Meet Luis Miranda, Utah’s New Beyond Coal Campaign Organizer

 

 

By Luis Miranda

 

While I was born in Los Angeles, I spent my childhood in the Caribbean town of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. As a kid, I grew up eating coconut bread, plátanos con frijoles, and freshly made tortillas. Almost every day it would pour rain and the sun would scorch the streets dry. In the distance, I would hear salsa, merengue, and reggae no matter where I went. I would cycle around town, evading puddles, and hating to be stuck in goal for our pickup soccer games.

 

When I was a teen, my mother and I returned to the United States. Our refuge and community was along Redwood Road on the west side of Salt Lake County, where many other immigrant families like mine live. I learned to eat Mexican pozole and Venezuelan arepas. I learned that if I felt alone, I could go to my homies at school who looked like me, who sounded like me, and who also shared strict, overwhelmed, and hardworking parents like mine.

 

I’ve joined the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign because what is killing our planet is also killing our people. I invite you to join me in rolling up our sleeves to radically re-imagine and build the just future we’ve been waiting for. An invitation to decenter our privilege and our narratives as an insular environmental movement, and to pass the mic, the leadership, and the resources to marginalized communities. Because if we are to overcome our shared foes, we will need to do this together. Let’s make this journey so sacred, so sweet, and so liberating that justice becomes irresistible.