 Thank you so so much everyone for joining us this evening for the main Audubon Future Focus speaker series. This series is a collaborative series hosted by Maine Youth for Climate Justice, Maine Audubon, the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative, Maine Environmental Education Association, and its youth network change makers as well as Maine Climate Action now. And this is a monthly webinar series where in which youth climate justice activists and their work is highlighted as well as their stories from all over the state. Each one hour session focuses on a different individual and the intersection, intersectional leadership work they are doing in their community and beyond. And so today we are joined by the spectacular Soroki Kumar who is a climate justice activist doing some pretty amazing work in the Bar Harbor region. Next month on the 2nd of February at 4.30 we will be joined by Josh Wood and he will be giving a talk on his intersectional climate work. So Soroki will be giving her talk and at the end of her talk we will have a Q&A session so I encourage you all to start thinking of questions as Soroki speaks to ask in that portion of our event tonight. And so for now I'll turn it over to Soroki so that she can begin her talk. Hi everyone and thank you Amara for introducing me so well. My name is Soroki Kumar. I am 16 and I live in Bar Harbor, Maine. I'm currently a junior at Mount Desert Island High School and I'm really excited to talk to you guys about my experience as a climate and racial justice organizer. I wasn't always an activist in fact I used to be quite the opposite. See when people think of youth activists they think young driven and hardworking and while I am all those things I also used to have one major character flaw. I was a giant procrastinator. I was a procrastinator in the way most teenagers are. Very much why do the dishes when they'll be dirty tomorrow or why do my homework when I have all of the bus ride to school tomorrow to do it then. I used to be abstractly aware of the problems in the world but I was never driven to fix them. After all I always felt there would be more problems to solve. In the summer before my sophomore year of high school I applied for an internship with a climate to thrive, a local climate organization. I didn't apply to the internship for any specific reason. I just really needed something to do over the summer other than work. Over the course of my internship I learned about the existential threat posed by climate change. Not only what it was caused by but what it would do to the island I live on. MDI's two main economic sectors are fishing and tourism which are both directly threatened by the climate crisis. Fishing by the increase in ocean temperatures and acidification and tourism by the increasingly erratic weather patterns and heavy storms. Over that summer I learned about what the climate crisis would do to my family across the world creating climate refugees and making India where some where some of my grandparents still live almost entirely a desert. It was mind blowing for me. My the dishes will still be dirty in the morning mindset was now in direct conflict with this knowledge that the world was on fire. I was 15 at the time and had no plan other than to do what was right in front of me so I immersed myself in climate activism. I completed my internship with a climate to thrive and joined my school's green team in the fall. There I took every opportunity I was presented with. I volunteered to co-write a white paper on my school solar installation with one of my friends Thomas Corstagna. I worked with local college students to organize a climate strike. I worked with other MDI youth to declare a climate emergency in my town. I took on more and more and eventually I found that the titles of change maker and activist fit me. If I had to describe those months leading up to March of 2020 it's like when you have to climb a really tall mountain one minute you're at the bottom and the next you're at the top with no recollection of getting there other than a lot of small steps. That's not to say there were no bumps in the road. In December of 2019 I was in the middle of the climate emergency declaration process in Bar Harbor. For those of you who don't know a climate emergency is a formal piece of legislation passed by a government acknowledging that the climate crisis is real. Often they include action steps to be taken by the government. Part of this climate emergency declaration process included local outreach, talking to the people who would be affected by the declaration. To be clear this wasn't one or two conversations. This was hours of coordination and talking and being direct witness to the huge disconnect between the reality of the climate crisis and what most people thought we were facing. Where I saw years of environmental destruction and thousands of lives and livelihoods lost. Others saw a minor inconvenience. Hotter summers and colder winters. One conversation I had with a member of the Bar Harbor town staff was particularly memorable. They asked why the climate emergency declaration was something that even needed to be taken on by the town. If youth organizers were willing to coordinate the the declaration process could they not just take up the decarbonization efforts themselves. That assumption that the effort to decrease the emissions of an entire town could be taken on by full-time students only highlighted a clear lack of understanding of the true scope of the climate crisis. It was really deeply disheartening. I was a kid seeing my community and local leaders dismiss a real and scientifically