In Conversation with Kier Blake
Kier Blake (they/them) is a 24-year old organizer currently based in New York City, specifically East Flatbush in Brooklyn. They co-founded the radical education organization, Start:Empowerment alongside fellow organizer Alexia Leclercq (she/her).
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The EJP How did you get started in organizing?
Kier I got started in high school, when I found the League of Women Voters (LWV), whose founders were leaders in the women’s suffrage movement. This was the organization that served as my jumping off point for political and collective organizing. There, I started getting really interested in a lot of policy, but specifically, human rights policy and how man-made environments affect people; in other words, how do systems affect people? A lot of the work that I did was combating human trafficking. And so I did some work with the League of Women Voters in Los Angeles on that, over the course of two years. And then, in college, I worked with RESTORE NYC, a shelter in New York, where I was an overnight watch person helping survivors of international trafficking. Afterwards, I went abroad, and there I still saw a lot of these same issues perpetuated beyond LA and New York City. In that process, I really was asking the question of, “How is it that these systems continue to be perpetuated?” I was also exploring the nuances of a lot of these things, for example, we don't necessarily want to say that sex work shouldn't be allowed, because there's a whole camp for that, but the issue is that there are a lot of loopholes that allow trafficking to occur at the same time. Therefore, the question of “how can we make sure people are safe?” arises. That's really when the whole question of safety comes in and is typically where our society chooses to use police
Over the summer of 2020, that was something I broadened my thought process on, in terms of coming into a more abolitionist framework. At the same time, the importance of community and education was emphasized to me during the 2020 uprising but also, for example, when I spent time in Kenya, I was really fascinated with how they were using a lot of agricultural and village knowledge to support schools and development. I saw the same thing in Lebanon where Syrian refugee and internally displaced peoples (IDPs) communities were coming together to support community-oriented and culturally-relevant education practices. So when I came back to New York, I continued to collaborate with Alexia and Start:Empowerment was born. I was bringing a lot of these kinds of connections, a lot of these questions about, how do we really develop communities that care for each other? How do we kind of foster that sort of community building?”
The EJP What led you to environmental justice, specifically?
Kier I hadn’t heard about environmental justice before I met Alexia but when I talked about my interest in environments, I realized my interest in development — in creating equitable, non-patriarchal, and decolonial societies — was a part of seeking environmental justice. Alexia and I both believe in the economics of inequality, so as Alexia and I were discussing a lot of those things together, environmental justice was a really happy medium between areas that we were really interested in.
The EJP What are you working on right now outside of Start:Empowerment?
Kier I've always been really interested in serving in and building community, and one of the things that is quite easy to come across in terms of building community is food. So I've been very interested in initiatives like the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast Program. In East Flatbush, for instance, there's a large population of people between 0 and 17. People under 45 are half the population! And most are people of color and immigrants. You’ll find that in this community alone, they need over 6 million meals across the community to become food secure. That's a really staggering number, considering that that need is like nowhere near being met.
Through working with The People’s Forum, a movement incubator located in NYC, and other things like that, I met a really wonderful organizer who has co-created a collective called Flatbush Mixtape. So, I’ve been organizing with them around the community and bringing in Start:Empowerment in order to provide 501(c)3 support on an as-needed basis. One of the things that I really want to do is expand. And then we can also provide more to the overall community, because we could have more of an influx of food coming in to meet people’s needs.
The EJP So you went to NYU and are in graduate school at The New School right now. What are you studying there?
Kier I'm getting a Master of Science in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management. My capstone project tentatively on the Renewable Rikers project. That project is to close Rikers, first and foremost, but then also to say, “Hey, what do we do with this land? How can we give it back to the community? And how can we spark some sort of reparations from this?”. The whole notion is that a committee of people from the community will come together, as well as other NYC officials because of the legal use of it, and decide what they would like to see in that space. And so some people have said, “Hey, we want to see a green space being erected.” A lot of people have said, “Hey, we want to see renewable energy hubs, right?” New York City is long overdue to kind of transition to solar, and other types of renewable energy systems. And other people have said, “Hey, that's a really great idea. Let's use that as a green jobs training program for people in the community. So they can have first dibs on those jobs.” So my prerogative is to kind of help be a part of coordinating on a lot of that, and I've been taking a lot more responsibility in that coalition. In terms of like, on social media, also digital organizing, outreach, and things like that.
The EJP That is so cool! Okay this is off-topic but I feel like you’d have a lot to say about this: Could you give a brief rundown of what the nonprofit industrial complex is?
