Senator Clare Oumou Verbeten visited Hamline early last week to speak about her time as a legislator, her advocacy work and how young people can get involved locally. Students gathered to ask the senator questions and brainstorm what climate advocacy looked like in their communities.
The Hamline Environmental Education Project (HEEP) collaborated with Feed Your Brain and the Hamline University Student Congress (HUSC) to raise awareness about environmental justice and build a relationship with Oumou Verbeten. Katherine Ichinose, a Young Adult Coalition coordinator who was also involved in planning and executing the event, looked forward to watching Hamline students take the reins.
“My hope for the event was for students to take the lead and that I could take a back seat while students acted around the things they cared about,” Ichinose said. “I was proud of and so impressed by how Hamline students stepped into agency to build power for a healthier future.”
Ichinose also spoke about how a goal of hers was to connect with Oumou Verbeten.
“[She’s] a key ally in the Senate and particularly on the education committee,” Ichinose said.
Building relationships and networking is an important part of leadership that the senator advised young people to prioritize.
“It sounds kind of cliche, but it is very important [to build] strong relationships,” Oumou Verbeten said at the event. “For me, being able to be in my community, know my community, I think is what has led to my success and legislative accomplishments.”
Senior Hafsa Ahmed attended the event, and appreciated the opportunity to engage with a local elected official.
“It definitely gave space for me to finally meet a senator and talk about issues ranging from finance and environmental bills that affect us,” Ahmed said. Ahmed found that she appreciated the community she found at the event as well.
“Sometimes people know things that you don’t know, so it’s nice to talk about these issues to see a crossover of information but also just to have a space to feel comfortable enough to do that,” Ahmed said.
For Oumou Verbeten, climate advocacy is something important to champion, inside and outside of politics.
“Whenever we’re talking about climate justice, it is just about our livelihood and making sure that we have something for future generations: that our future generations are actually able to live on this planet,”Oumou Verbeten said at the event. “It’s as simple as that.”
Local climate justice activist B. Rosas was also in attendance at the event and appreciated the opportunity for young adults to gather around environmental justice.
“It was a really great event, and it was just also cool to be amongst other young people and hear what issues they care about and how they envision that to come to fruition,” Rosas said. “I think it’s really important for young people to get involved in this fight because we are the leaders of the future, and we’re gonna be making a lot of these big policy decisions soon … and in the meantime, it’s really important that we are really tapping into what we can do now to stop and mitigate the climate crisis and hold our elected officials accountable.”
Anyone that wants to get more involved in climate advocacy and is looking for a place to begin can look at organizations like Climate Generation and the projects they are working on.
“We are a part of a lot of coalitions, especially ones that are doing on the ground climate justice work, and so a part of our partnership with a lot of these coalitions is sending out action alerts. Also, if folks ever want to set up a one on one, I’m always down to figure out how we can create relationships to create those solutions,” Rosas said. “I’m always hoping and inviting people to join us in the fights that we’re in.”
One local environmental issue that anyone can get involved in is rallying against the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC).
“[The HERC] is a big incinerator that has been polluting the Northside of Minneapolis for several decades now, causing a lot of health problems,” Rosas said. “I would really encourage everyone to follow the Zero Burn Coalition on all social media platforms; that’s where updates on how to get involved are going to be happening.”
Katherine Ichinose hopes young people feel empowered to be active in local climate justice, even when it feels too overwhelming of an issue to take on.
“I hope that people’s takeaways from this event are that we as young people really can make a difference in politics, no matter how many people try to dismiss us or how much imposter syndrome we feel,” Ichinose said.