Katie Redford on the Importance of Grassroots Action and Advocacy in Climate Change

For the first 25 years of her career, human rights lawyer Katie Redford litigated within the system. But by 2018 she had grown frustrated with the formal mechanisms of law; issues like the climate crisis and environmental injustice were getting worse, not better, despite successful litigation efforts. Conversations during a Bellagio Center residency gave her the chance to reflect on and challenge her lawyer’s perspective; from here, she internalized the Audre Lorde quote: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

This theme underlies her work today. Katie is Executive Director of Equation Campaign, a 10-year funding initiative (2020-2030) working to disrupt the oil and gas industry and invest in the power of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Prior to this role, she was a founding director of EarthRights International, a nonprofit with expertise in human rights, the environment, and corporate accountability.

Katie came to the Bellagio Center for a residency in 2018 and for a follow-up convening in 2019 to advance the book The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated, a definitive manual on what it takes to catalyze, support, and sustain social and environmental justice movements.

How is your work helping to address the climate crisis?

We’re in a moment in history where there are multiple, existential threats. But these problems – the climate crisis, the racial justice reckoning, and Covid-19 – are not going to be solved with the same thinking, strategies, and tools that caused the problems in the first place. The pillars of power – government, economics, law, and media – are built on and perpetuate a presumption that growth is good, and more is better.

Equation Campaign, in contrast, is focused on confronting power: trying new things, doing what hasn’t been done, and funding what hasn’t been funded. We find under-the-radar strategies for social change – they may not even mention the word “climate” – which aren’t part of the strategic focus of climate philanthropy, climate organization, and climate campaigning, and yet are still integral.

These strategies are explicitly about disrupting and dismantling the power of the fossil fuel industry. We’re funding, for example, litigation in Louisiana to protect the unmarked burial grounds of enslaved people, descendants of enslaved people and freed men and women who might live next to where the industry is trying to expand. We’re funding community groups in Cancer Alley working with archeologists and using satellite imagery to find the grave sites, while simultaneously funding lawyers filing cases to protect the land under novel legal theories, such as historic preservation, cemeteries laws, and the 14th Amendment.

These trailblazing cases could pave the way for similar cases all over Louisiana, and I hope they do, because – let’s be honest – the entire state is a burial ground thanks to slavery, and it’s also ground zero for industry expansion in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana is known as a carbon bomb. If we don’t stop the expansion there, we’re toast – literally.

And these kinds of legal strategies have been successful – the Byhalia Pipeline in Tennessee was canceled after months of litigation, organizing, and community advocacy. It was won by descendants of freed men and women who exercised their legal rights to defend their communities.

We need change to address the climate crisis, and the only way in history that has ever happened – with the scale and speed that the science says is necessary – is through mass mobilization and movements led by organizers in areas where the harms are most directly experienced.
Katie Redford

What breakthroughs need to happen for us to both avoid the worst impacts of climate change and prepare communities to adapt to the new challenges that will arise?

Power has to be shifted in a really radical way. We have to go to the root of the problem – we’re talking about transformation, not tweaking. From a community organizing perspective, the folks on the ground are the ones who are hit first and worst by environmental injustice and fossil fuel expansion, but they don’t get to call the shots. Power must be transferred to them. Equation Campaign funds strategies that center their expertise, and shifts power, decision-making and resources to them.

Our new legal strategies are not just about confronting the power of the fossil fuel industry but actually leveraging the power and expertise of these communities too. And these efforts must be supported from a narrative perspective: it’s not enough to win only in court, we must also win in the court of public opinion. Equation Campaign therefore also funds media efforts that expose industry fraud, greenwashing and false solutions, while also telling a different climate story – a human story.

The strategy up until today, if you look at what’s being funded, has been about getting the very best science, white papers and data, and presenting them to those in power with the hope that they’ll do the right thing. But that’s not enough. What we need, and what works, is real people telling their stories: “my sisters are buried here,” “my kid has asthma,” “I don’t want poisoned water next to my child’s school.” These stories are shifting things already. And it’s completely under the radar of climate strategy, which tends to look for scientific, technical, or market-based solutions.

Legal efforts like youth constitutional cases and climate liability cases that I worked on are inspiring and important. And as a lawyer, I still believe that the arc of history swings towards justice, but unfortunately it can’t swing fast enough to address the injustice of the climate crisis in the time that science demands. And the remedies available – money damages for past harms, state-level emissions considerations – do not match the scale of the crisis.

Instead, we need rapid and transformational change to address the climate crisis, and the only way in history that has ever happened – with the scale and speed that the science says is necessary – is through mass mobilization and movements led by organizers in areas where the harms are most directly experienced.

“The frontlines will never lose, because the frontlines will never give up.” That keeps me hopeful – fighting for yourself, your family, your home, or whatever you hold sacred and love is an incredibly powerful thing.
Katie Redford

What keeps you up at night about achieving these goals? What makes you optimistic?

There are David and Goliath battles happening everyday. [Tennessee House Representative and Equation Campaign board member] Justin J. Pearson has this great quote: “The frontlines will never lose, because the frontlines will never give up.” That keeps me hopeful – fighting for yourself, your family, your home, or whatever you hold sacred and love is an incredibly powerful thing.

What keeps me up at night, though, is losing. The flipside of fighting for what you love is that you can lose what you love, and that’s devastating. More and more people – sadly, as the front line becomes all of us – are gonna be fighting for what we love.

We have a guiding principle for who we strategize with and who we fund: Can you sense fierce love in the way they talk about the problem? Because if we could solve the climate crisis with only our strategic minds, we would have by now. We don’t need yet another dataset or white paper or powerpoint presentation. No, it’s the fierce love, the fighting as if it’s a matter of life and death for something you care about with every ounce of your being, that is what it’s going to take. We’re done with tweaking around the edges.

Learn more: Find out more about the Equation Campaign, and The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated. Watch the Equation Campaign video, “Funding Movements on the Ground to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground, or sign up for the Equation Campaign newsletter, including the publication Dispatches from the Frontlines.

Read Katie’s contribution to Inside Philanthropy, “Philanthropy Should Help Close Climate Justice Gaps in Inflation Reduction Act.”

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Bellagio Perspectives: Climate Change

Climate change is the challenge of our lifetimes. The latest Bellagio Perspectives features 11 climate-leader alumni who are driving a range of breakthroughs to tackle the climate emergency, from financing and governance to advocacy and on-the-ground activism.