Mainstream media too often tells an incomplete story: one without agency, catastrophe is inevitable, disasters are isolated events, and the people living through environmental harm are reduced to victims or voices in someone else’s story.
That’s why Counterstream exists. To center the stories and perspectives the mainstream media often miss.
A new platform for climate and environmental justice stories
Counterstream began as a single podcast, People over Plastic. Today we’re a multimedia organization with A People’s Climate, an award-winning podcast distributed by The Nation, a digital magazine, inspiring storytelling events, and fierce commentary that puts people first.
Our new website is home for the full range of our work: reporting that connects environmental harm to the systems behind it, stories that center frontline voices and lived experience, and cultural work that challenges how people understand climate and environmental justice.
At the heart of it all is the same commitment: to create counter-narratives that challenge those frames and shift whose knowledge, history, and vision for the future are seen as authoritative.
Help us keep building
This new website represents a real investment in the future of our work. Help us keep building the platform, producing the stories, and creating the kind of media ecosystem climate and environmental justice deserve.
P.S. Use discount code STREAM20 to get your copy of Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities, curated by Peace & Riot editor Kate Weiner and celebrated community organizer Kailea Loften. Offer ends October 31.
The Latest at Counterstream
SEP 25: Watch Condemned: The Toxic Prisons Problem
Join A People’s Climate guest and Lead Organizer for the Toxic Prisons Campaign B. Preston Lyles in New York City for a screening of this new documentary, followed by a panel discussion. Through the stories of survivors, advocates, activists, and lawyers, Condemned exposes the breadth and depth of environmental toxicity within Pennsylvania’s prison system and SCI-Fayette, a prison in Western PA built on land polluted by about 40 million tons of coal waste. Attend
OCT 23: Join Shilpi Chhotray and Kate Weiner for a Narrative Justice workshop
The stories we tell shape what people believe is possible — and what institutions choose to fund, protect, or ignore. Join Counterstream Co-Founder and President Shilpi Chhotray and Peace & Riot Editor Kate Weiner in Oakland for an interactive workshop exploring how stories influence public perception, policy, philanthropy, and power. Attend
Worth Revisiting
How Origin Stories Shape the World
Rather than replicate violent systems, origin stories can deepen understanding, empathy, and strategic knowledge.