"I think the answer is pretty simple. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable."

Episode 11 of Shack & Mu hands the mics to two HBCU students at the HBCU Climate Change Conference. Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali opens on June Jordan's line that we are the ones we have been waiting for, then he and Dr. Sacoby Wilson hear from Joseph Carter, a junior political science major at Texas Southern University, and Sincere Harrison, a senior at Clark Atlanta University who came up through the Bullard Center's Environmental Justice Climate Corps.

The gap they describe first is awareness. Students are living with exposures nobody has told them about. Mold came up as the example, in homes and in campus facilities, and neither of them knew much about it until the research put it in front of them. Both want to make the subject interesting enough that other students actually engage.

Then the question of where power comes from when the world makes you feel small. Joseph is the youngest person at his law firm and the youngest in the Texas Legislative Internship Program, which usually takes law students. He works housing defense across 72 counties in Texas, fighting unlawful evictions and the conditions landlords leave behind. Sincere walked into the Bullard Center internship with no idea what environmental justice was, spent a month in the field looking at what was fouling the air in Black communities, and has since recruited four students into the summer program.

What they carry back to campus comes down to exposure. Joseph noticed a Harvard summer program had two Texas Southern students in it while other HBCUs sent far more, and he runs a nonprofit pushing opportunities to students on his campus and high schoolers around Houston. Sincere does the same at Clark Atlanta for the students behind him, because nobody told him those doors existed either.

CHAPTERS

0:00 June Jordan and the next generation

0:29 Fighting for climate justice while in college

0:56 Mold, and what students are not being told

2:06 The Bullard Center internship

2:59 Why Clark Atlanta matters to this movement

3:12 You have power unless you give it away

3:43 Comfortable with the uncomfortable

4:47 Being the good you want to see

6:12 What they take back to campus

6:39 Only two Texas Southern students at Harvard

7:43 The arts question

8:06 J. Cole, Drake, and telling a story

8:38 Nas, If I Ruled the World

9:18 Closing

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Awareness comes first. Mold and air quality are already in dorms and neighborhoods, and nobody tells students.

Discomfort is the cost of the room. Both describe being the youngest or the newest in the building and walking in anyway.

One internship can redirect a career. Sincere knew nothing about environmental justice until a month in the field.

Exposure compounds. Every opportunity passed down to a sophomore puts somebody else on the path.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Joseph Carter is a junior political science major at Texas Southern University. He interns with the Texas Legislative Internship Program at a firm doing housing defense work across Texas, and runs a nonprofit that gets opportunity information into students' hands.

Sincere Harrison is a senior at Clark Atlanta University on a pre-law track, studying criminal justice with a sociology minor. He came through the Bullard Center's HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps and now recruits students into it.

Find the environmental justice center closest to your campus and ask what they need. Then tell the students behind you.

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