Who is community? Inside a frontline movement for environmental justice

PCJ in the Bay Fellow Stories: Fatoumata Barrie

It was my first week as a Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area Fellow with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), and instead of being tucked away in an office, I was outside, listening. My mentor for the summer was explaining how they had been organizing the Polluters Pay campaign, a community-led effort to hold Chevron financially accountable and provide a mechanism for a just energy transition. 

Growing up in the Bronx, I watched asthma rates climb and playgrounds crumble while luxury buildings rose a few subway stops away. Later, while organizing Congo Week at Stanford, I studied how communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are displaced and poisoned by extractive industries. Those experiences shaped my belief that environmental justice isn’t just about data or laws—it’s about who gets to breathe clean air, who gets heard, and who gets to stay.

CBE is a frontline environmental justice organization that has spent decades fighting corporate polluters and pushing for policies that protect communities like Richmond—low-income, predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods burdened by high asthma rates and toxic emissions. I joined their research department, but my work crossed many boundaries. One week, I was phone banking residents to inform them about the recent settlement Chevron made with the city to support a just transition; the next, I was analyzing community-collected air monitoring data and preparing visuals for a public workshop. My host encouraged me to attend neighborhood events, mutual aid drives, and outings in nature with other youth organizers in Richmond, so my work wasn’t abstract—it was rooted in people.

One day I was conducting semi-structured interviews with local organizers, asking how they sustain energy and hope in a city burdened by decades of pollution. Their stories were full of strategy, resilience, and a quiet insistence that community knowledge is as valuable as any scientific report. The next day, I was leading a youth climate justice summer camp, guiding teenagers through workshops on systems thinking and artivism. I watched them use creativity to explore environmental justice, turning complex ideas into visual stories and organizing campaigns for their neighborhoods. 

We also discussed global parallels, connecting Richmond’s struggles with fossil fuel pollution to extractive industries in the Congo. Topics like greenwashing and the unintended consequences of electrification came up—issues that are critical but often missing in energy transition conversations. It was refreshing to see how eager CBE was to integrate these global perspectives into local climate advocacy.

I also contributed to a community-led “people’s science experiment,” analyzing quantitative data from soil samples around the Chevron refinery and creating data visuals and researching soil remediation for public workshops. Sharing these results in the community wasn’t just about numbers—it was about empowering residents with evidence they could use to demand accountability and influence meaningful change.

Richmond residents live in the shadow of the largest oil refinery on the West Coast, yet they lead some of the most visionary climate campaigns in California. CBE’s model showed me that environmental justice is not only about fighting harm—it’s about building local power. Seeing youth who grew up breathing refinery fumes now lead campaigns for clean air ordinances made the stakes clear: this is what frontline leadership looks like.

I learned as much about myself as I did about the field. I realized how much I value being embedded; living in the community I was working with gave me a depth of understanding I could never get from afar. I also discovered how to move between roles: sometimes the researcher, sometimes leading a youth leadership workshop, sometimes just another set of hands organizing a member meeting. I used to think impact meant expertise; now I see it also means humility, showing up, and staying long enough to build trust.

If you’re hearing about this for the first time, here’s what I want you to know: environmental justice work isn’t abstract. IIt’s teenagers canvassing after school, elders passing on not just stories but hard-earned wisdom and practical strategies, and organizers transforming grief and burnout into deliberate approaches for building stronger, more resilient care networks. It’s slow, joyful, frustrating, and deeply human. This summer, Richmond taught me that a just energy  transition is not just a right—it’s a relationship. And I want to spend my life protecting that relationship, from the Bay Area to the Congo.

Fatoumata Barrie (she/her) is a first-year coterminal student pursuing a BA in sociology and an MA in sustainability science and practice. She is passionate about the intersection of racial equity, public health, and community-led climate solutions. In the summer of 2025, Fatoumata was a Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area (PCJ in the Bay) Fellow with Communities for Better Environment in Richmond, supporting efforts to raise awareness about pollution and displacement and collaborate with residents on “The People’s Science Experiment.”