proven threat to my future. So what did I do to cope? Well as any mature, intelligent and calm 15-year-old would do I ate a lot of junk food and I watched trash and TV. I shoved everything I was feeling all the overwhelming emotions and hopelessness into a little box and put it somewhere deep in my chest. But as hard as I tried I couldn't keep it all down. The negative emotions I was experiencing as a result of my extracurriculars started leaking out of that little box and messing with the rest of my life. I was constantly tired. I was unmotivated in class. I ignored my homework. I was emotionally exhausted and generally unhappy. I didn't know it but I was experiencing a phenomenon that's very common among activists burnout. Burnout can manifest differently in different people but it's a physical or emotional reaction to extreme emotional duress. It can manifest in anger, sadness, anxiety, exhaustion, lack of motivation or depression. If you don't have the tools to handle this emotional stress it can be really damaging and turn you off social justice permanently. While that wasn't my experience I sure as heck was not emotionally intelligent enough to deal with it on my own but I'm going to give you guys a shortcut I didn't have then. Often when we're experiencing a reaction to the worst parts of activism we need to remind ourselves why we got into this work in the first place. What was our original motivation? Where does our passion lie? In my experience answers to these questions fall into one of two categories healthy or unhealthy. Healthy motivation is usually something long-lasting and independent of outside structures for instance fighting for your rights or those of the people you care about. If you can find a source of healthy motivation your activism is much more sustainable and your mental health is in good hands but it's much easier said than done. I myself still struggle with motivation and I will be the first person to admit that. Unhealthy motivation is a trap lots of change makers including myself can fall into. Unhealthy motivation can be the desire for the outside approval of peers or desire to impress someone looking for something to bolster your resume. It can be the desire for social cloud or just something that isn't long-lasting like rage or hatred. When these are motivators we can get so swept up in the momentum that we forget to make sure we're doing it for the right reasons. Unhealthy motivation leads to unsustainable activism. For instance if I'm a climate activist looking to gain social capital by speaking at huge conferences and events how is my activism going to hold up one more struck by a pandemic that prevents such large gatherings? In my experience unsustainable activism comes in two forms. Either I can't do it at all or I can't do it well. Let me explain. Not being able to do it at all doesn't mean that you're not an activist or that you don't do any changemaking. It means that activism will take a deep toll on mental health and the ability to balance the various aspects of your life. If I had unhealthy motivation that prevented me from doing it all I would feel less joy for my work and burnout that I experienced would be longer and more severe. To use an earlier metaphor it's like having to climb the mountain without shoes on. You can do it but at some point it's easier to stop walking. The damage from this kind of unsustainable activism is mostly self-contained and while it is awful it's not the worst consequence of unhealthy motivation. The other type of activism that comes from unhealthy motivation is performative activism. Now this is a phrase thrown around a lot and the definition isn't always clear. Performative activism is activism done purely on a superficial level with very little actual execution on the part of the activist. For instance a performative activist might talk about the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement but fail to stand up in the face of racial injustices they see in real life. Or they may only do social justice work when it looks good on a resume and then ditch it once they get credit. Unlike other types of unsustainable, the other type of unsustainable activism, performative activism's negative effects aren't just contained to them. It can be damaging to the movement they're part of as a whole. It's disrespectful to the people who have worked hard and made the movement what it is right now. Performative activism can be misleading because performative activists may not take the time to learn everything about their movement. So they may mess up definitions to terms that they throw around or confuse popular figures within the movement. There are also more insidious consequences of performative activism. This summer I worked with other MDI students to organize protests in Bar Harbor in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. As part of the work I did, I helped write a petition to my school district that contained various anti-racism action steps we felt were appropriate. One such action step was the formation of an anti-racism task force, which had the ability to make recommendations to the school board about curriculum, the school resource officer position, and how to deal with incidents of racism within our schools. Now, as one of the members on the task force, I currently have the power to shape what anti-racism in my school district looks like. But if I was a performative activist, I might not be willing to dedicate my time and energy to this task force now that I could put it on my resume and get credit for starting it. I would be setting back the work of a group that has the