Rosie Hampson was prepared, professional, poised and polite. And she was also still only in high school as she spoke on one of the many, many Zoom meetings she regularly has. This particular one was a meeting with the superintendent of New Haven’s public schools.
But that’s what she and her co-members of the New Haven Climate Movement have learned it takes to fight climate change: Long and not always super-exciting meetings, doing careful research, diplomacy, and occasionally a fun protest waving signs for a couple of hours.
“I was definitely more interested in the big rallies and getting people out there, which, I think, is also really valuable, and it brings a lot of energy and attention to issues,” she said of her early days with NHCM. “The political side and really working through things is often sort of overlooked. And I think for us that has been a really big focus. It’s all been testifying, research, meeting — and sometimes it does feel slow, but we do see policy change, if just on the local level.”
Adrian Huq, essentially NHCM’s first youth member, hadn’t thought about board of education meetings when joining the group.
“Whatever it was, I was down for the ride, and I was ready to continue,” said Huq, who uses they/them pronouns. “Anyone that’s coming from outside an activist perspective, they do just see protests, direct action, but it’s actually a lot of legwork. Sometimes two or three times a week, we’ll have meetings, and it’s just emails, agendas, facilitating meetings. It’s a lot of that same cycle.”
Huq stuck with NHCM even through their four years of college at Tufts and is now continuing in-person, having come back to New Haven for graduate school.
Hampson joined NHCM three years ago, a logical extension of her interest in environmental issues and climate emerging as “the biggest environmental issue out there.” She’s been running the group’s education committee, a position she is now transitioning out of after graduating from Wilbur Cross High School in June and getting ready to attend college later this summer. Her replacement is entering her junior year at Cross.
The committee’s focus had been pushing the board of education to pass a climate emergency resolution designed by NHCM, which it did in September 2022. After that, the focus became staying on the board’s case to implement the various provisions. Among them: getting transportation emissions to zero by 2030, starting composting and recycling programs in all schools, upgrading the energy efficiency of buildings, creating more robust climate education programs — an extension of a climate justice schools initiative passed in 2021 — and hiring three new staff people to do all that. It all meant a whole lot more meetings.
“The past year, we’ve been very active around the climate emergency resolution and trying to make sure things are happening around implementing those points,” Hampson told Superintendent Madeline Negron during that Zoom meeting in May. And she told Negron the group recognized the school system faced financial difficulties, so they were modifying their request for three hires to two — one of whom would be a grant writer to help find the money to implement programs. The other would be an energy coordinator.
“We have been doing a lot of research, however, on examples of energy coordinators and other sustainability staff and the benefits those can have to districts,” Hampson told Negron, citing significant cost savings. “I definitely do understand that it is a big upfront investment, to pay staff members, but we are really hoping to see these things on a district-wide level and also that there will be likely significant-long term benefits and cost savings even just within like the course of one year.”
There’s definitely more energy because of the youth.
Chris Schweitzer, NHCM Founder
Negron, who was not quite a year into her position at the time, spelled out the financial reality — a sizeable deficit — the school system faces.
“I definitely value what you are advocating for. And it’s work that you’re doing to make things better for all of us, and even our future generations, because we know if we don’t act now, we are placing future generations in danger,” Negron told the students. “So, Rosie and team, I do support it. I will continue to explore in terms of the resources that we need to be able to do this work.”
Not a hint that Negron was even remotely blowing them off as “kids.” And the NHCM members sitting in on the meeting felt they were taken seriously.
“Yeah, I do feel that they are,” said Manxi Han, the soon-to-be junior who is taking over the education committee.
Huq called it “a very positive meeting.”
“That was a big step for us getting to sit down with the superintendent,” they said.
Hampson characterized the results as mixed.
I know, it’s baby steps, but baby steps are important.
Jack Grindley, NHCM
“They’re willing to meet with us and support us and listen to our demands and talk through with us. So I think that they really do care about it and know that it’s an issue that they want to act on,” she said of both the superintendent and the board of ed. “But it’s also mixed, because I think it’s not always a priority.”
Negron called the NHCM students she’s interacted with “impressive” and said that when she learned of the climate resolution and the existence of NHCM with its many New Haven public schools members, it immediately sparked her interest.
