SERVE

People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) Facilitation

GCCLP’s staff helps to facilitate community gatherings and group retreats using an equity-based approach to achieving agenda goals. Facilitation services advance co-created meeting goals and tailor the People’s Movement Assembly to maximize engagement and advance processes rooted in civic participation and self-determination. People’s Movement Assemblies (PMAs) focus on the following areas:

Energy Democracy
Climate Justice
Just Transition

Past examples of PMAs include:

Gulf Coast Just Transition People's Movement Assembly Series: As part of our 3-year coastal organizing effort, GCCLP partnered with local and national partners to host a series of Just Transition PMAs in September, October and November of 2016. We explored the connection between climate justice and economic justice, and vision a sustainable future for South Louisiana.
Planning for Clean Power in Mississippi: Hijra House and the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy brought together more than 80 community leaders at the St. Rosa de Lima Family Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for a People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) focusing on Just Transition and the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The first day of this two-day session offered a day of Communications Training offered by regional and local allies. The second day offered a space for strategy development around the accompanying impacts and opportunities of implementing the CPP in Mississippi and envisioning a just transition toward energy democracy in Mississippi.
Next Generation Climate Assembly: Louisiana leaders came together to develop a community action plan to stop the extraction of fossil fuels from our planet and to stop the extraction of justice from our democracy. The goals of the assembly included:

Further an intersectional analysis around long-standing justice fights (racial, gender, labor, etc) and the connection to the climate crisis;
Map impacts of oil and gas drilling on frontline communities of color in South Louisiana;
Develop a community-led vision, plan and commitments toward a just and sustainable future for New Orleans; and
Build networks of frontline community and next generation leaders across the GNO area.

CULTIVATE

GCCLP provides targeted leadership development through fellowship and internship programming specifically tailored for leaders working in the unique landscape of the Gulf South. Leadership development programming is intended to identify and cultivate local leadership rooted in community and bound by the ultimate level of community accountability. GCCLP tailors fellowship & internship programs (by cohort and through staffing) to develop and politicize a pool of local experts who advance a broader vision of ecological equity and climate justice. GCCLP strengthens movement infrastructure through fellowship programs that develop local leadership.

Gulf Guardian Fellowship

The Gulf Guardian Fellowship is a 12-month program that develops local leadership at the grassroots level. Fellows are community organizers or local civic leaders from the Gulf South (TX, LA, MS, AL or FL). Fellowships are meant to honor and support community members working to address root-causes, immediate consequences or long-term impacts of inequality AND climate change. The Gulf Guardian Fellowship is designed to develop a regional leadership network while providing financial support for regional innovators. This fellowship experience provides analyses that support strategies addressing root causes and long-term impact of climate change in the Gulf South’s most marginalized communities. Throughout the course of the program, Fellows attend three (3) retreats designed to create space for collective learning, cross sector networking, collaborative strategy development and leadership cultivation for the Gulf South region.

Gulf South for a Green New Deal Public Launch in New Orleans 2019

BUILD

GCCLP engages in advocacy through an innovative, collaborative process with frontline communities. Policy priorities are developed through deep consultation with community and toward achieving the transformation of our economy and social structures to the benefit of the Gulf South’s most marginalized communities. GCCLP prioritizes tribal and land sovereignty as a foundational step to achieving this long-term goal. Therefore, Federal Recognition for the United Houma Nation remains a top advocacy priority for GCCLP’s just transition work.

Black & Native Alliance Building

GCCLP sees Black & Native alliance-building as critical to building the kind of bottom-up grassroots power we need for a just transition. GCCLP facilitates PMAs and organizes cultural and traditional gathers to create space for healing and reconciliation caused by the shared experience of colonization and shared rituals. Examples of past PMAs include:

Co-host Black & Native Ecological Equity PMAs
New Orleans Climate Adaptation Conference
Plaquemines Climate Adaptation Plan

In 2020, GCCLP launched our Sacred Waters Pilgrimage to connect Black and Native culture-bearers and advocacy leaders working to address the climate crisis and this global moment for ritual and discussion. A key element to climate justice is healing and reconciliation. Black and Native women and two-spirit people must take the lead at repairing generations of wrongdoings, so that we can all heal and move together toward our shared greater goal. Click here to learn more about the Sacred Waters Pilgrimage.

Bayou Rising 2018

ENGAGE

Bayou Rising

GCCLP prioritizes tribal and land sovereignty as a foundational step to achieving this long-term goal. An additional priority is offering support for the region’s workers (especially those in the oil and gas industry) and to residents of historic communities on the frontlines of a new climate reality. Bayou Rising Gatherings are produced annually throughout the Gulf region using community and tribal partnerships to develop collective demands toward a just transition and away from extractive industries, discriminatory policies, and unjust practices that hinder equitable recovery from disaster and impedes the development of sustainable communities. These gatherings are zero-waste events rooted in collective healing and ecological equity.

Louisiana Relocation & Preservation Project

As Louisiana deals with the impacts of climate change, historic communities are forced to contemplate and plan for relocation. With relocation, communities often lose traditional ecological knowledge as they lose their native language. In 2019, GCCLP will launch its Native Tongue Project to support the preservation of LA Creole and Indigenous languages in communities slated for relocation due to climate change. GCCLP will partner with Northwestern University, Southern University, and Nicholls State University to develop the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) aspect of ongoing work to preserve Louisiana’s most unique cultures and languages.

Partnership for Indigenous Sovereignty

GCCLP stands with the United Houma Nation in their fight for recognition from the US Federal Government. Land sovereignty is central to GCCLP's vision of climate justice, and we are proud to provide legal and policy support to this campaign.

GCCLP stands with the Esto’k Gna people and the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas in confronting not only the construction of this border wall and these fracked gas terminals & pipelines in Garcia Pasture — but also the extractive economy that facilitates this kind of disastrous infrastructure and devalues and destroys Black & Indigenous, poor, migrant, and rural life and land everywhere. We recognize the inherent right of the Esto’k Gna to be right to be free of this extractive economy. We recognize their inherent rights — and the inherent rights of all Indigenous Peoples - to survival; to self-identity; to self-determination; to protect their people, their lifeways, and their non-human relatives; to continue living in sacred relationship with the land.

GCCLP co-anchored the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribunal on Human Rights. In response to the continued attempts by corporations and governments to erase the significance of their culture, history, and land, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas held a tribunal on human rights on May 22nd and 23rd, 2020 to document past and present harms against their people, the Esto’k Gna. Click here to learn more about the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribunal on Human Rights.

Louisiana Energy Democracy Coalition

GCCLP provided movement support services for the development of community plans (LA, MS, AL) for a new energy future in partnership, and now anchors the coalition that emerged in partnership with the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Alliance for Affordable Energy and Sierra Club.