Ep. 2 - Mass Movements with Patrisse Cullors
This is when people-powered movements matter most.
In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, artist, abolitionist, and author. They explore the deep connections between racial justice, environmental justice, and the fight for a more just and caring world.
From her childhood experiences in Los Angeles to organizing around police brutality, climate justice, and cultural work, Patrisse shares why her vision is rooted in care, creativity, and nonviolent action.
Together, they unpack what it means to build coalitions across movements, resist systemic violence, and imagine a future beyond just survival.
Key Topics
How racial justice and climate justice are deeply interconnected
The role of abolition in addressing systemic violence and environmental harm
Nonviolent direct action as both a strategy and philosophy for change
The science of organizing
Coalition-building across movements and communities
Cop City
Abolition Aesthetics and art as resistance
Resources to Explore
Learn more about Cop City in the Shilpi Chhotray hosted “People over Plastic” podcast episode: The Hot Seat.
Learn more about Cancer Alley in the Shilpi Chhotray hosted “People over Plastic” podcast episode: Secret Sauce
Credits
Presented by Counterstream Media and The Nation
Powered by Wildseeds Fund
Host: Shilpi Chhotray
Executive Producer: Mindy Ramaker
Engineer: Dennis Maxwell
Project Manager: Marianella Nuñez
Additional Research: Sarah Morgan
Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors is a New York Times bestselling author, educator, artist, and abolitionist from Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured at The Broad, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Frieze LA, The Hammer Museum, The Fowler and a host of theaters, galleries, and museums across the globe. Patrisse has won numerous awards for her art and activism. In 2020 she launched a one of its kind online MFA program at Prescott college. She also launched the Crenshaw Dairy Mart with fellow artists Noé Olivas and Ali Reza Dorriz.
Her current work and practice is focusing on “Abolitionist Aesthetics,” a term she has advanced and popularized to help challenge artists and cultural workers to aestheticize abolition. She has recently founded The Center For Art and Abolition- a trailblazing nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering abolitionist artists and leveraging the transformative power of art to catalyze social change. Patrisse’s mission is to invite all of us to grow towards abolition through intergenerational healing work that centers love, collective care, and art.
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Shilpi Chhotray [00:00:02] This is A People's Climate, powered by Wildseeds Fund, from Counterstream Media and the nation. I'm your host, Shilpi Chhotray.
News Clip [00:00:11] President Trump is easing regulations designed to protect the environment.
News Clip [00:00:16] People are being snatched up in the middle of the streets, trafficked, kidnapped in the middle of streets.
News Clip [00:00:23] Whoa! Ice out of Berlin! Ice out, out, hey! Ice out in Berlin!
News Clip [00:00:33] The Trump administration has dismissed hundreds of scientists working on the National Climate Assessment.
News Clip [00:00:40] The EPA immediately closed every single one of its offices around the country that deals with what's known as environmental justice.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:00:55] We're living through a really wild moment right now, for democracy, for people, and the planet. Those in power, from elected officials to corporate interests, are actively betraying us. They're dismantling our rights, fueling the climate crisis, and doubling down on violence against communities that have been already pushed to the edges. When it feels like so much is unraveling all at once, you may be asking, how do we keep going? How can we resist? This is exactly when mass movements matter the most. Which is why I'm so honored to be speaking with my guest today, Patrisse Cullors. You may know her as the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, which is one of the most successful social justice movements in history. She is also an artist, abolitionist, and author whose work spans across movements and media. Patrisse has played a huge role in my personal journey, especially in understanding how racial justice intersects with climate advocacy. We recorded this conversation in June, and I'm really excited to share it with you. Patrisse, thank you so much for being here today and tuning in from Los Angeles.
Patrisse Cullors [00:02:04] Thanks for having me. It's really generous. We're in a really scary time. So just to be able to take a moment and be in conversation with folks feels really fulfilling.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:02:16] Yeah, let's not glaze over the fact that ice raids are continuing to sweep across our country, especially in the city that you love and you call home. Before we, we get into what's happening right now, what's happening currently in our country. I would love to ground us a little bit and hear about your childhood and growing up in Van Nuys, California, specifically how did your experiences in your early childhood, shape your understanding of race, of class and those systems around you.
