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!