Kier It’s this really big system that explains relationships between the state, the owning classes, foundations, and the organizations themselves that serve to surveille, control, derail, and manage political movements. The revolution will not be funded through 501(c)3. The part that I like to focus on is the fact that a lot of times the nonprofit industrial complex tends to overlook the ways in which, as nonprofits, we're supposed to be fighting for the most good. But, oftentimes, nonprofits ignore a lot of the systems that have continued to oppress people. Nonprofits then organize society through programming and services, in a way in which oppression can continue to happen, whether a nonprofit is in bed with colonial land conservation organization or holds biases and demonizes certain groups of people, prioritizing them over others. Those same systems of oppression are then re-perpetuated within the nonprofit field. It is important to note that the nonprofit field is not separate from the systems and structures of our society.
The EJP How do you feel about the current state of movement building? Particularly regarding the environmental movement?
Kier I feel like people have good intentions, and I feel that people are learning a lot of different terminology and different structures. I’m all for that. But I also feel like these very nuanced concepts almost become trends themselves. And then in that way, like they're also part of the corruption of movements if you’re not careful. For example, take environmental justice, it’s a term that has been created to challenge the mainstream environmental movement, saying, “Hey, you're not meeting our demands, we need to make a movement that centers us.” In a sense environmental justice was such a collective movement, that sometimes I feel that when people talk about the intersectional environmental movement, it's almost a way to break through all the “noise” and create another trend to brand. I’m concerned that there isn't as much of an emphasis on the grassroots organizing that is so imperative to environmental justice. I feel like a lot of people are just posting about it, but I wonder how many people are actually outside organizing to really make a change. Because sometimes out in the streets, it just feels very lonely.
The EJP What's your activist philosophy? How do you stay grounded?
Kier I really find that bell hooks’ work on love, and how we have been living in a loveless culture, a culture that needs to really look at the ways in which, again, I will say infrastructures influenced the way that we love and influence the way that we show love within the society. And I guess that's what I would say my activist philosophy is: Love and vulnerability. Without vulnerability, you can't build trust and without trust… well organizing moves at the speed of trust.
The EJP How do you like to build and find community? Or, how have you built and found community?
Kier I honestly don't know what the magic seasoning is for finding community. I feel like the patterns that I've seen have been: something about the space makes it feel psychologically safe, and that space has been put together with intention. Once you have that settled down, it allows you to build from there, because that's where you're starting the conversations. That's where you're starting to make those connections. Once you kind of set that stage, then that allows for people to say, “Oh, there's something I can contribute. There's something that I have that's tying me here.” A lot of that has to do with how you set up that psychological safety, which allows for vulnerability, for people to ask for help, for people to really talk about where they are psychologically, like, where you're not being like, “How is everyone today? We're all fine, right?” It's about being able to say, “Hey, I had, like, a really hard day today.” It's really like nourishing that part of yourself. That’s really human. We're not robots.
The EJP How does queer liberation fit into climate justice?
Kier I look at queer ecology and how Indigenous communities have already been talking about different ways to steward thisland forever. So-called “traditional” ecology is a Western way of categorizing and organizing this framework for thinking about the world. But queer ecology disrupts the prevailing heterosexism, discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature’s interrelationships. Our society fights so hard to put us in boxes. Whereas it’s like, other animals don’t do that? There are no set rules regarding animal relationships and gendered roles as the male seahorse gets pregnant and gives birth to their offspring and female Bonobo monkeys have been shown to exhibit same-sex sexual behaviors out of pleasure. I love queer ecology because it does away with the false narrative that there are broad generalizations we can use to define normality, all of which gives people, plants, and animals a sort of agency to act according to their own nature.
I think that every part of our environment has a very important story to tell. The more and more we listen — this is where the spiritual component comes in and also where I draw a lot of inspiration from just listening to stories that Indigenous people pass on — when you really, truly start to listen, and you really, truly start to care, and you really start to think about how everything is interconnected. It's so hard to kind of go back to that mode of thinking where it's like, “No, everything is fixed,” because you realize that there's a beautiful chaos to this world. Queer liberation definitely promotes a beautiful chaos within our society.
The EJP How do your intersecting identities as a queer black person shaped the work that you do?
Kier I can't really say for certain, because I feel like I'm still very much growing. I know, especially over this past year, I've definitely gone through another really, really big evolution to a point where I feel like I'm a lot more confident in terms of taking up space and making space for others. I feel worthy of the space I’ve worked for. And a lot of people say, I really like this energy, I really like how vulnerable you are, I really like how you really care. I feel like I've always kind of been really open, and used to having my heart on my sleeve. As I've grown older, you realize that the world isn't that kind. But now I'm a lot stronger, and I'm able to handle more of that hurt that may come with being more vulnerable.
That’s a really big risk that we run in terms of building community, is that you have to put yourself out there when you're connecting to other people. Understanding all the different ways in which I've been hurt, I've been oppressed, I've dealt with certain things may not may not necessarily be the same experiences that other people have had. But it definitely allows me to have real empathy for other people in that I will show up. Nothing about me is really “normal”, and that allows me to challenge people in a really beautiful way.