Earth Day Postcard: Finding Hope

Earth Work Day Postcard: This is difficult to name, the despair I have begun to feel in the last year. Perhaps it’s because I am from the twentieth century and magical thinking led optimism is how we let go of the Cold War and landlines. Or perhaps it’s because I have cushioned trauma and the dread of loneliness with omnipotent faith. Who knows, it may be as simple as that I am a Puerto Rican believer in science, evolution, and la Virgen de la Guadalupe with multiple altars to my dead parents spread across my home and three rosaries always hanging from my neck. In any event, this despair is difficult to name because it’s out of character.?

What is my despair about ? For a change, is not about me.?I fear climate change and our planetary crisis. I fear for my immediate future and my teenage daughters’ lives. I fear AI’s abilities to scramble humanity into insanity. I fear Alzheimer and the integrity of my sense of self, I fear big big things I had never feared before. Not even in 2020. But on this Earth Day 2023, I sensed the way out of this despair. It’s not a big deal when you think about it. It’s planting trees.

This Saturday and for nine hours I was reminded of the all embracing sense of wellness and safety that is only found in community. The day began with snow on the ground and more coming down as we gathered in a vacant lot by the rail tracks of Globeville, a Denver neighborhood two miles away from my Highland home with 50% less tree canopy than my block and much more particulate matter, sulphate, mineral dust, soot, and nitrate getting deep into residents lungs and bloodstream making that neighborhood?which includes Elyria-Swansea and part of the River North neighborhood (RiNo), the highest environmental hazard risk zip code of more than 8,600 zips codes nationwide.

As we divided into planting brigades I followed my sixteen year old daughter's smile carrying compost and mulch in between the trees lined up with a mission. I watched her give an interview on how trees suck up heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce erosion and flooding.

I saw her hands wrap around one catalpa tree to stress how they saved lives, how heat was the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S and how Denver, like many US big cities, is packed with too much heat-absorbing infrastructure like roads and bridges. Her foot stomped the tar scarred ground of the parking lot to signal how the lack of tree cover made neighborhoods like Globeville?dangerously hotter — up to 15 degrees more than others with tree cover. She smiled away at a train humming its morning inevitable tune while her brother stood by her. I let out a tear. Hay futuro I heard myself and it's happening today.

As the founder of an environmental small brown organization working at the frontlines of the non profit ecosystem I know first hand the pleasures of grassroots work and how the workspace of human-nature connections helps undermine the self centered fatalism that feeds despair. But this earth day as we joined partners in planting over seventy tall 6-8 foot trees across pollution battered Globeville and as we greeted the smiling residents welcoming our trees I felt a joy of a delicate and wholesome nature that I am holding on for dear life. This is a type of joy found only in the triad of public service, communion, and hands that work the earth for a common good. It's true. This earth day of 2023 did not solve any of the problems that are the make up of my despair but it brought me fully back to my social essence and the gratitude of community. Hope thrives in our investment in people, in each other. Hope struggles in isolation no matter how hard you do justice work on your computer and via zoom. There is no substitute for the blessings of service in real time and in community. I am grateful to the leadership of the city of Denver office of climate resilience (CASR) for the?offerings that are facilitating this work, supporting grassroots organizations to lead the culturally relevant efforts needed to achieve lasting results. I am grateful for EJ leader Fernando Pineda-Reyes of CREA Results, our principal colleague in the implementation of the Community Tree Planting Initiative under CASR's Climate Action Fund.

And I am grateful for the tree equity led collaborative on Earth Day with Globeville First, the Birdseed Collective, the Park People, the Nature Conservancy, NWF, and all the volunteers and partners big and small whose public service elevated my own and have revitalized my hope. Gracias!