breakingthecyclepodcast@sierraclub.org
Today, Sierra Club launched Breaking the Cycle, a new podcast that features interviews with frontline community leaders and environmental advocates that live along the fracking cycle in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast. Breaking the Cycle is an interview-style podcast that also includes conversations with organizers, environmental scientists, policy analysts, and health professionals who work with frontline groups to defend communities from polluting industries and to create a future that is not dependent on oil and gas.
The pilot episode of Breaking the Cycle, Voices from Sacrifice Zones, features four women activists who live at each major point along the fracking cycle. The interviewees are Kayley Shoup, an organizer with Citizens Caring for the Future out of Carlsbad, New Mexico; Emma Guevara, Brownsville, Texas Organizer with Sierra Club; Elida Castillo, Programs Director for Chispa Texas in Corpus Christi Texas; and Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project and Southwest Louisiana Organizing Director for Healthy Gulf.
The purpose of Breaking the Cycle is to help give more narrative control to frontline communities, educate the public about the Permian-Gulf Coast fracking cycle, and provide people a platform to speak to for themselves in a new medium. By collaborating with organizers, community leaders, environmental and health experts, listeners in the Permian and Gulf Coast and beyond will be prompted to reflect on how industry has impacted them and to get connected with their local organizations working towards environmental justice.
Breaking the Cycle will release episodes every two weeks. Each episode varies between 45 minutes to an hour. Listeners can find Breaking the Cycle on Simplecast Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign’s website.
Courtney Naquin, Gulf Coast Press Secretary for Sierra Club and host for Breaking the Cycle, said:
“Storytelling is crucial to movement building and narrative change. It’s so powerful - and effective - to hear stories and get information from people in your own community, which is why making this podcast felt so important. Breaking the Cycle is one way that community leaders can speak directly to their communities and the wider public to illuminate the fracking cycle and “de-normalize” the impacts of pollution on the environment and people’s health. Everyone living along the fracking cycle has a story related to the fossil fuel or petrochemical industry – and they should be able to tell it far and wide.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.