Jothsna Harris: Sparking Stories in the Climate Justice Movement

The climate justice movement is increasingly becoming harder to ignore as more people are suffering the consequences of climate change. Every day people are affected by the sea levels rising, scorching hot summers, frigid winters, droughts, floods, landslides, hurricanes, and more. But, their voices are not being heard in the mainstream media. In our interview we learned about the work that Jothsna Harris, the founder of Change Narrative LLC, has been doing to empower and center everyday people’s voices in the climate justice movement by engaging in storytelling. It became evident when speaking with her that her work to honor these everyday experiences is born out of her own experiences with unfair systems that prioritize corporate greed over individuals.

Jothsna Harris is a born-and-raised Minnesotan deeply committed to combating climate change injustice through the power of storytelling. She received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Thomas in Political Science and Environmental Studies but did not initially start her career working within the environmental field. She discussed with us how, out of college, she found herself in the financially extractive industry of managing financial aid and loans at private higher education institutions. One day, still at the beginning of her career, she reflected on her place in this extractive system and realized she could no longer reconcile the negative emotions she had surrounding these exploitative practices in for-profit education. With this, she found herself reassessing her life path. Her deep passion for the well-being of others was evident as she spoke to us.

Jothsna explained to us how, in 2011, she and her husband took a long look at their lives: the house they had just bought, their two lovely children, and decided they needed a change. This change found its form in the World Wide Organization of Organic Farms (WWOOF). Jothsna and her family moved to Italy and began working on small farms in the Italian countryside. Through this experience, she began to better understand her own spiritual discernment, realizing that her true passions lay with environmental work. Jothsna went on to describe to us how she has now been working for 10 years in spaces where the goal is to combat climate change. Returning from Italy, she reacquainted herself with the climate change sphere. To get up to speed with the new environmental data released since her time in college, Jothsna began work with the MN Green Corps/Americorps with the Burnsville, Eagan, and Savage schools working to reduce school energy use. She then moved on to working with Climate Generation, where she focused on special projects, partnerships, and community engagement.

In 2021, Jothsna left Climate Generation to found Change Narrative LLC. Change Narrative works with individuals, groups, organizations, and more to build capacity in the environmental movement through personal stories around climate justice. The focus is to empower and give confidence to people in their stories. As Jothsna put it, we are all experts in our lived experience and live with climate change. “For centuries, people’s narratives have powered social movements. Jothsna works with people to develop and adapt these stories for various audiences such as theatre productions, legislative testimony, artwork, performance, and an anthology of written stories.” For centuries, people’s narratives have powered social movements. Jothsna works with people to develop and adapt these stories for various audiences such as theatre productions, legislative testimony, artwork, performance, and an anthology of written stories. Two examples of this are Eyewitness: Minnesota Voices on Climate Change, an anthology of stories, poetry, and art, and Climate Stories for Justice, a show at the Minnesota Fringe festival. A copy of Eyewitness was sent to every legislator in Minnesota. This put first-hand experiences of climate change from various people in the hands of decision-makers. At the Minnesota Fringe Festival, live stories were shared about climate justice on stage.

A large part of Change Narrative’s mission is to change the dominant and damaging narrative around climate communication. This dominant narrative tends to exclude everyday people and lacks a first-person point of view, solely focusing on the facts and scientific data. Change Narrative works to include every day and marginalized voices; this includes and is not limited to Black, Indigenous, People of Color, low socioeconomic status, LGBTQIA, and people with disabilities. Centering marginalized voices is critical to this movement because it amplifies the voices of those who are disproportionately affected by climate change. Using a first-person narrative allows marginalized people impacted by climate change to define their own identity through an intersectional approach by combining the head, heart, soul, and spirit. As Jothsna mentioned in our interview, many people feel that they do not have a story to tell but she works with them to help find their spark.

Jothsna goes about helping people develop their stories in two ways: group storytelling workshops and one-on-one coaching. Group storytelling workshops are done through talking, writing, and focusing on identity and climate experiences. This is an exercise in vulnerability for all who are involved. They are able to connect and share with one another and see how their stories may be similar and how they may differ. These workshops provide people with community. The goal of this workshop is to find the spark or heart of their story. Group workshops also provide individuals with practice in sharing their stories. One-on-one coaching starts with listening and then facilitating a space for reflection for the individual. Jothsna says this process is not the same for every person and she goes off of her intuition. But like the group workshops, Jothsna’s goal is to find the heart or spark of their story. These stories do not have to follow traditional storytelling practices, as storytelling has persisted in many forms in many traditions across the globe for thousands of years.

Currently, Jothsna is working on a project in the Gulf South. When we inquired about any specific story that has been on Jothsna’s mind, she shared about Ms. Marsha Jackson in South Dallas. Ms. Marsha lives in a majority community of color in South Dallas. The land next to Ms. Marsha’s house, originally a field of green grass next to a creek, became a dumping ground for roofing shingles in late 2017. When the company neglected to properly dispose of the shingles, local residents named the pile “Shingle Mountain” due to the enormous height of the shingles, and it looks as if it were a landfill behind Ms. Marsha’s home. Many people in the area experience health effects due to fiberglass and formaldehyde being airborne and from the pollution that runs off into the nearby creek. The pleas of Ms. Marsha and many other residents were ignored, until at least a year into this project of sheer negligence and disregard for the lives of BIPOC folks. After many lawsuits and community-led activism, the removal of Shingle Mountain was officially completed on February 26, 2021. Jothsna expressed to us how Ms. Marsha’s story is a prime example of how BIPOC communities are disproportionately affected by environmental injustice, and is just one of many stories that she is working on. She is also currently working on a project with “We Choose Now,” highlighting stories from Appalachia, and the Gulf South to show the similarity of stories surrounding harmful patterns of extraction practices, victories and re-imagined futures, across regions of the US despite differences in the region.

Nearing the end of our interview, we asked Jothsna about advice for young activists, to which she responded by strongly urging young people, especially those working within activist spaces, to “just DO” to make the world around them better. In doing this work though, she urged young activists to take a deeper look around them: is the work you are engaging with at this moment happening in the right –spiritual, moral, ethical– way? What different ways are there for you to engage in work done in the right way? The work you see happening should reflect the work needing to get done, reflect on what makes you feel alive, and seek out the people engaging in the ways that you want it to get done. Jothsna says that one of the largest barriers within the climate movement is finding partners who are actively engaged in inclusive work based on non-extractive practices that engage the head, heart, soul, and spirit. Jothsna expressed that working on your own can be an empowering journey and that when you are blessing other people through the work, you are also blessing yourself. Because of this, she urges young activists to work with integrity and not for personal gain. She asks young activists to reflect on the question “What does beautiful work look like to you?” Because, she says, beautiful work ripples out and then there will be more of it. She continued on to say that young activists should just show up in the ways that they can, any form of activism rooted in the head, heart, soul, and spirit will result in work that gives to you, just as much as others.