Patrisse Cullors [00:02:50] Yeah, I'm born and raised here in Los Angeles, California. I'm from the 818. I'm so proud of where I'm from that I tattooed it on my chest. I am fourth generation Angelino. My son is a fifth generation Angeleno. We have been here for a long time. I think for those of us growing up in the 80s and the 90s, what's happening right now in our city. It feels so familiar.
News Clip [00:03:27] The police approach black men as criminals first and citizens second. If they can not get a conviction with the Rodney King video available, there can be no justice in America.
Patrisse Cullors [00:03:42] Seeing tanks on our streets. I remember LAPD's military grade weaponry on the streets of Van Nuys in our suburb, in a working class suburb that was primarily Latino and undocumented with some Black families and working class white families. And the level of violence, everyday violence, the normalization of LAPD's brute force. And terror that I experienced and my community and my family experienced shaped everything that I do today. It's the central part of my shaping that would make me the person that I am, both as an abolitionist and as an artist.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:04:30] I know you have three siblings that you're very close to. You've often referred to your oldest brother, Monty, as your first best friend. And Monty was criminalized and experienced police brutality from a very young age. Are you comfortable sharing what happened and how that impacted your work?
Patrisse Cullors [00:04:49] Monty Colors, he's my older brother, who's been one of my favorite human beings for a very long time. At a young age, he was criminalized by his school environment. We talk a lot about the school-to-prison pipeline. He experienced that personally. He was criminalized in our neighborhood, in our community that was heavily patrolled by LAPD. He was eventually incarcerated into juvenile hall and then later the county jail system and then later the California state prison system. All while Monti really needed mental health care and he needed an environment that saw him as not just someone who could be easily wrapped up in the criminal legal system. He needed an environment. Where people saw him as a really loving, gentle, kind human being, which he absolutely is.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:05:53] Thank you so much for sharing, Patrisse. I can see how these very personal experiences with your brother would shape your understanding of abolition. One of the reasons I invited you on the show is because you have such a powerful grasp of how abolition connects to climate, environmental, and racial justice. Long before co-founding Black Lives Matter, you were already organizing with the Bus Riders Union, seeing firsthand how race and climate are intertwined. The mainstream climate movement often misses this important connection. So let's dive into that.
Patrisse Cullors [00:06:26] It was quite clear to me when I was first organized into the bus riders union, the impact of the climate on the poorest communities, the poorest countries, and then zooming in to our own backyards and looking at factories and fracking and all of these things, these cancer inducing spaces that were all primarily in working class. Places and poor spaces and BIPOC communities, I was like, we can't stand for this. And so climate change has always been such a primary part of my fight, even if it wasn't so visible when I came across the ACLU's 86 page complaint against the sheriff's department.
News Clip [00:07:20] The American Civil Liberties Union along with a county commission released the results of their investigation this morning. The report cited the L.A. County Sheriff's Department jails as being a place that fosters a culture where deputies are allowed to beat and humiliate inmates.
News Clip [00:07:37] Sandra Neal says her son was beaten by L.A. Sheriff's deputies earlier this year while in a holding cell after being arrested for a nonviolent crime.
Patrisse Cullors [00:07:45] I realized, oh, I want to take on the prison system. I want take on state violence. That's when I started Dignity and Power Now with a group of friends, a group of really loving friends and also my family. My brother gave me permission and the blessing to start Dignity and Power now because I was really using our family story to talk about what had happened to him and to say that it wasn't just us. There were so many other families who had experienced state violence and We were, quote, one of the lucky ones. My brother survived police torture, but some people didn't. And so many people haven't and won't. And from Dignity and Power Now, a year after we started Black Lives Matter.
News Clip [00:08:36] What prompted Black Lives Matter was really around the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. I wrote a Facebook post, Black people, I love you, I love us, our lives matter, Black lives matter. Patrisse put a hashtag in front of it. I didn't know what a hashtag was.
News Clip [00:08:52] In 2020, following the death of George Floyd, an estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in Black Lives Matter protests in the United States alone.
News Clip [00:09:03] And in that moment, part of what we have to accord to the movement for black lives beyond what it has done for black people, it shifted the entirety of how media works, right? Because it took away the power of mainstream media to control the narrative and to tell us what the news was.
