In the lineage of many creative activists, Layel Camargo is on a mission to make a just future irresistible. Through humor, joy, irreverence, improvisation, illustration, media and art of all kinds, Layel is urging us to consider what climate change is doing, big and small. We talk about everything from being prepared with an ‘end of the world cocktail’ to how their perspective as a trans indigenous person impacts their outlook on the world and their work. We met up on the unceded homelands of the Chochenyo Ohlone peoples in Oakland, CA to hug trees, go our own pace, and breathe deeply. Join us on the Trail Ahead.
For more information about Faith, Addie, Layel and The Trail Ahead go to https://www.thislanddoc.com/thetrailahead.
Discussed on this episode:
Layel on Instagram @thechosenlyfe
Addie Thompson:
Welcome to The Trail Ahead, conversations at the intersection of race, environment, history, and culture. We’re your hosts, Faith and Addie.
Faith Briggs:
We bring on folks from all walks of life to have real, authentic, messy dialogue that can lead to tangible change.
Layel Camargo:
For me, it’s very important that people laugh and enjoy what they see, and that at the end, they don’t just close their laptop or turn off their phone and it’s as if nothing happened, that it stays with them. The biggest motivation is getting people to action.
Thompson: Our guest this week is Layel Camargo. They are a climate activist, comedian, organizer, founder, outdoors enthusiast, the list goes on and on.
Briggs: They are using a unique blend of storytelling, tongue-in-cheek humor, and art, to raise climate awareness and motivate people to take action. Layel believes in using all of who you are and all of your talents and skills to bring justice to the forefront of every conversation.
Camargo: So, my name is Layel Camargo. I use they/them/theirs pronouns. I’m a descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert, which is a border-infiltrated ecological system. I live in Berkeley, California, Huichin territory of the Ohlone peoples, and I’m transgender, I’m queer, I’m a climate activist, an artist, and a content creator, filmmaker.
Thompson: We both think you’re absolutely hilarious, and it’s clear that you use humor as a way to urge folks into action, and to translate concepts and ideas that might be inaccessible to broaden the conversation, to find new entry points, all of the above. Why was humor sort of the way that you chose to go about this conversation and why do you think that that’s your leverage point or a leverage point for behavior change kind of in this entire climate crisis, climate conversation we’re having?
Camargo: I mean, first off, thank you for thinking I’m hilarious. I try a little bit, just a little bit, just enough. My favorites are like sexual innuendos. I think sexual tension is the most amazing, awkward thing to play with forever. I hope that one day that becomes old, because that would mean consent culture and sex culture is just more normalized. But yeah, I think when I came into the climate world, I did not like the way that the narratives were being perceived, like watching videos about polar ice caps melting, we all know that huge glacier, that repeating image of it just like falling into water, and that dramatic effect, like it’s just… It got old. And then I would try to see stories of humans and we weren’t actually talking about climate change as like the impact it has on humans.
And I think it’s because it’s a little abstract how it’s happening to us, because a lot of those impacts are air pollution, water pollution, pipeline contamination, infrastructure development that’s not ecologically aligned. That’s the way that the conversation goes on, how it impacts us doesn’t make sense in the way that we’ve learned to understand climate change, which is about CO2 emissions, melting ice caps, deforestation, whatever, extinction, all the very sad wa-wa stuff that just makes your heart just cringe. And I came into this world and I was like, “Well, first of all, I don’t see my people. I need to see more Black, Brown, Indigenous people up in this conversation.” This is five, six years ago, and I did a tour for about six to eight months with a friend of mine, Jesús Iñiguez, who’s a filmmaker, and we were being supported by the organization then CultureStrike, now the Center for Cultural Power, and we just went on a listening tour.
We would talk to frontline communities about climate change and mind you, these are communities that are not engaging with the issue area. We were being connected with them through environmental orgs where they’re like, “This is clearly happening there,” but they don’t talk about it like this is a climate crisis. They’re talking about it like we need clean water now.