potential to do real and quantifiable good. Not only is performative activism damaging to the activists and their direct surroundings, it can also discredit the movement as a whole and damage its reputation. To organize the aforementioned Black Lives Matter protests, the student organizers had a Facebook page we used to coordinate the dates and times of our protests. However, some people abused this platform. Despite calling themselves supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, they spread false rumors about the motivations of the organizers and incited fights that detracted from the real progress we were trying to make. Performative activism also thrives in the Asia social media, where it can be so easy to put up a false front. It's easy to retweet the words of someone else about an issue and say you brought awareness to a topic or to preach a certain kind of behavior online without actually carrying it out in real life. For instance, in the months after the murder of George Floyd, almost every social media influencer posted about the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, spreading resources and attending protests. However, as the media wave around the movement died down, they quickly stopped discussing it and their activism disappeared. Social media also allows people to glean a shallow understanding of real and nuanced topics from cliff note-like posts instead of taking the time to do real research to gain a serious and deep understanding. So if performative activism is so bad, why do people do it? Well, it's hard to admit when you've made a mistake and to step back. Often we don't know we're being performative until it's pointed out to us that we're misleading others or don't know enough about a topic and hearing that can be really difficult. Sometimes we can get excited by social movements because of their glam and appeal and don't stop to think about if we really want to get into them or why we're so invested. Performative activism is also emotionally easier. There's no burnout when you don't invest time and energy into a movement and if you can get social and academic credit for faking it, why would you bother to invest? When I got my internship in the summer of 2019, I was the definition of a performative activist. I was entering a movement, a social movement to pass my time over the summer. But as I learned more about the realities of the climate crisis, I became more and more of a real activist. So how can we work together to make this a reality for other young performance activists? I would like to introduce to you all my hypothetical friend Sam. Sam is a junior in high school. She's taking three AB tests. She runs track and field and she's studying for the SATs and she has a part-time job. Sam's pretty busy. Sam is also a performative activist. She posted about the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer but has not said anything about it since August or gotten involved in anti-racist efforts around her community. I am interested in getting Sam involved in my school civil rights team but I've got no idea how to do it. First I thought about trying to educate Sam. After all, Sam is a good person who cares about others so surely she'd be interested in learning how to speak up in the face of injustice. But I don't have to assist any anti-racism resources I can use to teach her. My library doesn't carry any books on anti-racism and my civil rights team doesn't have access to them either. So that's not an option. Well I might appeal to her desire to invest her time in something cool. After all, as part of the civil rights team we go on fun field trips and attend protests together. But Sam also works a part-time job and the civil rights team meetings fall during track and field meetings. While the civil rights team is cool she's saving up money so she can buy a car and she heard the school is building a new track over the summer which will be awesome because she's looking into getting a sports scholarship. Sam has also heard that being part of the civil rights team is really hard emotionally that they have to talk to people who are racist and homophobic all the time. Sam is a good person but she's not sure she can deal with that kind of hostility regularly especially when she doesn't have access to a therapist or any strong emotional support structures. So how do we convince Sam to join the civil rights team and become a racial justice advocate? How do we educate her about the movement provide compensation for her time and support her emotional well-being? How are we supposed to compete with a million other things that can demand the time of a performative activist? Every true activist has some ideas about that. More stipends for youth, increased recognition of youth leadership, providing mentorship for young activists. But the question I want to leave you all with is this. How do we convert performance activists who may see social movements as a hobby or a trend into real sustainable activists who can make careers out of their changemaking? Thank you. Awesome. Definitely round of applause for Sam. Round of applause for Sarohi and folks want to come on video and express their applause. That would be great. Yeah, thank you so so much Sarohi for your wonderful talk and sharing your lived experiences and the things you've felt and faced as an activist doing this work. So in your talk, you spoke to performative activism and in my work as a climate justice activist myself, but I guess I've also battled those feelings of whether or not I'm doing things well in tension. So how can I tell if I'm a performative activist? That's a really good