News Clip [00:09:23] Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Ma-
Shilpi Chhotray [00:09:28] You've always had a very strong commitment to nonviolent direct action. As we're seeing waves of protests around the country and globally, like the ongoing protests against ICE in Los Angeles. What is it about nonviolent, direct action that you believe is essential to building lasting change, particularly in movements for racial and environmental justice?
Patrisse Cullors [00:09:52] I really love this question. My deep belief is that human beings, in order for us to live a full, healthy, evolved life, that we must center nonviolence. This is not a moral judgment against human beings. I get that we have evolved in a way that if pushed too far, violence happens? It's in our chemistry, but I wanna argue that we can live differently, that we deserve to live nonviolently. When I think about nonviolence, it's both a strategy of a political strategy. We've seen it work over and over again, not just in this country, but across the world, right? But it's also a strategy for humanity. I don't like how it feels when in my body I want to become violent. It doesn't make me feel good. There's so many studies around the poison of anger, right? Anger is an important human response. Anger to me is a symbol of a boundary. But when you're so angry that it turns into lashing out, it's a cycle of violence. It just creates a cycle of violence and so I want be honest about that. Like I want us to live differently. I want humanity to be able to be in community with one another from a place of deep harmony, and that is why I advocate for nonviolent direct action when it's needed.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:11:33] That is so beautiful and poetic. And Patrisse, I appreciate that so much because we have to evolve as a species. We're simply not doing it right. You know, you've personally experienced this with your own work and the narratives of framing advocates and abolitionists in this really violent way. And I'd love to know how you've handled that.
Patrisse Cullors [00:11:59] Said over and over again, especially when the propaganda has been pointed at our movements as being violent movements. As I've said, the only movement that I've seen be the biggest purveyor of violence has been a white supremacist movement. And I really try to remind people of that. Let's talk about who has created violence and what that has felt like for communities. Our very movements actually need to culturally challenge the way we understand how to be in community with one another. We all talk about cancel culture, right? We all talked about punishment culture. I call it carceral culture. Our movements behave pretty carceral to each other. There's a lot of the way you're supposed to behave or the correct way of behaving in our movements. But I wanna challenge that. I wanna that in our culture. But if we're If we're trying to look in what we're trying to build, a movement, a loving movement that centers true abolition, which is accountability and care, then we also have to practice that with each other. We have to practice something radically different than what I am seeing as happening in our movement.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:13:21] I've heard you speak about in the past that building movements is scientific.
Patrisse Cullors [00:13:27] I think sometimes people think thousands of people are on the streets and then that is like it. Yeah, it just stops right there. There's no like process in between, right? Strategy. Strategy, conversations, development, cultural work, support, organizing people power. There's a science to building social movements. In that science is really how we are in relationship to each other. And what you learn as an organizer is you meet the people where they're at and you bring them along the journey to show them what's possible, that the life that they're living doesn't have to be this kind of life and that in fact, they can change that life. They could support something different, not on their own from some capitalist individualism. But no, as a community, as group of people, as collective, we have so much more power. And that's what social movements do. That's the science, one by one, group by group, institution by institution, bringing people along for a new vision that we can all sign up for.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:14:57] I do wanna dive a little bit deeper here as it relates to climate justice in the Gulf South especially. So when we use the term frontline communities in this context, we're referring to those who are most directly impacted by pollution, extraction and the ongoing effects of the climate crisis. This is where industries like the oil, gas and plastic production industries thrive. They created this climate crisis and a culture of harm on Black communities in particular. One stark example is Louisiana's Cancer Alley. Yes, we have a place called Cancer Alley in the United States. It's located along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And in this area, residents face a lifetime cancer risk more than 700 times the national average due to these emissions from nearby petrochemical plants, which are heavily involved in plastic production. So just a little bit of background there. And of course, as Patrisse is all too familiar in her racial justice work, these are the same communities that are also on the front lines of state violence, of over policing, incarceration, and economic abandonment. So given this important context and connection, how can strategies evolve to address both racial and environmental injustices in tandem, recognizing that these issues are deeply interconnected and cannot be bifurcated.