I’ll never forget a community in Coachella. Their skin was… There were rashes everywhere. You could see it in their face that just the air pollution was really impacting their health. And I was like, “What if we just talk about this shit, but in the realities of it is.” And then we would always be like, “No, that’s inappropriate.” So then, him and I would say a lot of, for lack of better words, fucked up shit while we’re driving up and down California, of like… I think it was our way of processing what we were hearing that was so overwhelming. And I think for the first two years of doing this work with him, we felt like really fucked up people because we were digesting it in a comical way.
I was fortunate enough to get selected for Climate Story Lab. It’s like a five-day workshop and we kind of showed up being like we want to do more stories, more amplifications of the human connection around climate change, and we did some sample work, some stuff we had already rolled out, which really at the time was only one video, and then we showed them some drafts of some other one. And they were like, “You guys are funny, like the way that you’re talking about this, the way that you do your tone shift, like it’s funny.” They’re like, “We want to see more of that.”
On the other side of the hallway, there’s a whole group of comedians writing scripts on climate change, so they’re like, “Let’s bring the comedians in.” So, they like literally go outside, bring the comedians in, and we just paired up with them and started running through some ideas. And then at the end, everybody was like, “You need to just push more humor. People can jump from a place of activation and emotional activation to action faster if they’re laughing and processing instead of processing through their brain,” or even for lack of better words, touched, had some emotional impact. So, I was like, “This is enough information for me. Let’s go for it.”
So, we met with people and what has been amazing is I think I was in Arizona shooting a video around solar and Indigenous women leadership around that, and I was… You know, in our first initial interviews or conversations with people as we were scouting for stories, was like, “I want to use humor. How would you feel if I say things like sexual innuendos, things about derogatory or like stereotypical comments about natives?” I was really trying to fish, like how much humor can I really push? I’m saying this as recognizing I’m Indigenous. I probably shouldn’t do this with communities that are outside of mine at all. And they were like, you know, they’re like, “Us native people, we’re funny too.” And it was like the seriousness of it, and I was like, “Yeah. Okay.” And they’re like, “I just think people don’t get our jokes.” And I was like, “All right, let’s do it.”
Briggs: It makes so much sense, too, because exactly what you said, those iceberg pictures, how overwhelming it is to be constantly surrounded by doom and gloom and something that feels so big, that what could you possibly do as one person to stop that from happening, from that glacier melting or something like that? But bringing it to clean air, clean water, access to green spaces, and bringing it to like… This is how we live, and we can’t be… It can’t just be gloomy all the time, so how do we move forward in joy and the reality, I think, is so important.
Camargo: Yeah. What’s that saying, like if the revolution isn’t a dance party or whatever, if there isn’t music, like I don’t want to be a part of it. Yeah.
Briggs: I love that. I love that.
Camargo: I’m here for the jokes. Like I keep saying if this is our last year as a species, which honestly, it feels like we’re headed there, I’m like I at least want to go with a drink in my hand and knowing I had a good time.
Briggs: I love that. What drink in your hand?
Camargo: Okay, my go-to right now is Codigo 1856, which I probably shouldn’t be saying, but basically tequila, grapefruit, and maple syrup.
Thompson: Oh, what?
Briggs: Maple syrup, so it’s like a sexy Paloma.
Camargo: Yeah. Yeah. It’s my spin on the Paloma, for sure.
Briggs: Dang. I like that. I love a good Paloma.
Thompson: That’s amazing. I need to make that drink immediately.
Briggs: Well, I guess we’re all gonna figure out what our end of the world cocktail is gonna be for the dance party.
Thompson: Yeah. I’m gonna be thinking about that.
Camargo: That should be a thing. End of the world cocktail.
Briggs: Totally. I think you just made it a thing. I want to talk about your tour in California moving off of that. You know, you talk a lot about labor and justice, and you know, I’d say the world that I’m coming from is often like the “outdoors” or the “outdoor community,” and it’s so interesting because it really… It overlooks so many people. It overlooks labor. It overlooks migrant work. And then there’s the strangeness around posturing on Instagram and being like, “Well, this is just my life, actually. I’m just a van lifer and a mountain climber. We don’t talk about labor.” You know, it’s like we don’t talk about work at all. You know, and there’s so much privilege obviously wrapped up in that idea that like if you’re able to climb a mountain, then we don’t talk about everyone that doesn’t have that privilege, or we assume that it’s… There’s just… There’s so much in that.