question Amara and this is a kind of question that inspires deep introspection, which I know some of us might not be totally comfortable with. What I've learned about performative activism is that it really does come down to your motivation, the reason why you're spending your time and energy. If you feel like you're being a performative activist, it's important to ask yourself, why do I care about this? And how much am I willing to give up for this? Am I joining whatever group because I see an injustice I want to fight? Or am I doing it because it's easy and looks impressive on my resume? Am I willing to work this hard six months in the future even if we made no progress because I know that this is a place where I can make real change? Or am I going to give up if I don't see any immediate results? Would I be willing to give this up to someone else if I knew it would be better for the movement? If I wasn't getting credit for what I was doing, would I still be doing it? Those are the kinds of questions you can ask yourself to try to understand why it is that you're doing what you're doing. Another thing I found important is listening to other organizers, especially those who have been doing the work for longer than you have. If I'm doing something wrong or if I feel if I think I'm being performative, I trust that the people around me would be willing to call me out and tell me what behaviors I'm doing that are problematic so I can go about changing them. So don't be afraid to rely on the people around you because that's for most of your support comes from. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your insight on that. So, Sirohi and I we met over the summer actually and I think the first thing that totally took me back by Sirohi and the work that she did or that she does is how much she has accomplished given her age and how young she is. So what is it like starting to organize at such a young age, Sirohi? Were you given the tools to learn how to be an activist or did you learn to do it all on your own? That's a really good question and I love talking about this question with other youth activists because we all have like a similar story but everyone's everyone's stories are a bit different. I think when you organize at a young age it's really interesting because you have no idea what it's supposed to look like. It's like when you're a middle schooler and you think high school is going to be like what high school musical or any teen drama has led you to believe and then you go there and you realize it's nothing like what you expected. So I think the best part about organizing at a young age is just how surprising and unexpected things are. It's never anything like what you expect. I asked you a second question about whether I was given the tools to learn how to be an activist. The answer is no. I think that no one is really taught how to do changemaking or activism work mostly because depending on your direct environment and the people you're working with and the unique problem you're facing, activism and changemaking can look different. But I think there's like a base set of skills everyone, every youth activist has, whether they're taught it or whether they glean it, how to write a really good email, how to coordinate a good meeting, how to facilitate a good meeting, how to talk to someone who doesn't agree with you. These are all skills that you gain. I will say one thing I would have appreciated having however many months ago, however many months ago I started this would be like a mentor. I know that there are people who have decades of experience in this movement and who have so much wisdom to impart on us the younger generation and I would love to have had someone who can teach me what is a climate emergency declaration, how do local politics work, how to write a good email that is an understated skill that I think a lot of us really need to work on. I wasn't given the tools but I think younger activists would definitely benefit from being given the tools. Awesome, thank you for that. And so you just mentioned how you would have really appreciated some kind of mentor and I find that in this work dealing with as you spoke to these existential crises that are really threatening the livelihood of the people on this earth that it can't just be one person or one group of people, it really has to be very collaborative and so I think intergenerational learning and learning from others who are not in your age group who have different experiences is one way to do that. So referring back to like mentorships and you know adult allies, you mentioned some things that adult allies can do to help youth in this work but what are some other things that adult allies can do? Yeah I really like your point about intergenerational learning I think that's very important. I'm sure every youth has like the same every youth has different ideas about what adult allies can help but and I cannot say this enough you have to stipend the youth who you work with especially especially those who are still in some form of school because if you're asking youth to choose between three hours working at their job where they can make money to pay rent or to pay for their car or to speak at your engagement for free they're gonna have to choose their job even if that's not what they want because they literally cannot afford to be giving time to their passion so it's so important to stipend youth. I think another thing just generally take the time to educate your peers. Right now I'm 16 I can't vote I can't run for office I can't run for president unfortunately and I know that that makes me feel powerless in a