Episodes

Brent is a 1994 graduate of Mississippi State University in Agriculture and Biological Engineering. After graduation, Brent worked as an Environmental Consultant for two central Mississippi environmental engineering firms. In 1999, Brent went to the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation to become the organization’s Environmental Programs Coordinator and served in that capacity for over seven years. From October 2006 to December 2019, Brent has served as the State Activities Coordinator for the 25x’...

Marsha Jackson is the co-chair of Southern Sector Rising, a nonprofit environmental justice organization based in Dallas, TX. Founded to get rid of Shingle Mountain, an illegal dump in a southern Dallas community, SSR’s mission is to offer marginalized residents health equity by ending decades of racist zoning, forcing industrial polluters out of Black and Brown neighborhoods, and by more evenly distributing the pollution burdens of our city. Thanks to Marsha and SSR’s years of unrelenting advoc...

Alabama native Catherine Coleman-Flowers is an environmental and climate justice activist bringing attention to the largely invisible problem of inadequate waste and water sanitation infrastructure in rural communities in the United States. As the founding director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (formerly the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise), Flowers builds partnerships — from close neighbors, to local elected officials and regional nonprofits, to federal lawmak...

We’re back for Season 2! In the first episode of the new season, Abigail and Maresha chat with the leaders of the organizations that developed the Climate Justice, Y’all podcast. The conversation is a both a look back at the first season and a look ahead to this next one. Welcome back, y’all! Rev. Michael Malcom is Executive Director of the People’s Justice Council and Alabama Interfaith Power and Light. He is a licensed and ordained United Church of Christ Minister. Alexander Easdale is the Exe...

This special Earth Day episode is also our season 1 finale — and it’s a good one. Abigail and Mareshah are speaking with Chief Pete Parr and Danna Smith about forests, nature-based solutions, and more. Enjoy! Chief Pete Parr is Chief of the Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina (PDITSC). He is also a Board Member of the Native American Advisory Committee (CMA) & South Carolina Indian Affairs Commission (SCIAC). Danna Smith is the founder of Dogwood Alliance. For over 20 years, she has been at t...

Today is International Women’s Day, a “global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.” We recorded this episode with EEECHO Co-Founder Kathy Egland last year, but what better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than to highlight one of the most iconic Southern women in the fight for environmental and climate justice? We hope you enjoy this conversation with the lady affectionately known to some* as “Mama Kat.” Katherine T. “Kathy” Egland is the...

Buckle up, because this week’s episode features some heavy hitters in the world of renewable energy advocacy. Seriously, these two are brilliant. Sit back and enjoy! Dr. Holmes Hummel founded Clean Energy Works to accelerate investments in cost-effective distributed energy solutions to open the clean energy economy to all. As a champion for inclusive financing, Dr. Hummel led Clean Energy Works to win four international searches for breakthrough climate strategies, including the FiRe Award for h...

This week’s episode features a pair of amazing Appalachians in conversation with our hosts: Bri Knisley is the Tennessee Campaign Manager for Appalachian Voices, where she organizes campaigns for energy democracy and justice in the Tennessee Valley Authority Footprint. Over the last several years, the fight for coal ash worker safety and expanding union jobs at TVA has been central to realizing a grassroots vision for clean, equitable and publicly controlled power in the TVA region. A Virginia n...

This week, we’re talking with two faith leaders from the South, Rev. Leo Woodberry from South Carolina and Dr. Daniel Joranko from Tennessee. Rev. Leo Woodberry was born and raised in New York City. There he became involved with community organizing at an early age, as a student organizer. Reverend Woodberry is the pastor of Kingdom Living Temple, Executive Director of New Alpha Community Development Corporation in Florence, SC, and a member of the SC Environmental Justice Network. He became inv...

In this episode, we chat with two visionary leaders in Alabama and Georgia: Dr. Mikhiela Sherrod and Susan Diane Mitchell. Dr. Mikhiela Sherrod is the Executive Director of Agricultural Missions, Inc., an 85 year old ecumenical organization that supports rural people in the US, Africa, Caribbean, Latin America in using advocacy and agriculture to address the structural causes of poverty and injustice. She has over 17 years of experience working as a community organizer with Black farmers and rur...