But I wonder, like why don’t we talk about labor more? And what do we need to be talking about when it comes to labor in your opinion?
Camargo: It’s so funny you say that, because I always look at these Instagrams, I’m like, “But what do you do for work? You’re like posting these pictures of your rock climbing in all these various places like every other day and I’m so confused. How do you sustain yourself?” And in my head, you know, I’m just like, “Oh, they’re just like living off of an inheritance or something, or they can afford it.” And so, I think that there is this classist idea that if we talk about what we do and how we do it in order to have a livelihood, I think that there’s just this like, “Oh, what I do isn’t good enough. What I do isn’t as glorified enough, or it’s not romanticized enough so therefore I shouldn’t talk about it.”
And I think if you look across the country, most of us have labor-intensive jobs, jobs that are for either as they call them like low skilled, like community college, or just having a high school diploma or not kind of job. I think it’s because we live in the belly of the beast. A lot of the jobs that we have access to are consumerist driven, corporate, wealth accumulation driven jobs, which does make creating products and selling things, and so for a lot of that, that means we’re in factories. We’re in the fields where, you know, the 9:00 to 5:00 grind for I would say more than half of America is like 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. People are like out mining very intensive jobs. And I do feel like in the outdoorsy community, there is this kind of persona of like, “I live for the outdoors, so therefore like I work at a café on the side so that I can be out rock climbing two, three times a week,” you know. And so, I think that there’s also this idea that it doesn’t really matter what we do for money. It’s what we do that makes us happy and how we connect with the outdoors.
And the labor piece, I think it just gets lost around that. When things got unionized, when we got weekends and the labor movement, that’s kind of like what we go to when we think about labor, like, “Oh, we’re just so grateful we get weekends. We’re so grateful it’s only 40 hours a week.” And I think that the evolution of the labor conversation needs to be like… Certain groups of people are getting exploited at rates that are so high that that’s what’s eradicating the health of our planet, and what’s facilitating that exploitation is the idea of white supremacy, that there is a group of people that are worth more than other people. So, I think that where we need to move as a society is really rethinking what we touch, and what we do, and how we interact with each other from the moment we wake up till we go to sleep, the impact it has on the next seven generations, which is what our Indigenous people often tell us, and I think that we’ve lost that way.
I think the outdoors community is one way to kind of connect with nature, but it needs to get diversified. You don’t need to be rock climbing, or hiking with sticks, or doing this Instagram-fed way of how you interact with nature. Just go out. Touch the soil. Hug a tree. Take a deep breath of fresh air. Walk 0.2 miles and consider that a big adventure instead of trying to aspire for this 24-mile hike that everybody has on their bucket list. I think it’s we need to diversify the way we engage with nature.
Briggs: I mean, I think there’s so much in there, and so much that I think we’re… I mean, just reacting to and with. I think one of those things, what you said, this homogenous way that we’re taught is the way to engage with nature, and what’s so interesting with that is like when I say, “We’re taught to,” it’s like everyone’s being told that and yet what we are seeing is white culture. And so, it’s like, oh, white culture says this is how you hike, is this amount of miles, it’s this kind of thing, and it takes out more Afro-centric, more Indigenous, more collective ways of knowing. And when we’re reconnecting with nature as people who have it in our bones, I’m always like our blood is in this soil. We plant this food. We know about the sun cycles. We know these things. And yet we’re told, A, that we don’t know. We’re told B, that we’re new to it. And we’re told this is how you do it.
And I’ll just say personally too, like I’m a runner, right? I’ve been running since I was probably 11 and before that, where running competitively on teams, and the idea of like miles, and splits, and times, and seconds, and whatever, particularly during the pandemic, for me was so overwhelming that I couldn’t even get out the door. Because I couldn’t even allow myself the 0.2-mile adventure because it didn’t feel like enough.