“I am most impressed by the fact that these are kids that are spending their time and doing the necessary research that they need to do to not only educate themselves but educate others,” she said. “So I just see it as a group of kids that is going to help me and help the system really home in on what it means to increase student engagement and empowerment.”
From the beginning
NHCM grew from the New Haven/Leon (Nicaragua) Sister City Project, a longstanding social justice operation that evolved to include climate change when it became apparent that it was a factor in the turmoil and problems in that country.
Initially NCHM was an adult effort, but its founder — Chris Schweitzer, the New Haven program director for the sister city project — found them less-than-energetic. So he began drawing student interns into more active roles. One of the first was Huq in 2019.
Schweitzer is still involved, but young people are in charge.
“I think there’s definitely more energy because of the youth organization. There’s more youth who are coming out to meetings and putting more time in than we’ve had the experience that adults have done,” he said. “With youth, they’re more interested in doing fun, creative things like art, which can grab media attention. The alders have definitely been more deferential to them, just in listening and acting on that. If we had 10 people — adults — going to meetings, we would have, I think, a very different response than the fact that the youth are speaking up.”
Save the Sound, the Connecticut and New York advocacy group that has its headquarters in New Haven, has partnered with NHCM and come to count on them for Save the Sound events in the area, said Alex Rodriquez, who heads Save the Sound’s environmental justice department.
“What I thought was especially impressive of them was their own watchdog ability,” he said, recalling when American Rescue Plan money was provided to New Haven. “They were advocating on a weekly basis in the streets for that funding to go towards energy efficiency retrofits for the city, for climate education, for more bicycle lanes. They were on it.”
Huq, whose environmental interest started in things like recycling and food waste, moved into energy efficiency work as part of their internship. In spring 2019, Schweitzer tapped Huq to organize a youth-led climate rally, which led to a campaign to get the New Haven Board of Alders to pass a Climate Emergency Resolution for the city, which it did unanimously in September 2019, three years before the board of education took similar action.
The city resolution was designed to establish a climate emergency mobilization task force. It called for zero emissions in the city by 2030. But NHCM’s provision to establish a funding stream in the city budget to implement the goals was eliminated from the resolution.
Usually when we reach a low in a campaign, or we think that we’ve gotten as far as we can, we start to think of a new one.
Adrian Huq, NHCM first youth member
“I would say it felt like a success at the time, but there has been not great follow through,” Huq said. Movement towards emissions reductions has been less than robust. The task force was formed and even included three NHCM members.
“I think that task force kind of fizzled out a bit during COVID. But I heard that they’re meeting monthly again. We really don’t hear updates at all from them,” Huq said. City departments had six months to report how they would cut greenhouse gas emissions. Huq said they never did that either. “We’ve met with the mayor maybe like twice in the last five years.”
Success on the education front has been hard to measure, Hampson said. “How much is happening for climate and how much would happen anyway, like the energy retrofits? Is it just that the system is not working any more, or are we actually doing it because we want to make them more efficient? Either way, it’s great, but sometimes I think when the board will give reports they might use things that they were going to do anyway, rather than things just done for climate.”
And then there’s the group’s ask for three climate positions: they’re basically down to just a grant writer.
“It feels like just the best bargain we can make right now,” Huq said. “We’ve hit some dead ends for a while in terms of advocating for new staff when they’re already doing layoffs, and there’s always a chronic issue of budget cuts and restraints.”
“Usually when we reach a low in a campaign, or we think that we’ve gotten as far as we can, we start to think of a new one,” they said.
And that’s what’s happening now.
Pivoting
The new, nearly singular focus seems to be transportation. The organization as a whole is preparing a wide-ranging transportation resolution to present to the New Haven Board of Alders. It begins with a litany of climate change-induced horrors and then demands more than a half-dozen actions aimed at getting people out of their cars and onto public transportation, bikes and city sidewalks as a means to lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest offender in the state: motor vehicles.
It also calls on the mayor and alders to commit budget funds to do that.
Suprya Sarkar, who has just taken over NHCM’s general committee, is mindful of how the alders handled the last resolution — watering it down and, over time, ignoring it.