Barbara Weckesser and Barbara Nelson are local residents of Pascagoula, Miss. Barbara Weckesser is originally from coal country in Kentucky and retired with her husband in Pascagoula in 2010. Barbara Nelson grew up here in Moss Point and Pascagoula. Both of their fathers worked for local industries. They are the founding members of Cherokee Concerned Citizens, an industrial fenceline neighborhood organization formed in 2013 to demand a buyout for their community because of the health impacts rel...

In this episode, Abigail and Mareshah sit down to talk about the importance of land, food sovereignty, ancestral roots, and more with Carlton Turner. Carlton Turner is the Founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, also known as Sipp Culture. Sipp Culture is a grassroots organization that prioritizes bringing fresh food in a food apartheid within rural Mississippi. We’re talking about land because in order to stand up for what we stand on, we must recognize the oppression that st...

Abigail and Marésha sit down and talk with Nina Morgan, climate and environmental justice organizer for GASP. Nina’s an incredible organizer — but we may be a little biased since she’s also a part of the team that’s making this podcast happen! Nina is graduate of UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) where she studied Anthropology and Sociology. Nina mapped over 3,000 trees on campus using GIS and served as a decathelete in the 2017 DOE Solar Decathlon competition. Nina is also a co-founder ...

This is Climate Justice, Y'all!, a podcast dedicated to lifting up and centering the climate and environmental justice movement in the South. Climate Justice, Y'all In this episode, Abigail goes one-on-one with Major Joe Womack. Born in historic Africatown, a community in Mobile, Ala., Joe graduated from the Mobile County Training School in 1968 — the first training school for Black folks in the state of Alabama. After earning a degree in business administration from Saint Paul’s College in Vir...

In this episode, Abigail and Marésha chat with Nsombi Lambright-Haynes (One Voice), Bee Moorehead (Texas Impact), and Andrea Miller (People Demanding Action). We’re talking about the importance of protecting our democratic institutions in the context of bold, ambitious climate action. Nsombi, Bee, and Andrea are three of the leading Southern voices when it comes to democracy, voting rights, and why it matters. Nsombi Lambright-Haynes. One Voice, a statewide leadership developme nt and policy adv...

On this episode of Climate Justice, Y’all, we are joined by Jeannie Economos of the Farmworker Association of Florida. Jeannie’s title is Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator. She’s been with the Farmworker Association for more than 20 years. She focuses on issues related to farmworkers’ exposure to pesticides. She is also coordinator of the Lake Apopka Farmworker Memorial Quilt Project, which memorializes the former farm workers on Lake Apopka who were exposed to toxic ...

In this special episode of Climate Justice, Y’all, we are joined by Juan B. Mancias. Juan is the Tribal Chairman of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Born in Dimmitt, TX, and raised in Plainview, Juan is the eldest born to a lineage of hereditary chiefs of the Carrizo Comecrudo. Juan has worked alongside the Sierra Club, protecting prairie dogs, organized marches against the Dos Republicos Coal mine, and initiated two inter-tribal organizations that are still viable and thriving today. Curre...

In this episode of Climate Justice, Y’all, we speak with Chandra Farley, Just Energy Director with Partnership for Southern Equity, and Daniel Tait, Chief Operating Officer of Energy Alabama. Energy burden is extremely high in the South, and the disparate impact of energy burden felt between wealthy and poor Southerners is extreme. Chandra and Daniel together know so much about the energy injustice facing Southerners, whether they get their electrify from small rural electric cooperatives or mas...

This is Climate Justice, Y’all, a podcast dedicated to lifting up and centering the climate and environmental justice movement in the South. Despite the South being the most biodiverse, diverse, and one of the largest economic engines in the world, we are underfunded and often barred from the decision-making table. Because of that, we decided to pull up a chair and amplify the stories of communities in the South hit the hardest by the climate crisis. We’re using good ol’ fashion storytelling to ...