Camargo: And that’s a constant theme in our society that has allowed for corporate wealth accumulation, and then we get stuck, and then it just bleeds into all these possibly amazing things that we could be doing, where like I have friends that are like, “If we don’t do 12 miles today, like I did nothing.” If I could speak to my hiking experience, I have breakdowns when I’m hiking, like I have multiple physical, mental, mostly mental breakdowns, and I have to have this internal mental like why am I doing this? Why am I pushing myself so hard?
And then all of a sudden, I start having these flashbacks of being a child, and being in school, and being told that I’m not enough, and that I have to do things a certain way.
Thompson: It’s become so prescriptive. It’s what is enough. We’ve become confined to a definition of what is enough in the outdoors that is represented in media, that is represented by this culture that says, “Here’s what’s enough. Here’s what’s good enough. Here’s what’s intense enough.” The effort, the summits, the views, and I think it is fueled by media, but I also think it’s fueled by who are we around, who are our peers, who has, and then who has access and who doesn’t?
Briggs: Right. Because it’s not fitting the prescribed view of what that connection looks like, you know? I feel like for me, when I run around barefoot and I get to feel mud between my toes, I’m like, “Hey, I know you. I know this place. This is where I’m from.” But you know, it’s not where I’m told I’m from.
Camargo: We have also been indoctrinated into this class idea that like there’s a certain way that you have to leave the land, and leave your relationship with land, in order for you to have made it. And that looks like not camping. That looks like not being outdoors, but like having a particular life, where you have takeout, you have a 5-bedroom house, there’s just this idea that we’re still hovering over, that is an outdated mentality of living that is keeping us from what you were speaking to of like this so raw and natural connection that we have with the land. And there’s also this white supremacy ideal on that. Once you make it, then you’ll have time to maybe start incorporating hiking or biking into your life once or twice a month or whatever it is.
A lot of us Black, Brown, Indigenous people, I think especially folks who grow up in urban cities, which that is… Folks who are descendants of slaves, folks who are on or off reservations, folks who are migrant, we cannot even fathom being outdoors. And I think that there is this attitude of like my family left the farm. In Spanish, we say, “[Spanish 0:17:23.4],” which is like we literally left the ranch. Why am I gonna go interact outdoors? Why am I gonna go camping? This was the… I’m the generational upgrade. Why am I gonna go do this thing that my parents did?
And so, I think there’s this distance that we’ve created for ourselves between like nature’s over there, we’re over here and we’re civilized, and we don’t engage. I love this topic. I know you all want to talk about so much and I love everything-
Thompson: No, this is great. We want to talk about this.
Camargo: I know. This is… I’m like, “Oh, I actually haven’t been able to process my connection when I hike.” Like there’s… Even observing how I talk to myself when I’m five miles in and my body’s like, “Why the fuck did you choose to do this again?” Because that’s literally what my body’s saying. And especially when… Those inclines, man. They just like… Ugh! When I first started this journey, it was like, “Come on, don’t be a little bitch.” For lack of better words, and I say this as like the most decolonial, anti-sexist, I am that person that will be like, “No, we shouldn’t say this like this.” I talk to myself like that. I’m like, “Why are you being…” Like when I first started, that’s exactly what I was telling myself. There’s just so many ways that we beat ourselves up because of these expectations and the progression of to where I am now is I’m at a place where now my friends know that if they’re going hiking with me, and if it’s not a day where I’m super committed to the goal, they know that I’m just gonna be like, “No, I’m here for the views. I’m gonna take my time. Y’all do the pace that you want to.” And we’ve considered getting walkie talkies at this point just so we can still stay in contact.
But I started off really beating myself up about how I felt my body breaking down after a certain amount of miles of hiking, and now I’m at the point where when I start to notice my body just being like, “Yo, I don’t really actually want to go this hard, or this fast, or maybe we don’t get through the 12 miles.” And I’m like, “Okay.”
