71: You can't be an environmentalist unless you're anti-racist with Leah Thomas and Sabs Katz from Intersectional Environmentalist Medium Well

We’re back with more episodes! I am so honored to speak with Leah Thomas and Sabs Katz, founder and co-founder respectively of Intersectional Environmentalist, in today’s episode. We chat about several topics regarding how being an advocate for the environment must be in tandem with doing anti-racism work, how sustainability has been commoditized, and more. This is such an important episode, and I hope you learn from it as much as I did when recording!
In this episode, we discuss:
How Leah and Sabs got into environmentalism
Why Leah and Sabs focus on environmentalism over sustainability
How we need to move past zero waste and “mason jar” sustainability
How to be more intersectional in your environmentalism and ask harder questions
How to call out and call in individuals
Why Leah chooses compassion over shaming
The challenges of “Columbusing”— people reclaiming things that BIPOC or other cultures have been doing for awhile
Cultural appropriation and its impacts on the environmentalism movement
The future of Intersectional Environmentalist
And more!
Mentioned in this episode
Kimberle Crenshaw and her TEDTalk, The Urgency of Intersectionality
All the deets:
Learn more about Intersectional Environmentalist and support their work on their website, intersectionalenvironmentalist.com
Check out Leah’s blog and Sab’s YouTube
Follow @intersectionalenvironmentalist, @greengirlleah, and @sustainablesabs on Instagram and share their important work
Tag me (@saraweinreb) and IE, Leah, and Sabs on Instagram with your favorite takeaways from the episode— we’d love to hear them!