SUPPORTING CLIMATE WORK IN NEW YORK CITY
From the Bronx to Staten Island and everywhere inbetween, Imagined Futures is hi-fiving, galvanizing and spotlighting the work that is and has been happening all over New York City towards a livable future.
​
Come celebrate, dance, engage, argue even- and then… let’s roll up our sleeves and find the best place to put our hands to use.
Inviting you to not only envision the world we want, but help to actively make it.
Towards a future we want to live in.
Often when we imagine the future, we find our worst nightmares. Admittedly there's a lot to fear with what's ahead, and it's important to feel all of it. But what of the future we actually want?
From the youth just starting to raise their voices to the ones hoarse from years on the frontlines, a tide is shifting, and people are starting to demand something better from our systems, our way of business and even our own habits.
And the more we lean in to the people and ideas worth celebrating and supporting, the more we’ll make the future we need.
Last year we chose five New Yorkers, deeply rooted in their communities, making the change we need...
KAREN BLONDEL
Fighting for the Future of Housing
Karen Blondel, Founder and Executive Director of the Public Housing Civic Association, is the kind of activist that can get a crowd on its feet, go head to toe with city legislators and connect communities that might not otherwise.
With experience in engineering, environmental education and public housing policy, Karen Blondel knows saving a shoreline can't be just about the shore but the people who live there. Ms. Blondel has been a recipient of Harvard's Loeb's Fellowship, AmeriCorps Vista Program, the Red Hook Public Safety Corp, Friends of the Library, Red Hook NY Rising Committee, Red Hook Community Collaboration, the Red Hook West Tenant Association and most recently, the prestigious David's Prize.
Follow her at @petra0720
JOURNEI BIMWALA
Rewilding our relationship to Food & land
Journei Bimwala passionately connects people to nature, empowering us to embrace holistic wellness and environmental stewardship, and fostering a deeper connection between humanity and the natural world.
She is a homeschooling mother of three, clinical herbalist, foraging practitioner, certified health coach, transformational coach, and educator based in New York and is currently serving as the Community Coordinator for the New York Mycological Society and Resident Artist at the Bronx River Alliance.
Follow her @bjournei
DON RIEPE
Protecting our Shoreline
Don Riepe is the honorary Jamaica Bay Guardian and defender of the shore and all its inhabitants. With over 30 years experience as a naturalist and manager at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Don doesn't mess around when it comes to community-based coastal clean up and marsh restoration.
His contributions to the academic and journalistic realms are countless, and is currently on the advisory board for NYC Bird Alliance, Co-Chair of the Jamaica Bay Task Force; and Chair of the Wildlife Hazard Task Force, JFK Airport. Just look for the Jamaica Bay Guardian boat and you'll likely see Don on survey or patrol of the Bay he calls his home, fortified with a deep knowledge that protecting the marsh means protecting New Yorkers.
​
Follow the work @littoralsociety
​
ANNA TSOMO
Youth Action
Anna Tsomo (they/she) is a climate educator and mutual aid activist based in NYC. They are the Program Director of the Teen Climate Justice Program at Sixth Street Community Center in the East Village, which empowers high school students with the information, skills, and relationships they need to become powerful climate activists.
Anna has been organizing in 2020, resisting fossil fuel expansion, leading projects in citizen science, legislative advocacy, community gardening, youth empowerment, and mutual aid. Raised in Appalachia with roots in Brooklyn & Queens, they are passionate about nature, dance, mindfulness, and approaching life with the values of decolonization and pleasure activism.
​
Learn more about the work @sixthstreetcc
JK Canepa
Pushing Policy
Whether on the frontlines, writing the grant, or outlasting you on the dancefloor, JK Canepa pushes policy forward from the ground up with tenacious joy. She works intensely with Sane Energy Project, passionately fighting pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that threaten to devastate New York's land, waters and people. She co-founded Rainforests of New York, responsible for stopping NYC from buying tropical timber for boardwalks and park benches, and is a long-standing member of More Gardens!, a stalwart of the community gardens movement and vital provider of nature education for kids in parts of the City where trees and parks are woefully missing.
Currently JK's working toward the creation of a thermal energy network for Loisaida in the East Village as a model of decarbonization for other disadvantaged communities in New York City and State. When she's not directly working towards better climate policy, she tends a couple of medicinal plots for the pollinator queens, and at her day job advocates for residents of adult homes, to help them know and exercise their rights to dignity and claim their autonomy.
She's a grandma to three fascinating kids and shares her home with 3 freeloading roommates with fangs and claws but none of them would have it any other way.
Partnering with breweries to support the work
Why Breweries ? We love returning breweries to the idea of public houses, what pubs used to be– places people come to gather and talk, bring kids, play games, organize. Breweries are also on the forefront of gentrification and we see a need to engage community work in these spaces– to see if we can challenge what can feel like a given contradiction between supporting small businesses and the communities that they are in.
In New York, Breweries are also intrinsically tied to local agriculture through the farm bill that allowed them a license if they use a certain percentage of NY ingredients. And for most breweries in New York, climate change isn’t conceptual– they exist on shorelines or flood-prone places and rely on crops that are affected by weather. And since beer is not climate neutral, finding ways of sustainability for our future brews is all the more important.
Inspiring NYC breweries to experiment with more sustainable practices and ingredients while supporting climate work on the ground.
100% of the donated proceeds go directly to our five New Yorkers. Interested in collaborating? email us!