Patrisse Cullors [00:16:31] Especially where we're at right now with these issues of racism and environmental crisis, we can't afford to separate them. And that looks like getting different types of people together that work on different types of things to be in coalition together. I think the more that we try to silo ourselves, the less we're going to get done. Look at this administration and how effective it's been. At going after everybody. Women's rights, trans folks, the environment, black folks, scientists, artists, immigrants, undocumented people. I mean, you name it, they have created an infrastructure of chaos. And inside of that infrastructure of Chaos, they have Project 2025. That is their strategy. And it wasn't just one thing they were going to try to undermine and topple. It was all the things that they believed were part of their strategy and their value set.
News Clip [00:17:39] We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. I love you. I love all of you. God bless you. USA! USA!
Patrisse Cullors [00:17:56] Where's ours? Where's our collective value set where we connect all the dots and help people understand how well connected we are? Let me give you an example. One of my cousins is being heavily targeted by the social media algorithm as a young black man to move him into Trump Maga Land.
News Clip [00:18:26] Contrary to what we had been told, we found the MAGA people to be warm, loving, and even rather cheeky at times. As we spent time with the MAGA people, we learned that their mantra, make America great again, is an optimistic belief that the United States will once again prosper by returning to its founding principles of a government by and for the people.
Patrisse Cullors [00:18:49] Understand, right, the power of bringing more people into their movement. We also need to understand that we need to bring more people into our movement, not less. Does it make us cooler if we are 50 people trying to yell and shout at MAGA? We need more people. We need a movement in the millions. And so I think that our work, the answer to this question... Is that we have to build coalition.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:19:20] So I understand the need for coalition building, and I want to bring up a specific example. Cop City in Atlanta, which is now open.
News Clip [00:19:30] The idea basically is that they want to develop a militarized police base that's right next to a black and brown working-class community. And by building this base, they want cut down over 100 acres of forest. They want to build up an area where there's room for explosives testing over 12 firing ranges, a place where there is a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad, a training center for them to practice crowd control. We should also mention that they are engaged in international training with the Israeli police.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:20:05] This is, you know, textbook environmental racism.
Patrisse Cullors [00:20:09] Yeah, I mean, I think this idea of a cop city is deeply disturbing. Sometimes when we, when we lose a struggle, right? Cop city was built. We forget that it's just as important that we fought back against it. We fought. People didn't say yes to cop city. Thousands of people said no to cop City and they showed up. The reality is, is we are in a deep backlash. We are living through the backlash of Obama being president, the backlash against Black Lives Matter, against Me Too, against an immigrants rights movement that yelled out no one is illegal and MAGA is in power right now. And we have to be sober about that. I'm not gonna give you platitudes on this podcast. That's not gonna help anybody. But I will say that just because they're in power now does not mean they'll be in power forever. And our job during this time is to organize and people may be like, you've said this 50 million times, but I mean it. We have to organize. We have bring more people along into our struggle. The only reason why MAGA is successful right now is because we were successful. We have remember that. We're living in the contradiction of this moment and it really, really sucks. It really, really is a terrible timeline. And remember that this is not going to be forever.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:21:56] I want to raise something that I've been really frustrated by. When I'll use Cop City as an example, when, you know, Tortuguita was killed by Georgia State Police, not a single environmental NGO made a statement about his death. And it literally broke me. Because this is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time, yet none of the environmental groups. Are covering Cop City, advocating against Cop City. Not only that they did not acknowledge his death, this is a forest defender. And I'm hearing you explain how we need to be in community. What is your message to environmental groups that aren't quite understanding what's at stake here and what the silence is costing us when we're trying to fight environmental racism specifically?
Patrisse Cullors [00:22:49] Most mainstream environmental justice organizations or environmental organizations aren't centering race and class. And I think the question and the conversation for these mainstream orgs is, why are you choosing to not center the most vulnerable communities? And there probably is a lot of reasons why. And if I were sort of having that conversation as an organizer or strategists. I would ask them, what are they willing to risk? What are they will to sacrifice? Because sometimes that means donors. Sometimes that means resources to be on the right side of history. The other thing I would say is like, if you're not willing to do that work, take some of your resources and give it to the orgs that are. Repatriate if you are unable to do it in your own organization. Sometimes these orgs aren't the right ones to do anyway. And we have to be more strategic about who we want to platform.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:23:53] Been in the climate space for about 15 years and I've honestly taken some steps back in the last couple years because of the lack of willingness to engage on these very serious issues where I don't think we're actually going to move the needle if we don't really tackle the systemic issues at hand. Another piece of this is Palestine. Crickets, right? Like we can't achieve climate justice without addressing a real-time genocide happening. On that note, I was so impressed that you've been a longtime advocate for our Palestinian brothers and sisters. You've often drawn connections between Black liberation and Palestinian resistance. You also visited Palestine with the Dream Defenders back in 2015. And I just would love to know how that experience has shaped your views on abolition, on militarization and policing.
