About the Delegation

It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm a delegation of over 100 leaders and organizers from US and Canadian grassroots and indigenous communities headed to the upcoming UNCOP21 in Paris.  It Takes Roots joins together three powerful alliances of grassroots activists and frontline communities’ leaders: Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and the Climate Justice Alliance.

The delegates and the groups they represent are intergenerational, comprising a mix of youth organizers and veteran community leaders, who hail from Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander and rural white communities in the frontlines of movements for economic, racial, gender, and climate justice, including:

[su_row]
[su_column size=”1/3″]

• AfroEco
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
• Black Mesa Water Coalition
• Chinese Progressive Association (CPA-SF)
• Cooperation Jackson
• Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
• Community to Community Development (C2C)
• El Comite de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agricolas (CATA)
• East Michigan Environmental Action Coalition (EMEAC)
• Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island

• Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC)
• People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Justice (PODER)
• Right to Survive
• Ruckus Society
• Southern Maine Workers Center
• Southwest Workers Organizing Project (SWOP)
• Southwest Worker’s Union (SWU)
• UPROSE
• Vermont Workers Center
• WE ACT for Environmental Justice
• Worcester Roots

[/su_column]
[/su_row]

Throughout the Global South and in many part of the US, frontline communities are already facing the devastating impacts of governmental climate inaction. Our communities are impacted daily by oil spills, oil refinery pollution, the dirty air from the waste incinerators, and the production of fossil based chemicals. We are enduring the impacts of floods on one coast and drought on another, and from the destruction of land, air and water by tar sands extraction and Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking).

For over 20 years we have been pushing for real action, and global leaders have been promising a new climate agreement through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference Of Parties (COP) meetings. This December at the COP21 in Paris, a global climate agreement is anticipated and falls far short of the actions needed to avoid global climate catastrophes. Inadequate action and false solutions will result in extreme consequences for the planet that will have notably disproportionate impact on the peoples of the Global South, as well as working class communities, communities of color, and indigenous and marginalized peoples living on the frontlines of the escalating climate crisis.