lot of spaces especially when I'm surrounded by adults who have that kind of power I know some of you can run for president and I think it's really important that you use that power you have right now to educate your peers and to ease the way for the youth because we may have a burning desire to have a world that we can live in but we might not be able to vote certain people in our out of office or we might not be able to influence those people who are currently in office and have that kind of power the way you are the way you do so it's important that you use that power to help us. Awesome thank you so much and I see a comment in the chat about just not being able to wait until you're old enough to run for president and I totally agree so so excited for you to be able to be old enough to do that. I have I guess two more questions I'd like to pick your brain on before I open it up to the audience so as we are I guess wrapping up this portion I encourage those in the audience to start submitting the questions that they have so kind of going a little bit backwards to the work that you did this summer how are things going with the Bar Harbor Climate Emergency Task Force? They're going well so for those of you who don't know I'm the youth representative on the Bar Harbor Climate Emergency Task Force which was formed in the weird limbo that was spring of 2020 it's a group that was formed after the climate emergency declaration in bar harbor and the intention is to decrease the emissions of the town of bar harbor it's going well I would say it's been interesting to do the entire thing virtually because I don't know about you guys but organizing online is not as easy as some people would think I think there's serious potential in the group potential for public education and for bringing awareness of the climate crisis to the rest of the town and I'm really excited to see where the group goes especially when we are able to meet in person and we'll be much more productive than them. Yes it is a very very strange time for organizing but I found that it you know especially in the summer and just going back to Soroky's amazing work the great work that you did in the town of bar harbor organizing these rallies for the Black Lives Matter movement and intersectional climate justice activist work which attending those really just made my summer so kind of just going along the lines of racial justice work and climate justice work you are involved in both of these activist spaces how do you see those areas these two areas overlapping? That's a really good question I think there are a couple ways that they overlap these are both huge systemic and systematic issues that are incredibly difficult to fight they're going to require a lot of energy time and money and the system is rigged against fighting either of them that's a unfortunate similarity that they share they also share the similarity of influencing every aspect of our lives regardless of whether you know you're someone who's victimized by systemic racism or if you're impacted by the climate crisis in the immediate time frame that we find ourselves in regardless of whether or not you fall into those groups you are still impacted by racism and by the climate it touches every single thing that we do and while that can be really disheartening it was for me until I found a different way to look at it the good thing about the way the deep intertwining nature of these issues is that once you work to solve one of them if you do it the right way you can work to solve the other one systemic racism exacerbates the climate crisis and the climate crisis exacerbates systemic racism but if we can work to fight one of them then we work to find the other we work to fight the other I think on your right said this a while ago and it's stuck with me ever since any climate justice activist can work on fighting racism for five years and will have done just as much work for the anti-racism movement as they did for the climate movement and I think it's really interesting just to consider that the deep intertwining nature of those two I would also add it's really interesting in Maine among the youth aspects of these movements how much the people overlap I feel like every racial justice activist I meet is also a climate justice activist and vice versa which I think is a good thing because it shows that we understand the connections awesome thank you so much for sharing your perspective on that and I I totally resonate with that beauty of Maine and it's all of its wonderful activists how the the climate justice and racial justice movements they are never distinct they really are one in the same and the work that activists in our state do just really mirrors that and shows that that is that they are really entwined and that they are the same so thank you so much Soroki for answering those questions that I have and now I want to open it up to the audience for questions that you all have for Soroki about her work and lived experiences and other things that you're interested in audio or in the chat do you have a preference no preference at all I was just wondering soroki if you found that people didn't take you seriously when you were young you know just because of your age if they didn't take your words and actions seriously and if so what you did to work around that and what you would how you would advise other youth activists to maybe get past that that is an excellent question um yes my age has definitely been a beneficial and I would say hampering factor in my activism work in equal terms um it is beneficial to be young because I feel like we break up the monotony of the