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Thompson: There’s so many times where I look over at Faith and she’s just on her computer with the hood pulled up around her face, working away, looking legitimately like a purple Teletubby.
Briggs: Oh, totally. Even in public, I can’t actually care about how strange I look in that moment because I just feel so cozy. Like, I have actually transformed myself into a baby koala bear and that’s just my new normal. So, yeah, the Patagonia Capilene Air Hoody. Transform your world.
Thompson: That is definitely not their slogan.
Briggs: True. Maybe it should be.
Thompson: Patagonia, in the business of saving our home planet.
Briggs: And being hella cozy while doing it.
Ad 2: Okay, Faith. What is the Merrell Hydro Moc? I’ve started to see them popping up all over Instagram.
Briggs: I could try to answer that question, but I think it makes more sense to ask one of the coolest people I know, a staple of the New York City run community, [Jeb Helato 0:21:03.5], so I got the scoop from him.
Jeb: Hydro Moc, love them. In the summertime, I’m in the woods a lot, like I go camping, and like hang out at the lake, and they just seem like the perfect shoe, because they’re ventilated and they’re waterproof. I just did a 50K. Probably like the last 10 miles, I was like, “Oh, I just can’t wait to get these shoes back on there,” just so like I could let them breathe and recover.
Briggs: You heard it from the source, an NYC sneakerhead, marathoner, ultrarunner, and one of the most stylish people I know. Thanks, Jeb. The Merrell Hydro Moc. Walk, don’t run, to get you a pair.
Thompson: We spoke to Layel at home, so you may hear their puppy, Xōchipilli, scampering around at some point in this next section.
Briggs: If there was a puppy cam on right now, what would we be seeing?
Camargo: Oh. Her on the rug, in front, in my kitchen, chewing on my slipper. That is what she’s doing right now. She’s definitely gonna… She’s taking advantage of the fact that I have to be less mobile.
Briggs: When we say playing outside, what does that make you think of? Where do you go?
Camargo: I’ve been reintroducing myself into play as an adult, and it’s something that like has required me to tap into younger versions of myself and be like, “How did you like to play, Layel, when you were eight or nine?” So, I feel like playing outside really is a way to have this wholehearted living, which, Brené Brown, who’s an amazing writer, she talks about how in order to have wholehearted living, you have to really allow yourself to play. And I think playing outdoors is a way to play in our natural environment, which allows our biological, ancestral, historical ways of interacting and living to just kind of thrive.
Briggs: I love that.
Thompson: That’s amazing.
Briggs: Addie, you had a face when the wholehearted living was said. What-
Thompson: I put my hand over my heart, Layel, because I was really feeling… I love the idea of nostalgia and kind of when you mentioned how do I play in my childhood, how did that come into being, and how does it enter into my life now. I think that’s amazing. I wanted to ask you about what is healing to you and how do you find time for healing amidst all the work that you do?
Camargo: As a transgender person, like we’re told that we have to go to therapy in order to transition, and I had top surgery in 2016, and when I started my gender reaffirming as we call it, as the Western medical industrial complex calls it, when I started that process was about in 2012, and started going to therapy to just talk about like what were my options and how was it coming up, how would I talk to family about it. And I started in 2012, I was about 22, 23, and I’m so grateful that I started at the age that I started now, 10 years later, because I normalized therapeutic practice and I think that’s also what hiking has allowed me to do this past year, is I’m processing while I’m hiking.
Now, I’m at a point where I’m 32, and I have structured my life and my jobs so that is part of who I am. It’s like when you work with Layel, this is what you expect. Layel has therapy every other week. Layel will take time off to go hiking. And Layel will demand that certain foods get served for certain work events because I do try to live on a more low impact life because of my values and also because of my health. That’s healing. You know, that is me taking back my power of owning what works for me and how I’m going to process my trauma, and process my day-to-day current present time, so that I can create the future that I want.
And I say that as a dark skinned, Latinx, Indigenous, first generation, transgender person, and what a fucking audacity that I can do that. And I’m so grateful that I can be that for other people.
