Gender Justice Requires Climate Resilience
My name is Maryse Mitchell-Brody, and I’m Third Wave Fund’s Director of Development. Today, I’m writing to share my monthly sustainer story. I began giving as a staff member at a grantee partner in 2016 because I believe gender justice movements deserve consistent commitments from their supporters, and I saw how Third Wave prioritizes gender justice where it intersects with other movements, like climate justice.
Climate catastrophes make it clear: gender justice requires climate resilience. We need secure roofs over our heads, clean water to drink, and solid ground beneath us if we want to sustainably organize for trans liberation, abortion access, and bodily self-determination. When unnatural disasters like Hurricane Helene and the West Coast wildfires strike, grassroots organizers must be able to pivot to mutual aid as a matter of survival.
I’ve learned first-hand how important climate resilience is to our collective liberation. In 2011, I survived Hurricane Sandy in lower Manhattan, where I counted myself lucky to just lose power and water for a few days when friends lost everything to flooding. As a volunteer social worker, I supported displaced elders and disabled folks in city shelters while my community of queer, trans, and BIPOC folks kicked off the mutual aid effort that became Occupy Sandy. That year, I learned the hard way that climate change was already here, and my beloved hometown wasn’t ready. That experience marked a turning point in how I thought about the climate crisis and my place in it, and how central a climate justice analysis must be to every movement.
At Third Wave Fund, we know that we need both mutual aid and root cause organizing if we’re going to transform the oppressive conditions of gender injustice. Mutual aid disaster response in particular is so important to the communities we fund—especially BIPOC, working class, disabled, trans, and/or rural folks. They are often the hardest hit by disasters but the first to be excluded by mainstream preparedness, evacuation, and relief efforts, facing issues like English-only resources, barriers to reproductive healthcare, and a lack of trans-competent aid workers. Further, the sometimes years-long work of community care and disaster response often falls on the shoulders of BIPOC and working class women, femmes, and trans folks - feminized labor that is under-valued, under-acknowledged and under-resourced.
But thanks to supporters like you, Third Wave Fund is able to resource this essential gender justice work. In the face of climate catastrophes, our grantee partners are best positioned to know where these gaps are and how to fill them:
- When trans people of color were being excluded from disaster response efforts in Miami, Own Our Power Fund grantee The McKenzie Project developed the HRT Hub, a by-and-for program that trains trans people as first responders.
- In the wake of Hurricane Helene, our Mobilize Power Fund partnered with Colaborativa La Milpa to provide rapid financial support to local BIPOC mutual aid organizers in Asheville, NC.
- These groups in Asheville assisted well over 10,000 community members, including El Telar, which provided child and baby care for displaced families, and Poder EMMA, which assisted with home repairs and helped Spanish speakers submit FEMA claims.
I recently saw this kind of effort in action when, shortly after Helene hit, I drove south to help my folks pack up their home in Florida after climate change made their life there unsustainable. Along the way, I dropped off crowdfunded recovery supplies with a community group caravan in Greensboro, NC. Driving through the outer bands of the storm’s impact, I witnessed both the damages and the powerful and pragmatic ways that BIPOC communities led by femmes and queers responded, echoing what I saw first-hand during Hurricane Sandy.
Being able to support my family in migrating away from climate disaster as catastrophic weather devastated communities across the South has left me reflecting deeply about the possibility of showing up in multiple meaningful ways at one time. No single strategy can achieve gender justice on its own, but when we ensure that frontline groups have the resources they need for mutual aid and root cause organizing, we’re making a wise investment towards our collective liberation.
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