political scene or the activism scene by bringing our spunk and our vigor um but I think that there are also definitely downsides I mentioned earlier you can't take action in like a in a political way a lot of the time you can't vote and you can't run but I also would say it's much more insidious than that um as I said earlier I'm a member of the bar harbor of climate emergency task force and that's an official town task force which means that in order to be a voting member you have to be a registered voter of bar harbor and when I was because I was 15 when I joined despite being a resident I'm not a registered voter which meant that up until very very recently the 30th of December I couldn't vote on any of the decisions made by the task force I could only give an advising or I could only talk I couldn't actually make any decisions that's like one thing that my age has really hampered me taken away from me in a very clear way um to their credit though and I really admire the task force for doing this Jill Goldway who is our town council representative quickly went back to the town council and asked them to change the ordinance that does that so thank you Jill um I would also add that people think people think that because you're young uh youth equals an eye of a tail and they think that you don't know anything because you haven't lived long enough to know anything and I find that incredibly frustrating because even if I don't know the ins and outs of town government I would argue that I have a right to ask for a livable future I have the right to ask for clean air and clean water and for my kids to have the access to the wonderful park that I live that I live in now um to your question of advice I would give other youth activists I would say take the negative things and make them a positive thing um if people don't take you seriously because you're young monopolize on that suggest totally outrageous things and then have your adult allies come in and back you up because then people aren't going to see you as a crazy kid who's suggesting something totally wild they're going to see you as a revolutionary introducing new ideas and wow other adults my age agree with this crazy person so maybe I should consider her ideas I would also say that your youth gives you an interesting gives you a unique insight into movements because you haven't spent as much time being indoctrinated by the message that you know asking people to end systemic racism or asking people to end the climate crisis is totally bizarre that subconscious message of outright asking for what you want hasn't really sunk in yet so you're you're able to look at the systems that we're operating within with fresh eyes that adults might not have so take your weaknesses and make them your strengths people. Awesome thank you so much for your response to that Soroki and so some questions are rolling in the chat so the issue of climate change is one that is unfortunately very polarizing and so from the chat we have a question about can you tell us about a time where you faced a climate change denier and how you dealt with that situation? I consider myself lucky and that I've never had anyone come up to me and tell me climate change isn't real which is kind of nice because I don't know if I could process that in a nice way without yelling um but I've had a lot of people ask me why why it matters people will say I know the polar bears are dying and the ice caps are melting and sometimes it's hot and sometimes the snow is not very sticky but why does it matter and I those are disheartening as I mentioned earlier because it shows that there's a lack of understanding from that person of you know the seriousness of what we're dealing with and I feel like that is also kind of slightly worse than outright climate denial because if in the space in the space between understands the climate crisis and knows what needs to be done and thinks climate change isn't real there's a whole spectrum of gray and sometimes it's better to just disregard the people who are outright denying it because they often don't deny it because they don't believe it they deny it because they don't want to they don't want to believe anything else so when you are forced to confront the gray area of people who are who people people who just don't know better it can often feel hopeless because you're throwing all this information at them but you don't know how to change their mind away from where they are firmly in the gray space and I feel that what we need to take away from that is that education is really important no one well some people are ignorant for this for ignorance sake but most people aren't 90 80 percent of the population who's ignorant is not ignorant because they want to be they're ignorant because they don't know any better they don't know the climate science because those resources weren't made available to them and the best thing we can do for them instead of yelling at them for being stupid or being upset because they don't know any better is to take the time and energy to educate them on how to do better and how to be better so that's my answer to that awesome thank you so much for your response to that Serovi another audience question so in society school is a microcosm to society and so whatever takes place in schools will obviously be reflected on society if activists are you know born in schools and schools can really make sure that they equip their students to be activists then they'll go out into the world and be activists so um the audience member would love to hear any reflections you might have on how schools can do this build up activists and