Patrisse Cullors [00:24:49] I think that experience going to Palestine was really powerful and important. It was after Mike Brown's murder, we were all feeling very raw and vulnerable and learning about what was happening in the West Bank specifically, and East Jerusalem was so, so painful. So much has been illuminated from that trip, especially now after October 7th. I feel like our movement has been gravely impacted by our inability to be in true coalition around this moment and to have differing views and to show up for what is right and just. This has been one of the hardest movement movements, and I've been a part of a lot hard movement movements, but this has, you know, ruined families, careers, relationships. Friendships even in my own circle where I've seen people no longer talk to each other or unwilling to. And we have this phrase in the Black Liberation Movement, which is we are all we got. And what happens when we lose each other?
Shilpi Chhotray [00:26:18] I think it's a good time now to shift gears here a little bit to your role as an artist and culture worker. I'm really, really excited to get into some of this terrain with you.
Patrisse Cullors [00:26:30] I think it's important for people to know that I'm an artist first. I always have been, you know, abolition is my value set, art and organizing are my practices. Throughout different parts of the world, there are artist movements, there's artistic responses to a crisis that often looks like the mirror, right? Let's put up a mirror. It also looks like using art to tell a different story. What are we imagining? What's the possibility here? And how does art show us that? And so my practice, my art practice has always been at the center of my organizing practice.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:27:17] You know, one of the, it's actually one of your recent pieces, I believe, that's titled Black Women Rest, I think speaks to a lot about what you're saying, like imagining a different future, imagining a difference reality, which explores rest as a form of resistance. Can you talk a little bit more about that piece and how it connects to your activism?
Patrisse Cullors [00:27:42] Yeah, I mean, I really am using Tricia Hersey's nap ministry as source material for this piece that was filmed and shot in Joshua Tree. I was shooting it during the election. I was thinking about the role of Black women as like perpetual mules for the sake of everybody else's luxury. And what would it mean to just center our rest and to create a billboard that's on Sunset Boulevard that can just center black women resting? Black Woman Rest is just this beautiful, like sepia-colored film that's a nine-minute film that was curated by the city of West Hollywood for their billboard campaign that they do like every quarter, I think. So the billboard was up for three months.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:28:48] I know the last time we chatted, you did talk a little bit about your experience as a mother, and I'm a mom of two, so I wanna dig into that a little and how your role as a mom has kind of forced you, because it has forced me to balance activism and the need for rest and self-care.
Patrisse Cullors [00:29:10] I have a nine-year-old. I was pregnant during the height of the BLM movement. And I had just had a C-section. I was probably six weeks out from my C-Section where I was in the streets protesting. I think for me, my relationship to my child and this experience of mothering is deeply spiritual for me because I'm parenting a black. Child who's eventually going to be criminalized living in this country. He will. And there's something about that that is terrifying and also like puts you in a position as a mother and as a parent to have to believe in something bigger than this place and also teach my child, that there is something bigger than what he is going to experience, and... He's acutely aware of race and racism. It's not like I shoved it down his throat. It didn't have to, it's all around him. We'll have different experiences and he'll say, is it that because we're black? He's already sort of processing discrimination and his own color and how people are relating to it. I'm helping infuse in him a strength that is what my parents did for me.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:30:41] My son is four and a half years old and I take him to a lot of mutual aid events around Oakland. I'm a big supporter of the anti-police terror project here and we go to their rallies and I've been taking him since he was a little guy. And for me, you know, I had to do so much unlearning as an adult and I want to instill these lessons really early on in my kids and he. Now we'll say to his friends if he sees police cars and books or TV says police don't help. He doesn't want anything to do with with police cars or the narrative that police are going to save the day. And it's it's not even because I put it down as third it's because he goes to these events and he hears people talk and hears little kids that are, you know, eight or nine or 10 years old talking about how their brother or their uncle or their father has been. Incarcerated and harmed or even killed by the police. You know, it's really important for parents to not shy away from this. So I appreciate that of you as a mother and a leader in this space. I want to, I really wanna talk about this poem that you wrote back in March. You posted on Instagram.
