Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in the rural South amidst a tight-knit family, from a line of determined women with no choice but to make a bad situation better. In this inspiring conversation, host Chloe Aftel talks with Catherine about the good, the bad, and the ugly of a life spent advocating for community justice and the work still left to do. From working on the raw sewage issue in her rural community to now working in national policy and governmental strategy, Catherine Coleman Flowers has seen it all — and is still nowhere near done.

Highlights:

• Catherine’s guide to building lasting community and turning rage into productivity and strategy;
• What she learned from Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King;
• Growing up with a mother organizing with the Alabama Civil Liberties Union after being sterilized against her will;
• The conversations she now has with the younger generation and how everyone can make a difference, regardless of location, education, or occupation.

Catherine Coleman Flowers is a highly accomplished activist working in the intersections of environmental, climate, and public health justice, with much of her work focused on improving water and sanitation infrastructure in Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and poor rural communities in the United States. She is the Vice Chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the 2020 MacArthur Fellow for Environmental Health Advocacy, the Founding director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and a member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Climate Change, amongst many other accomplishments. Her memoir, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, can be found here. You can stay up to date with Catherine’s work on Instagram @CatherineCFlowers, and X @CathFlowers.

Chloe Aftel (she/they) has spent her career exploring narratives of identity and belonging. She’s an established name in modern photography with work featured in The New York Times, Mother Jones, Playboy, Dazed & Confused, Vogue Germany, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue & more. Chloe has photographed victims of sexual violence, reported on Covid’s impact on the trans community, and gained access as the first reporter in the Covid wards of the West Coast’s hardest hit hospitals. She has covered underground abortion providers, the impact of gender pronouns on daily life, and clergy abuse. Her first book, “Outside and In Between,” is an award-winning anthology covering gender non-conforming people across America. Aftel is working on her next feature book on male bisexuality.

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