Elizabeth Yeampierre: The Environmental Justice Warrior Who Leads UPROSE

Fern Gillespie
For almost 30 years, Elizabeth Yeampierre, an internationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney of Black and Indigenous ancestry, has been on the frontline advocating environmental justice for Black and Brown communities. As the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Puerto Rican community-based organization (established in 1966), Yeampierre has been advocate and trailblazer for community organizing sustainable development, environmental justice, community-led climate adaptation, multi-generation advocacy and community resiliency.

Yeampierre, a lifelong New Yorker who has lived in neighborhoods from the South Bronx to Brooklyn, holds a bachelor’s degree from Fordham and law degree from Northeastern University. Her expertise and impact on environmental justice has made her a popular featured speaker at local, national and international forums including Sage Paris 2015, 2016 GRI Amsterdam, White House Forum on Environmental Justice, Yale, Harvard, Cooper Union, Columbia, and universities, colleges, and conferences all over the country and spoke at the opening climate rally for Pope Francis at the National Mall, The Battle for Paradise at Cooper Union with Naomi Klein.

Her work is featured in several books, in addition, being featured in Latina Magazine, VOGUE, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Grist, American Prospect, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Democracy Now, The Intercept, and a variety of media outlets throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

She has operated in leadership roles with national environmental justice organizations and received multiple honors for her innovative advocacy for environmental justice for Black and Brown people. She was recently honored by Time Magazine with The Closers 2025, honoring 25 Black leaders working to end the racial and equity gap.

This summer, UPROSE had New York City’s first community LED solar project in collaboration with Working Power. Located in Sunset Park, the headquarters of UPROSE, the solar project will serve 200 families that have subscribed. The some of the proceeds will go back into the community. Members of the community will determine how the funds are reinvested to of climate change.

During Climate Week, UPROSE will host the event Climate Justice Lives Here in Sunset Park from September 22 – 26, 2025. It’s a free community-driven event on climate action, education, and advocacy. Special programs include the hip hop caucus discussing Katrina: 20 Years Later. A panel on how Caribbeans support each other from Haiti to Jamaica when there is an extreme weather event in the Caribbean.

A program on Full Fashion focusing on alternatives to inexpensive clothes laced with carcinogen that abuse the environment, workers and violate human rights. Instead, Full Fashion explores repurposing and recycling clothes into something elegant and beautiful, which will be featured in a fashion show. There’s singer Diana Assini and blessing of the Four Corners with medicine men and women from the Southwest.

Our Time Press spoke with Elizabeth Yeampierre about Climate Week and this new era of environmental justice.
OTP: People are coming from around the world to New York City’s Climate Week. Last year, UPROSE held their Climate Week event in Manhattan. Why was it important to bring your event Climate Justice Lives Here to Brooklyn?
EY: Climate Week has become this corporate-led big green event in New York City. But, the city is surrounded by Black and Brown people who are living in the midst of environmental burdens and have solutions to climate change. We can’t be invisible in our own city. UPROSE thought it was important to remind people who are coming into New York that climate justice is in community, that the solutions are in community, that we are changing the landscape in community, that we’re putting down infrastructure, we’re passing legislation and we’re building leadership.

OTP: What is the major environmental justice challenge for Black and Latino communities in Brooklyn?
EY: In Brooklyn, I think it’s a number of things. One is extreme heat. Also, poor air quality. You know, we’ve been having yellow skies from the burning in Canada. Then the lack of vision for looking at our significant maritime industrial areas and repurpose them to address our climate and economic needs so that we have great jobs. Instead of doing that what happens is that you see these sectors being turned into opportunities for the privileged. When you disrupt families and the connections they have in the neighborhood, you increase the chances that they’re not going to survive the extreme weather events.

OTP: The Trump Administration’s deregulation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was not only a major setback to the Climate Change movement, it was devastating to Black, Brown and poor communities who face hazardous pollutions daily. What impact has it had on UPROSE?

EY: All the funding and a lot of the support, legislation and regulations that came out of a legacy of the environmental justice movement were deregulated by January. Decades of work done by the environmental justice movement was deregulated. Now we’re in a very different position. Now what we’re doing is thinking about how do we take care of each other on the ground as if the federal government doesn’t exist because. We know that they’re going to remove FEMA and that those supports won’t be available. We know that they are investing in more fossil fuel extraction.

So, they are literally complicit in accelerating climate change. That they are moving away from the resources that existed for solutions that would address not only our environmental health, but our environmental future. So what do we do in a situation like that? Those of us who are descendants of extraction, colonialism and enslavement can’t just sit down and say, it’s all over for us. What it means is that we lean into each other, we lean into community and we try to figure out how to hold the line in the face of political disruption. That’s what we’re doing in Brooklyn and Sunset Park and that’s what the movement is going all over the country. We’re all working with each other, sharing resources, and holding the line because the lives of our people are at stake.

OTP: So, UPROSE and the environment justice movement had to readjust in terms of not depending on federal government grants or government programs?
EY: We have to recalibrate. Think about as war. You know, our ancestors were people who didn’t get health care. Who lived out through the worst conditions. Who were mistreated on a regular basis. And they had the ability to imagine us. To do everything they needed so they could feed each other, support each other, take care of each other.

UPROSE is part of coalitions and movement spaces. We’re members and part of the leadership of the Climate Justice Alliance, which is a national organization of frontline leaders across the country. We’re also part of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, which is a citywide organization. On the state level, we are co-founders of NY Renews, a coalition of 400 group members across the state. We are all working with each other to support each other to make sure that we’ll be able to get through this.
For more information on getting involved with UPROSE or attending UPROSE programs and events, please visit www.uprose.org