Step Outside of the Box

Voting in your local, state, and federal elections is a powerful way to act for climate justice. By voting for candidates who support the phase-out of fossil fuels, adaptation measures, and justice efforts, you highlight the importance of these issues to your representatives. Let your representatives know why you selected them, too! The flaws in our electoral process have become more evident than ever—and there are many important ways to get involved to create a more robust and equitable voting system. Our votes remain essential for climate progress.

HOW TO DO IT

1. Embrace the Arthur Ashe quote, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

1. Consider if there is a particular climate justice related issue (or needed change in policy) that impacts your community.

2. How can you combine your interests, values, skills, and spheres of influence to offer a solution? How can you improve upon the status quo?

3. How can you join or collaborate with like-minded others to have a stronger impact? Who can you join to put more people-power behind an existing fight for justice?

2. Keep an open mind and draw bold connections. Climate change impacts everything, and in order to address it, we need to make changes everywhere. It may sound scary, but it means that everyone can have a role to play! Anyone can be a leader and make change happen.

3. Check out the back of this sheet for examples of how other people of all ages have had an impact.

NEED IDEAS?

Here’s what others have done!

• Created a climate justice phone banking club at their high school.

• Organized a climate and social justice film series with their school’s cinema club.

• Invited their friends to a birthday party at the Climate Museum.

• Incorporated climate topics into their class curriculum and discussed climate activism with their students in class.

• Joined their community garden to learn with the land and shared their successes with their neighbors.

• Attended programs led by local Indigenous leaders to learn about Traditional Ecological Knowledge and to decolonize their thinking.

• Called and encouraged their bank to divest from fossil fuels.

• Started a course about climate justice at their university.

• Formed a student organization to pressure their university to divest from fossil fuels.

• Donated to a climate justice organization that aligns with their values and interests.

• Started a climate change podcast to share stories and discuss community-based solutions.

• Included more stories about climate change in their writing and journalism work.

• Worked to get more trees planted in their neighborhood and in other low-income areas in their borough.

• Made and exhibited art about climate justice.

• Got involved with a grassroots climate justice organization, meeting with and lobbying their elected officials for a climate-safe future.

• Founded a nonprofit to teach other medical professionals about the health harms of climate change and to advocate for equitable solutions in their communities.

• Founded an organization to empower fellow advertisers to reject working on greenwashing campaigns for fossil fuel companies.

• Founded an organization to empower fellow law students and lawyers to reject defending fossil fuel clients.