Patrisse Cullors [00:31:56] I wouldn't call it a poem
Shilpi Chhotray [00:31:57] What would you call it?
Patrisse Cullors [00:32:00] A statement.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:32:00] A statement, okay.
Patrisse Cullors [00:32:02] I don't identify as a poet, so I don't want to give myself that.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:32:05] Okay.
Patrisse Cullors [00:32:05] I will call it a, I will call it a statement.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:32:08] Because it was titled DEI manifesto. So it is, yeah, it was a statement. And for listeners, we will link to this in the show notes so you can read it. And the DEI Manifesto rejected this idea of integration into supremacist norms, and it calls for this radical return to self. I loved it. It was so clever and thoughtful and intentional at a time where I was really scared. Multiple friends and colleagues of mine had lost their jobs or they were relegated to ridiculously junior positions that had nothing to do with their skill set. Can you speak to what it means to you in this current moment? Because if anything, I think things have escalated.
Patrisse Cullors [00:32:54] I think this idea that DEI was going to save us in the first place was deeply naive because we were entering into other people's systems and they were creating whole roles for us under this concept of diversity. And if you don't believe in diversity, then it's not going to last for long. If you only are being pushed into DEI because of mass movements. And if you're able to turn it off, when a new administration comes on board, then that's a really dangerous environment. So I was sitting in my car pissed and I just kept saying DEI over and over again. And I was like, what else can this be? I was, like, oh, this is don't ever integrate. This is a call to action to release ourselves from this idea that the integration into white supremacist, patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, ableist societies is the way. We have to find a new way. If anything, I'm not saying that this isn't horrific, it's terrible. And inside of that, we have an opportunity to remember that we were never meant to integrate into their systems. The minute we did integrate, there was always a plot to get us out. And so what do we build instead? How do we resource each other? I think about Nipsey Hussle a lot, may he rest in peace, but he was a master. He was a Master at being like, I'm not integrating into their system because I already know what happens. I'm going to keep it all money in. We're gonna stay inside the block. We're going to stay in the office lesson. We're to pour back into our communities. We're are gonna be each other's best resource.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:34:50] Patrisse, you've mentioned that you're working on a book that dives deeper into a lot of the topics that we've covered today around activism and creative expression. Can you tell us more about what that book means to you and what you're hoping to explore in it?
Patrisse Cullors [00:35:04] It's about how artists and culture workers at the center of our movements and how they always have been and they're living amongst us and they are incredible and they shaping the way we are and the way relate every single day. So excited to share this book with you all next year and excited to be in this deeper conversation around arts and culture and movement building.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:35:32] This is my last question to you. You often say your work with Black Lives Matter was born out of a fight for survival where you've spent the last 20 years on dismantling systems, but in recent years, you've talked about wanting to go beyond just surviving. What do you want to focus the next 20 years of your life on?
Patrisse Cullors [00:35:55] Yeah, the next 20 years of my life's work is about building. How are we doing it together? How are showing up for each other? How are holding each other accountable through a place of love and connection and care? And that's the kind of institutions I wanna build in the next twenty years. Institutions that are about re-imagining our existence and our collective existence.
Shilpi Chhotray [00:36:21] Thank you so much, Patrisse. It's been an incredible honor to have you on the show and be in community with you. I so appreciate you for inspiring us to reimagine a different future. I hope this conversation left you thinking about what's possible when we push beyond the status quo. Patrisse reminded me that what's truly radical isn't just resisting the system, it's about imagining a new one. What do you think? How do we channel our anger and frustration into lasting change? Leave us a comment, rating, or review and let's keep pushing this conversation forward. You can also reach out to us at hello at apeoplesclimate.org. Thank you to Wildseeds Fund for making this podcast possible. This episode of A People's Climate is executive produced by Mindy Ramaker, with engineering and sound design by Dennis Maxwell, theme music by Khafre Jay, and additional research by Sarah Morgan. Recorded at Studio 132 and Skyline Studios in Oakland, California. From Counterstream Media and The Nation, I'm your host, Shilpi Chhotray. Until next time.