better support deeper sustainable activism in students absolutely that's an amazing question um I'd like to give quickly a shout out to Ruth Poland I don't know if she's here but Ms. Poland is the green team advisor at MDI high school and she is amazing anyone who's met her will agree she's a wonderful woman but she's also shaped my activism career in a serious way um I think Ms. Poland and Ms. Merica who's also here she's the civil rights team advisor for our school are perfect examples of what schools can do well to help youth activists um they provide these teachers and these groups like a civil rights team or a green team provide support and they provide guidance for young people they provide a safety net for when you encounter problems you can't get over by yourself they provide resources for when you want to learn more but don't know where to go they provide laughter when you're in the dark and all alone because let me tell you facing systemic challenges by yourself is sad it's very scary and it's very sad and having people to laugh about it with and having people to cry on the shoulder of really makes a big difference and um they provide that kind of support as well and I also like to say that schools are like you said tomorrow schools are a microcosm of society what happens there will reflect out into society and the best thing about school is that we're there to learn and learning isn't just teacher to student it's student to teacher and student to student and the best I'm sure there's some study on this but I'm pretty sure when we're in school our brains are like prepped and ready to learn so if you can talk to the people around you and people who don't always agree with you and you can tell them about your experiences and your knowledge I'm sure that that is I know for fact that that is the perfect kind of teaching environment school is meant to create so that's also another thing that schools do well awesome thanks for your perspective on that serenity um so I'm seeing two questions here in the audience about steps individuals can take to address the climate crisis as you said this is a huge crisis it's an existential crisis and it is at times very daunting to even be involved in this work so I guess I'll put a little spin on this question and ask not only what can adults do or what can younger folks do could you give I guess a better scope of from you know a middle school student to maybe a high school student college student and then adults at each of those phases what can folks do to get involved and to stop the issue of climate change mm-hmm I'm arguing with these heavy questions I'm not able to remember all that uh so I think it's most important first and foremost that no matter where you are in your life be it a middle schooler or a retiree there is always something you can do it's never too late and I know I'm going to sound so preachy as a 16 year old saying that but it is never too late to get involved I think that the biggest thing that we can do is um the biggest thing that we can do to cripple ourselves in this is to doubt ourselves think I'm too young or I'm too old or I'm not smart enough to join this group because that's a lie let me tell you right now I don't care what situation you're in that's a lie you can always do something um I think middle school is hard because I don't I wasn't involved in this in middle school but I think what's most important is educating yourself that's uh middle school is a time where the world is open to you because you can learn so much and there are so many people around you who are willing to teach you so if you can educate yourself about the climate crisis you know I know it sounds awful but read the news you can read the news and learn about what's happening in the world around you talk to your family and the adults in your life about the climate crisis because you may not have influence but they have influence and you can influence them so if you can convince them to do if you can share with them resources that you're using to learn if you can talk to them about there's this town vote that's happening on solar panels next week we should totally go and participate in that discussion that's a way that you can influence them as a high schooler I think as a high schooler I can say it's pretty fun but there's also a lot you can do at this age I'd like to steal some words from my friend Josh Wood who's speaking next month but Josh has said very eloquently that you can't don't try to organize on a large level start local meet up with one or two friends and address a problem you see be it there's no recycling in my town there's a huge plot over there that people aren't using for solar I want to install electric vehicle chargers anything find a problem that you see and work with two or three other people on a local level to solve it and your momentum will build and create ripples outwards that will have larger effects on the statewide or even national level one event I can talk about I have some friends one of them is here who in middle school did a plastic bag band they got plastic bags single-use plastic bags and polystyrene band within their town and then the ordinance was quickly picked up by the surrounding towns and then I think later that year the state did a plastic bag band and I'm I wasn't involved in that group so I don't know the exact politics but it's a perfect example of how something done between four or five friends as part of the school science project in the seventh grade had echoes and ripples on a statewide level in college I think you got a lot more power there I would say you can drive in college that's