“I’m super-concerned that it’s just going to get disregarded,” said Sarkar, who is heading into her senior year at Mark T. Sheehan High School in Wallingford and who sees transportation policy as good for both the planet and marginalized communities. “I definitely don’t want local government to take this lightly,” she said.
Simultaneously, the education committee is focused on a narrow transportation initiative — pushing for free city bus passes for students. City buses around the state were free during COVID, mainly for health considerations. When that ended about 16 months ago, ridership dropped instantly and dramatically.
It turns out, state legislation passed in the most recent session will be providing New Haven and Hartford each with $175,000 to run a free bus pass pilot program for high school students with a focus on those with the greatest need.
“I feel passionate about taking this on, partly because I feel the free bus passes is really important for climate,” Hampson said. “But I also feel it has to connect to people, especially low-income families, working-class families. I feel like it’s really something that will get people out there and excited.”
For NHCM education committee member Jack Grindley, who takes a city bus from his East Haven home to his high school in New Haven, the bus pass initiative has him thinking about taking more of a leadership role. “I know, it’s baby steps, but baby steps are important,” he said. But he wondered whether a New Haven resolution would be enough. “What if North Haven doesn’t do it? East Haven doesn’t do it? West Haven doesn’t do it? And it isn’t really making that much of a difference.”
Han as the new committee leader now will shepherd the free bus initiative. And she knows fellow students want it. When she and Hampson did a survey in their high school asking what students thought would help them use transportation that was more healthy than cars: “People were like, ‘bus passes, bus passes, bus passes,’” she said.
The learning curve she and the group face is potentially having to work at the state level for the first time. To that end, she is continuing the committee practice of weekly meetings with running notes that document the details of agendas, discussions, member assignments and follow-ups. She has been reaching out to the Hartford area group hoping to have a say in how their pilot money, due to arrive in both cities the end of September, will be spent there. She’s also brought independent transportation advocates in to speak with the committee. Negron said no plan for the pilot has been decided on yet.
Han’s smooth transition into running the committee speaks to the almost organic process that keeps NHCM running and handing off leadership roles as members cycle out to attend college and younger ones cycle in.
After all, these are mainly high school students, not professional organizers, with no official expertise in running an organization like NHCM.
“I really do like this process,” Hampson said. “The organization has only been around for a few years, but I think it’s really kept the energy going having that high school lead.” She said it helps the group have a bigger impact with the Board of Education and the city. “I think they want to listen to the students.”
But the ranks are a bit thin at the moment, and there has been a good deal of discussion about the best ways to recruit more members and hire more interns.
Looking ahead
“We recognize we’re not very big,” Schweitzer said. “We may not be able to get the 500 people out we got in 2019, or the 200 people we got in 2020, but being persistent and strategic and using art creativity is where we’re at at this moment.”
Recruitment plans are multi-pronged — everything from old-fashioned fliers to tapping into existing organizations to help with a demonstration planned for September.
“We’re very diverse group of people. We go to school in different cities, a lot of different experiences, and yet we’re coming together to do something together, a push in a similar direction. And I think that, that in itself, is very admirable,” Han said, confirming that much of the summer will be to figure out plans for the future.
As they do, one of their biggest messages and selling points is that despite the enormity of climate change, acting on a local level is important and effective.
“Obviously, at this point, we need huge changes. So it’s a little hard to feel like you’re making an impact when you’re just local,” Hampson said. “But I do think that it really is important. And if everybody does think locally, then that becomes international.”
“I think a local way is really beneficial, probably even more beneficial than a national way, mostly because the national ones tend to get disregarded but the local ones, they become a more cultural thing, and everyone tends to talk to them,” Sarkar said. She has experienced some of each, seeing climate change play out in her parents’ birth country of Bangladesh, now experiencing some of the worst effects of a warming planet. The national policy there, she said, just gets disregarded. “So I think probably working on the local level and slowly escalating may be the best outlet as of right now.”
As the old-timer, Huq has now seen NHCM grow, shrink, shift and adapt. Local work, they said, has special benefits that include “being able to have deeper roots within the city and really make better allies with New Haven city staff and board of education staff and local politicians, and really grow our base and presence,” they said. “I feel the rewarding aspect of also being able to meet dozens of youth that have worked with us throughout the years and see them also grow up and go to college and … hopefully continue to carry activism in the rest of their lives.”