in this space? How do I get here? The weak opportunity came up, and now I'm here. Never thought I'd actually be in the climate or EJ space, but here I am, also loving it. And bottom bum, bum, bum. [00:08:48] Speaker A: He's loving it. We're having a great time. We're just sprinkling some ads here and there. They're not actually giving us any money, but we're products of capitalism, so we're just going to sprinkle it in as needed. But as you can tell, we're both really passionate about environmental justice. We're here to really give you the best sense of what's out there and what's happening in our community and other communities that are being impacted by environmental justice issues. So we're looking forward to having you as our very special listeners and to tuning into the show every month. We'll give you different episodes, and we'll try to keep them fun and exciting. And Bonie, how can the folks find us if they want to check out. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Weact, you can check out weact on Facebook at weactfordJ. That's weactforej. And also on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube at weactford. That's W-E-A-C-T number four, EJ. And check out our [email protected], for more information about environmental justice. [00:09:47] Speaker A: So thank you for listening. We are so excited to bring you some great episodes this year. Tune in very shortly for some updates on that. And until next time, again, I'm your. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Co host, Jaren, and I your other co host, Lonnie. [00:10:01] Speaker A: And bye.