even better usually you can drive so get together with friends and find support younger and older people I feel like colleges are really from my experience with college students it's a really unique age where you've got the free time that high school students might not have and also the vision of youths that adults might not have so you're able to influence both of those groups surrounding you and that's I have the same advice for college students that I have for high schoolers maybe it'll change when I'm in college maybe Amara should answer this question because she's in college and then for adults I'd say the biggest thing is knowing your power and finding the best ways to use your power use it to empower the people around you use it to educate your peers use it to make sure the youth in your life are aware of what's happening around them and use it to if you have experience in this movement if you maybe started in high school and are now an adult use your experience to help other youths who are upcoming and most importantly talk to the youth around you and find out what they need because oftentimes we have needs that we are unwilling or unable to tell you because we're shy we don't know how we don't know if we need them and that only comes out when you talk to them so that's my one long answer I hope I got all the pieces yes awesome thank you so much Sarohi for for sharing about that and I guess as my perspective as a college student it's very similar to the way I was organizing in high school but with more flexibility given I don't have to be in school from like eight to two but I have another question for you and this kind of relates to really being I would say intentional in activist spaces and making sure that activists themselves are taking care of themselves in dealing with you know these issues that are such big issues as well as in themselves probably battling with you know am I supposed to be in this space is this the space for me am I actually contributing to this work so I was wondering if you could speak to imposter syndrome have you felt that in activist spaces how if so you know how did you overcome this and how first do you even recognize if you're dealing with the feelings of imposter syndrome that's a really good question this is another one I'm like talking about with my youth activist friends imposter syndrome is very manipulative I don't know if manipulative is the right word but it's very yucky and very yucky feeling you can feel where you doubt you're belonging in a movement and most of the time it's unfounded it's it comes from self-doubt I found the best way to identify it is like I said earlier talk to the people around you you know I could say hey Amara I'm not sure why I'm doing this I don't think I'm doing it for the right reasons and Amara the kind and lovely friend she is would ask me what do you feel your reasons are and I would tell her I'm doing it because I care and she would tell me you shouldn't be feeling awkward about that because that's also why I'm doing it but have conversations with the people around you because oftentimes you twist up your own logic in your head and it takes talking about it with another person to really lay it out and I would also say that we're very good at lying to ourselves I don't know about you guys but sometimes I'm faced with situations where I think if someone else brought me this problem I would have an answer for them in like 10 seconds but because it's me I don't know what to do think about I can guarantee you every other person that you look at who's like I bet this person definitely knows what they're doing and I bet this person feels so comfortable in the movement also has had moments where they don't feel at home but in in the end you have to remember that the movement a wave is made up of individual people the wave of movement is made up of individual people and if you take away one or two three people eventually you won't have anything left so every person contributes and every person has value regardless of if they think they don't belong everyone does belong as long as you care about the movement and as long as you're working to make the world a better place imposter syndrome sucks and it's stupid most of the time that's my 10 that my 10 word summary awesome thank you so much for for sharing that Sorokia I just um that that um analogy of the wave is really resonating with me I think that is is so beautiful in such the case that it really takes everyone to make a difference in this movement um I am not seeing any other questions in the chat so just being in being cognizant of time if there are any other questions please feel free to post those in the chat or unmute yourself I'll give folks maybe just one minute to do that then we can prepare to close out let's see so we just posted the recording it's going to be available on the main autobahn website and while you're on the main autobahn website please do register for what I know will be a very interesting and amazing talk by josh wood in February February 3rd because I got the date wrong the first time at 4 30 and just another round of applause to sorokia and the perspective that she shared and her amazing words that just keep leaving me taken aback every time I hear her um I just want to yes so much applause take a moment to just take it in sorokia um thank you all so much once again for joining us this evening um and again please make sure to check out the autobahn website for those resources as well as the registration link for josh's talk um I hope you all have a wonderful evening and please do take care thank you all for your time and for coming in