From Michelle Martinez, a Latinx-Mestiza environmental justice activist, writer, and mother, who is working on a 30-day challenge to reframe our #climatefuture positively. 

I want to breathe a cold Nov moment, quiet rustling of leaves, not smog sirens, so I can hear our ancestors’ cantor.

I want human sun houses to warm, drink tea and get VitD all winter, replacing warm car naps and drivethrus.

I want grapevines and cucumbers and other edible climbers to replace chain link fences.

I want Black Friday to mark the day we make per pupil allotments equal across all zip codes.

I want carrier pigeons in each school and house of prayer. Because when the grid goes down y’all… no cellphones.

I want neighborhood chicken coops, chicken coop captains and lil chicken scarf contests.

I want #MMIW home. I want mujeres de Juarez home! I want DETROIT WOMYN home and snuggling loved ones and stuffies!

I want forests. Not to drive 40 miles to get to. I want tall dark handsome forests to bathe in, right here.

I want to smell roses and corn tortillas in SW Detroit not sulfur and methane, like today.

I want art
And garlic.

I want a bonus check in the mail measured and commensurate to the biodiversity of the land I live on.

I want to melt down every fuxking AR and make affordable housing on dry land for climate refugees.

I want to melt down every Custer and Columbus statue for 1000s of lapel pins that say NEVER AGAIN.

I want bank dividends paid Black elders who survived Jim Crow to build their foreverhome wherever they damn please.

I want teens to learn post-partum care in sex ed.

I want the definition of rehabilitation to be changed to include 1-a team, 2-the Earth.

Rather than doom. What will your #climatefuture look like?

I want voting to be a national holiday.

I want public investment in pollinators, pollinator stewards, pollinator schools and a fucking flower fest annually.

I want it so that when u save energy, the extra solar power goes to your neighbor saving them $.

I want a local energy grid that won’t go out when it does in Canada.

I want community centers to teach local medicines, and reIndigenize knowledge of this land.

I want our elders to be warm in the winter, safe everyday, and cared for by all.

I want Black and Latinx families on the beach on a hot day having LOUD merry reunions without being policed.

I want to ride a zero emissions train to Lake Michigan from Detroit and be there in 2 hrs.

I want to drink from the waters of the Greatest Lakes without fear of being poisoned.

I want to live in a world that teaches textiles, paper and clothe making from recycling from age 7.

I want to live in a world where our common investment is in manoomin restoration not pipeline disasters.

I want to live in a world where teacher’s union salaries are subsidized by solar panels on the school they teach in.

I want to live in a world where there’s affordable, beautiful food in walking distance, for everyone.