Growing up, Elizabeth Yeampierre lived in what is known as an “EJ” (environmental justice) community — a federal designation signifying that residents of the area face heightened exposure to environmental hazards and an increased risk of related health problems. Several years ago, Yeampierre almost died of a bilateral pulmonary embolism, a condition she attributes to environmental hazards that afflict marginalized communities.

“Climate justice is the collective response of the frontline of the climate crises,” says Yeampierre, executive director of the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park (UPROSE), a grassroots group that represents Latinos and other immigrants in working-class areas of Brooklyn. “We know transition is inevitable, but justice is not, and so we operate at the intersection of racial and social rights, environmental and economic justice. We focus on the root causes of climate change and call for a transformation to a just, sustainable, community-led economy.”

When Superstorm Sandy hit in 2020, Yeampierre led UPROSE’s efforts to launch the Sunset Park Climate Justice Center. “The center stresses adaptation and mitigation to ensure we strengthen social cohesion in the face of recurrent, violent, disruptive weather events that will also release harmful chemicals stored in our industrial sector,” says Yeampierre, who helped double the amount of open space in Sunset Park. “We know that if we do not center social cohesion that families will be uprooted and displaced and lives will be lost.”

Yeampierre’s leadership in climate justice transcends the boundaries of Brooklyn. At the People’s Climate March Mobilization in 2014, she played a major role in persuading young people of color to participate and successfully proposed the adoption of the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, which have since become the road map to building just relationships in the climate movement. She also served as the first Latina chair of the US EPA National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and as a member of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences Advisory Council. In the Obama administration, she was selected as the opening speaker at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice, and in 2022, she was hailed as one of the 100 most influential people in climate policy by Apolitical.

Yeampierre’s activist sensibilities started at age 6, when her favorite uncle was walking her home from school. Neighborhood kids pelted her uncle with rocks, targeting him because he was gay, Black, mentally ill as a result of abuse, and unable to speak English. “I remember it vividly,” Yeampierre says. “I put my body in front of him, like I was going to protect him, and I told myself, ‘I will never let this happen to people when I grow up.’”