Today we have the second in our four-part series of 2024 conversations with community organizers and activists who are doing the work of environmental and climate justice … sometimes in acutely critical conditions, as we heard in our last talk with Kostia Krynytski of the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction. At other times, it’s about building a global mass movement, as we’ll hear in this episode.

We go back to late October. We’re in Charlottesville, Virginia, less than a dozen days before the US elections, and POCACITO, along with the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington DC, hosts a town hall meeting at local community radio station WTJU with two guests from Germany.

It’s Friday afternoon, and we’ve spent the last day and a half with Luisa Neubauer and Helena Marschall, two prominent voices from the global climate justice movement. One highlight of their visit took place the night before, when Helena screened her short documentary “Another World Is Possible,” alongside some environmental films created by youth from around the Charlottesville area.

When we sat down with Luisa and Helena at the radio station, we were joined by local climate activists of all ages.

The idea was to facilitate a conversation between people working at different scales when it comes to climate justice. In Charlottesville, the aspirations are specific and local. The work Luisa and Helena do, going back to their earliest Fridays for Future marches, is attuned to systems and the need for systemic change.

And either way, it’s about getting out there and making it happen. As Helena is fond of saying, hope comes from doing things.

Brendan moderates a conversation with Luisa Neubauer and Helena Marschall, recorded at WTJU’s studios in Charlottesville, in front of a live audience, on October 25, 2024.

Our first conversation is with Kostiantyn Krynytskyi from the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction.

In the years preceding Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kostia worked with the country’s eastern coal regions for a just transition of the energy system.

Since the invasion, his work has shifted, with a focus on the resiliency potential of distributed renewable energy.

Max talked with Kostia at the end of June, 858 days after missiles first started striking Kyiv.