Briggs: One of the questions I had for you and I’m like, “All right, I’m awkward about this.” I was like, “Faith, don’t get weird.” Because I’m definitely one of those people that’s like talking about sex, and pleasure, and sexuality in public space is not something that we have been taught is normal. It’s something that we’ve been taught to have a lot of shame, a lot of guilt about. There’s a lot of ideas about how you’re supposed to be, and what’s respectable, and what’s posh, and what’s sexy, and all those things. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve come to see self-pleasure, not only as “normal,” but also as essential? And were there some unlocks along the way where you got to basically like getting past these “cultural norms” that say how we can talk about these things to being in a place where you’re like, “Oh no, we’re talking about this. I’m gonna be open aboutthis.”
Camargo: Yeah. I will start by saying that my sun sign is in Scorpio, and if you don’t know about astrology, that is one of the most sexually activated astrological signs, so that has facilitated my self-pleasure exploration from a very young age. Yeah. I think I have always really enjoyed sexual connection, especially when it’s with other people, and I have learned just like what can be transformed if you just allow yourself to be free in that space. I am a survivor of sexual violence and I’m also a queer person, so being able to express myself sexually hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been liberating, because in order for me to really love sexually the person that I am attracted to, I’ve had to uncolonized my mind and rewrite who I am as a person and what I’ve been taught, what I was taught as a child who was raised Catholic.
When I think about being a sexual person, to me it’s like a big fuck you to the systems that are keeping us oppressed. I’m allowing myself to have joy that is in turn allowing me to express my true, authentic sexuality, and at the same time allowing me to heal from experiences that I’ve had due to being socialized as a woman in a society where girls and women are facing high levels of violence, especially sexually.
Briggs: I think it’s… Thank you. Thank you, because I feel like you’re bringing me into an unlock where it’s something where I’ve been… You know, I tell people, “Bring your full self.” All the time. It’s one of the things. I’m like, “Bring your full self. What does your full self look like?” And yet, it’s almost like, “Bring your full self but not that part that we don’t talk about,” right? Not the shameful part. And it’s like, “Well, who decided that?” And the idea of like being our full selves and being fully in touch with our bodies and what you just said, embodying our bodies, is only going to allow us to be more powerful, more joyful, more open, more in touch people who can do, and bring, and be so much more.
You use the term decolonization a lot. Some people, that is now language that’s been around for them for a long time. Some people, this might be the first time they’ve heard this idea, or they’ve heard it, but they don’t have a definition. Could you talk a little bit about what that looks like and what that has looked like for you?
Camargo: Decolonization I think is a term that we’re using now to discuss changing something that currently exists to its raw, purest form that connects us back to who we really are as people. And I think on a political spectrum, when we decolonize something, we’re actually trying to make sure that we give it justice by recognizing where it comes from. And a lot of the time, that means looking back at Indigenous people of the lands and how they did things. So, I think decolonizing is a term that is being used to just allow people to dive deeper into what they’re doing and be able to pull out the bullshit, which for our society is how white supremacy and Christian dominance has really infiltrated how we think about who we are and what matters.
Briggs: You know, I think for some folks there is intimidation around those words when they don’t get defined, which is why I think like going back to what are the definitions of this and what does it look like, and then what does it look like for you personally-
Thompson: For you.
Briggs: Because you know, decolonizing for… Going back to my people and my roots versus going back to your people and your roots is gonna look a little bit different, and not that we can’t learn from each other’s cultures and heritages and incorporate all of that, because I think we can, and also, what is deep in me is going to resonate differently for me if I can get in touch with that specific history, which means my process of decolonization is gonna look and feel differently.
Camargo: Oh, totally. 1,000%. I’m always like however your people did it, I’m happy to learn. I’ll teach you how my people did it. Because I want us to go back to that. Because that’s the only way we’re gonna survive this whole climate change shit, is like how did your people do that thing, because maybe your people did it in a way that will solve what the fuck is going on right here that I don’t know why that’s happening.
