“I’ve always been very loud about my opinions. It hasn’t always benefited me, but I’ve never stopped,” said Rachael Meyers, Executive Director of environmental justice non-profit Youth on Root.
Meyers grew up an activist, noticing the stark differences between how her white mother’s and Black father’s families lived as she grew up in the suburbs of Boston. She experienced environmental justice issues firsthand as she visited each side of her family, noticing how frontline communities are hit harder by climate change. These communities face unpredictable weather, hazardous environmental toxins, and discriminatory “sustainability” plans.
Here in the Bay Area, climate change and environmental policy do not affect everyone equally. Until 2007, a company named Romic Environmental Technologies operated a hazardous waste plant in East Palo Alto, polluting the surrounding neighborhood and contributing to poor air quality from the “pass-through” traffic network. All of this has led to a childhood asthma rate 2.5 times greater than the surrounding neighborhoods in EPA.
“In college, I was very engaged in anti-police brutality and fighting against mass incarceration. I had environmentalists saying what we were fighting for was a distraction from the cause because if we didn’t have a planet, it didn’t matter,” Meyers said.
It wasn’t until later that Meyers realized that this wasn’t true and put a name to the intersection she was fighting for and experiencing. She was 27 when she first heard the term “environmental justice.”
After graduating from Bennington College in 2015, Meyers worked in youth camps, schools, and non-profit organizations doing youth power building through community action, landing her in the Bay Area.
“My whole purpose in life has always been to work with young people. I’ve always been driven by the mission to support joy and make sure Black and brown youth have the agency and self-determination to imagine pathways for themselves, despite where they live or what they’re experiencing,” Meyers said.
When she heard a youth-based environmental justice non-profit was looking for an executive director, she applied immediately. At this point, it was just two years old.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to take on building an entire non-profit. I thought that sounded like a lot of work. But with every interview I had, I fell more and more in love with the mission.”
Today, Meyers has led Youth on Root for just under three years.
The organization is dedicated to providing a leadership space for youth at the frontline of environmental harm, elevating their lived experience in affected neighborhoods over the “expertise” of observers who have studied, but never experienced, life in an environmental justice community. They make curriculums for schools and youth programs written by and for BIPOC youth, run community programs, and hold annual “Seeds of Change” summits with hundreds of attendees.
“We want to reach more of these kids so nobody has to wait until they’re 27—like I did—to learn the term ‘environmental justice,’ especially if they’re living through it,” Meyers said.
This is particularly relevant for youth who live in environmentally-impacted areas like EPA. “You have this pocket that’s experiencing a lot of these hazards and are getting dumped on from all sides. I can imagine it being somewhat isolating to feel like you’re in this little pocket that’s going through these things that the surrounding neighborhoods aren’t experiencing,” Meyers said.
Most of all, Meyers is inspired by the young activists she works with.“What struck me was that we often forget that this is a kid, right? Like, y’all are kids. You’re supposed to be screwing up and running around and goofing off. And it’s so deeply inspiring and it gives me hope to see young people who are active in the world,” she said.
