Hip Hop & Climate Justice
What was Hip Hop & Climate Justice?
The Hip Hop & Climate Justice initiative focused on engaging youth in the climate justice movement through different forms of hip hop. Between 2019 and 2025, we produced music videos to pressure power holders and raise public awareness about the climate crisis and its impacts, led writing workshops for youth to imagine the type of world they want to live in and heal from climate change and all the issues it exacerbates, and published youth-produced art and poetry in our zine projects.
HHCJ’s mission
Our HH&CJ team aims to coordinate arts and cultural spaces, education, and pathways. If we encourage and curate cultural expression that advances the mission of our Environmental Justice campaigns and is rooted in ancestral memory, reciprocity, and regenerativity, then we expect to uplift those most impacted by climate and environmental injustice because we will achieve rebuilt art & culture that combats oppressive systems and protects community power and self-determination.
The HHCJ Portfolio
Produced by incredibly talented youth artists and organizers, Hip Hop & Climate Justice created a body of work that reimagines what climate activism can look like.
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When the Smoke comes x YVA Zine
In February of 2025, HHCJ collaborated with When the Smoke Comes, a monthly writing workshop and poetry collective based in Oakland. Together, we facilitated a workshop on memory and love in a time of post-inauguration fear, featuring materials from Safiya Bukhari and Assata Shakur.
We published a poetry collection, spotlighting YVA and WTSC poets in our zine. Poems were curated largely in response to the 2025 Presidential Inauguration.
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Free the World Zine
Published in October of 2024, Free the World uplifts and expands on the intersections of social justice movements and struggles, and highlights the necessity of different analyses, frameworks, and perspectives in the fight to achieve environmental justice.
The zine features visual art, poetry, writing, and political education to address the importance of intersectionality in environmental work.
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Free the world ep
Through creating the Free the World EP, we activated and engaged artists in using their artistry to work toward collective liberation. The project served as an opportunity to step into community, joy, and collective struggle and resistance when a lot of these topics can be physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally draining.
The EP is a collection of 6 tracks, each one highlighting a social injustice and how it interacts with environmental action.
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Where's the Money at? music video
Written, produced, and directed by Bay Area Youth in 2021, “Where’s the Money At?” demanded power holders like Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and corporations like CalSTRS and BlackRock to divest from and defund oppressive systems that are killing communities and the planet. The project emphasizes capital’s role in in the climate crisis and orders government officials and wealth holders to fund the freedom and future of people and the planet rather than oppressive systems.
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This is the time music video
The October before the 2020 election, YVA told youth that even if they were too young to vote in the upcoming election, they could still make an impact during this pivotal moment in history. The project urged youth to organize the adults in their communities, demanding that they use their vote to leave youth with a livable and just society.
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no one is disposable music video
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, “No One is Disposable” emphasized that throughout history, frontline communities of color have faced disproportionate harm in times of societal and environmental crisis. Our government has discarded these communities’ health and wellbeing while relying on them for labor, healthcare, and economic growth. This acknowledgment served as the baseline for YVA’s direct action campaign, NOID.
Thank you to our past collaborators
While HHCJ may inactive, the past artists, producers, and organizers who made the campaign possible are very much thriving! We’ve compiled a few letters from previous HHCJ organizers, team members, and collaborators.
To get in touch or work with our previous collaborators, please email yva@youthvsapocalypse.org.
MAKE HHCJ POSSIBLE
MAKE HHCJ POSSIBLE
Current federal sentiment around environmental organizing has made our work difficult and financially unfeasible. This has lead to the decision to end Hip Hop & Climate Justice and other YVA programs for the near future. We need your financial support to make programs like these possible!
Please consider donating to YVA, or contact us with any grant or funding opportunities at yva@youthvsapocalypse.org.