Briggs: I think… I mean, that brings into-
Thompson: I was gonna say. That’s a perfect, perfect transition into the last question that we have for you. I would love to ask you more about your climate work. I’d love to kind of hear more about that work, and what’s most important to you, and how you came into the work.
Camargo: Yeah, so I came into climate work I want to say in 2014. I was doing a lot of gender, anti-gender-based violence organizing and work, and I’m such a go to the roots kind of oriented person, I’m always trying to find like if we go deeper and deeper, can we really get to the real stuff? And you know, I had the privilege of organizing alongside a lot of amazing, transformative justice organizers, and I kept coming back to this thing when we were in the middle of resolving a conflict or in the middle of a community response around some kind of violence, it always came back to the basics. Do people have food, water, and shelter? If people don’t have these three things, that’s what we actually have to put our efforts towards in order to jump into this community response.
These three things, you having these three things depends on what you’re born into. What’s the color of your skin? What’s the class of your family? What do you look like? And then as I went deeper, as I was noticing a pattern between the folks that didn’t have access to this that we’re trying to do community responses with, that also it’s where you live. And so, I started to learn about environmental racism, and just like, “Oh, actually having clean water isn’t a possibility through a natural source in this community. If we want to make sure that folks… We have to add $200 or fundraise $200 a week or a month, however much they’re taking showers and using water, because they actually can’t have access to clean water in their community.”
So, this thing kept coming up, and I was like, “Wait, we’re trying to prepare for this world where we don’t have a carceral system and where people don’t have to go into cages and jails, and that they can respond to all this stuff happening in their community on their own, and yet we’re not even talking about the fact that they don’t even have clean air, or housing, or water, good food.” And because it came up so much, I just was very much more intrigued about climate change and about how fast our environment was being compromised. It led quickly to a spiral of a lot of documentaries, a lot of books, and audio books. I’m not a great reader, but I love audio books, of different ways of learning about climate change.
And I never heard folks talking about the people that I was already interacting with, like I wasn’t seeing stories of Black, Brown, queer, trans people, who were experiencing these impacts. It was a lot of the conversations that I was seeing, or the dialogues, or the stories around climate change wasn’t even my people. I mean, I was like, “Oh, man. This is gonna be such a hard leap to try to connect.” I had the opportunity to run art builds at an art organization and my first attempt was like I was feeling really politicized around this and all I could really gravitate to was my own individual behavior change, and so what really caught me on was the zero-waste lifestyle.
I was seeing the ways that plastic pollution, plastic production was impacting communities, and when I was seeing how plastic pollution was really impacting the oceans, and the trash gyres that are in the Pacific, it just really hurt me. It hurt me in such a deep, deep, deep way. And so, when I started working with this arts organization to do art builds, my goal was to have them shift to use more sustainable art products, which is like almost impossible to find. Visual art is very toxic in the way that we’ve created it.
But I learned about natural dyes, I learned about recycled material, I learned about how to be able to set it up so that you’re reusing the same things, offsetting carbon emissions when traveling, et cetera, et cetera. And then this organization, which was at the time CultureStrike, they were like, “Hey, you’re really about this and you’re an artist, you love to create content, and we see you. This is what we’re all about. Pitch us a position.” And so, I was like, “Well, how about I do some climate justice content and working with artists?” And they’re like, “Let’s try it for a year.”
So, that’s when I started my tour around California where they were funding it and I was working alongside Jesús Iñiguez, who’s a filmmaker, and I went into climate organizing as a storyteller, and I’m so lucky that I had that opportunity. And so, Climate Woke to me was like my ability to be able to give back to the communities that I was seeing that were struggling to be able to name their issues as climate issues, and I had several conversations with movement groups with individuals about this, and they just couldn’t find the words. And I was seeing a high rise in young people and their passion around the climate that I was like, “I actually want to create something that looks good, and that feels good, and that I’m gonna be proud of, and that other people will want to pick up organically and use it for their own.”
