Climate Justice Activist at Rothko Chapel

Elizabeth Yeampierre, an internationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney and environmental and climate justice leader, will deliver the 2018 Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice, and Human Rights. Her lecture is entitled: “Climate Justice: The Time is Now, The Place is Here,”.  Yeampierre is the executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance. The lecture is jointly sponsored by the Rothko Chapel and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas.

Yeampierre will share how vulnerable communities are both experiencing and responding to the unequal burden they bear of climate change.  She will draw on experiences of climate justice activists from Brooklyn to Houston to Puerto Rico, to discuss opportunities for creating a more just and equitable society, beginning at the local level.  Bryan Parras, co-Founder of Texas Environmental Justice Agency Services (T.E.J.A.S) will be in conversation with Yeampierre after her address.

“This political moment demands a different kind of leadership if we are to build and fight the intersection of racial injustice and climate change,” said Yeampierre.  “Climate justice demands we reject extractive cultural practices and embrace intergenerational front-line led solutions and that we do that now.  Our very existence is at stake.”

Online registration for this event is required.