Visiting Instructor
School of Liberal Arts & Sciences
and UPROSE Climate Justice Educator
AJ (he/him/él) is a community educator who spent five years as a public school science teacher in Brooklyn, and helped to found a public high school in one of the most disenfranchised, polluted, and over-policed neighborhoods in New York City. Though he faced the injustices of toxins, housing insecurity, and systemic racism throughout his own youth, it was his time as a teacher watching the Black and Latinx students under his care confront these same daily injustices that inspired his passion for building an environmental movement rooted in justice and lived experiences. He is committed to using his skills as an educator to fight for his community’s future. AJ has been working and partnering with UPROSE since first joining the family in 2018. He has organized coalitions to pass New York’s trailblazing climate justice legislation, helped plan and execute the 2019 Climate Justice Youth Summit, led workshops on climate justice and political action, and for three years during law school led the UPROSE partnership with Yale Law’s environmental protection clinic. He is also an author of the recent Routledge environmental justice history textbook and a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute.
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