So, Climate Woke has become a cultural signifier. Climate Woke intentionally sits on Black vernacular, which is the word woke, which was intelligently smart, brilliant way of identifying when people are in this place of coming into awakening around what’s happening around them. That was intentional. I hesitated. I had to consult with a lot of people. We talked with some leaders of BLM to be like how inappropriate is it for us as first-generation people to be using this Black vernacular. And the common response was, “Roll with it. Roll with it and just be honest about where you’re getting it from.”
So, Climate Woke to me has become this signifier to allow people to be able to name their stories for themselves as a climate issue, even when it doesn’t feel like it connects. And so, that’s one of the works that I’ve done. I created, and I always make sure to lead all of my storytelling with the vision being this just transition, which is a transition where folks… where justice is at the center, everybody’s being honored, people are… We’re moving towards care and just more intentionality into the world. And the just transition framework has been hugely amplified by an organization called Movement Generation, which I’m very fortunate enough to also be partnering up with on a podcast called Did We Go Too Far this year, where we talk about solutions to this crisis that we’re in to hopefully get to this just transition, this new world that we actually all need to walk into.
And then Woke n Wasteless was my baby before Climate Woke that I created with my then partner, Elena Aurora, to just kind of show people how difficult and also how easy it is to live a life free of plastic. Greenpeace was one of our big supporters and we held Woke n Wasteless gatherings in L.A., and that work has now kind of taken a little bit of a backseat, but my passion has always been to get… What I’m trying in my life and how I’m trying to realign, I just want more people to see it, because I know as a queer and as a trans person how important it is to see people do things because that inspires you to then make change.
My climate activism has been through storytelling. I think that we will not get to the economic and political shift, and I’ve been taught this by my mentor, Favianna Rodriguez, we will not get to our economic and political shifts that we need to survive this crisis without a large cultural shift, without us all changing our opinions and our values before that. And because politics and economics, they follow where our minds and hearts go, and they try to drive it, and they do a really good job at it and they have a really good machine that can drive that now, but it’s us taking back that power that is gonna be essential for us to survive this crisis that keeps me producing more stories, that keeps me coming up with more Climate Woke, and more Woke n Wasteless, and more content. Because I don’t care what the platform is or what you’re calling it. What’s important to me is that the story gets out there.
I really want to encourage the awakening of us as a large society and specifically people who look and talk and feel like me to take action and to not feel like they’re stuck or to feel powerless against this huge machine that’s been painted as a huge machine. But when you take off the layers, peel back the onion, it’s us. We’re the ones that are participating in it, that if we start to see our power in that, and start to take a couple steps back, we will be able to shift it. I’m confident that we will be able to shift it.
Briggs: Huge thanks to Layel Camargo for sharing your time, energy, and stories with us. The world needs more ways to engage in discussion and action around the climate crisis. Thank you for your work and your joy. We’re very excited to follow your lead, Layel.
Thompson: To learn more about Layel and their work, you can follow them on Instagram @thechosenlyfe, spelled L-Y-F-E. Also, check out their podcast, Did We Go Too Far, wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about their work at the Center for Cultural Power at CulturalPower.org. We’ll provide additional links on our website, thislanddoc.com/thetrailahead.
The Trail Ahead is created and hosted by us, Faith E. Briggs and Addie Thompson. It’s produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. Jen Chien is our editor. Elizabeth Nakano is our producer. Sound design and theme music by Cedric Wilson.
Briggs: Our podcast art is by Shar Tuiasoa. Check her out on Instagram @PunkyAloha. Special thanks to our amazing teams from Merrell, Adam Kepfer, Lauren King, Will Pray, and from Patagonia, Bianca Botta, Sasha Tenedy, Claire Gallagher, and Whitney Clapper.
Thompson: Big thanks also to Trail Butter and Outdoorsy, and thanks to our team on the visual side, Tyler Wilkinson-Ray, Fred Gorris and Monica Medellin. Thank you for listening and for spreading the word. Follow The Trail Ahead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. See you next episode.
CITATION:
Briggs, Faith E., and Thompson, Addie, hosts. “Layel Camargo," The Trail Ahead, Lantigua Williams & Co., May 11, 2021. ThisLandDoc.com/TheTrailAhead.
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