INTERGENERATIONAL CLIMATE ACTION: Success Through Collaboration

Hazel Chandler is a founding member of Elders Climate Action and is the co-founder of the Arizona Chapter. She works as an Arizona field coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force and she started and currently leads the Arizona Climate Action Coalition, an interfaith, intergenerational, and multicultural coalition of over 20 climate groups in Arizona. She is a mom, grandmother, and recently a great-grandmother who has been advocating for a livable planet, clean air, climate solutions, and environmental issues since her oldest son was a baby. She is committed to creating a loving, peaceful, sustainable world that we are proud to give to our grandchildren.

Hazel has dedicated her life to listening to the community and helping to solve difficult challenges facing Arizona. As a champion for children, she has brought diverse groups together to find common ground and real solutions. She has a background in government, nonprofit, and business, working with people of all ages, and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, on issues including early childhood, elementary education, health care, social services, mental health, and environmental/climate change. She has a BA in early childhood development and an MA in management, and she is a Certified Public Manager. Hazel’s work has been featured in the New York Times, PEOPLE, Yahoo! News, Yes! Magazine, Public News Service, ABC 15 Arizona, KJZZ 91.5, and Blog for Arizona, AZ Central, and the Arizona Republic.

Hazel previously served as outreach consultant for Union of Concerned Scientists, regional director for First Things First, and director for the Maricopa County Asthma Coalition. In 2018, she ran for Arizona House of Representatives.

She has been actively involved in finding real solutions to the changes facing our planet and assisting others to understand that we have real, creative, and innovative solutions to the challenges we face.

Hazel recently published an op-ed, New Power Plant Standards Will Impact Generations to Come along with her daughter, director of ECA, Jen Chandler in the Arizona Capitol Times.

Helen Mancini is a junior at Stuyvesant High School and a climate and social justice organizer with Fridays For Future NYC. She has been a lead organizer for 4 global school strikes and many local rallies while continuing to protest outside City Hall on Fridays and pen op eds for national and local campaigns. She co-led organizing youth turnout for the March To End Fossil Fuels which mobilized 75,000 people in September 2023.

Eliza Clark is from New York City and lives in Manhattan with her husband and three daughters. She was inspired to take an active part in the climate movement by the example of her teenage daughter Helen Mancini who is a lead organizer with Fridays for Future NYC. Her background is in education and academia. She earned a PhD from Harvard University in American Studies and her areas of research include the 19th century women’s movement, the history of the family, and the intersection of social and political movements with everyday life. She has taught history and writing at both the college and high school levels, most recently at KIPP College Prep High School in the Bronx. She has also spent many years as a primary parent and caregiver. She joined Climate Families NYC in 2022 and now serves as one of its volunteer co-chairs. She regularly participates in climate actions with her 6-year-old who has befriended many other kids in the group. She and Helen recently wrote about the urgent need for parents to get involved in climate activism in Teen Vogue.

Climate Families NYC organizes family-friendly climate direct actions in support of  city, state and federal legislation and to pressure fossil fuel enablers such as banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers. Our family-friendly activism accommodates working parents and considers the needs of children of all ages. It also helps us punch above our weight when it comes to impact: The moral clarity and disarming spirit that children and parents bring, makes us memorable and harder to ignore. Our ability to show up as parents of kids whose present and future are threatened by climate change, puts the stakes of the climate crisis in stark contrast. While we recognize that the most catastrophic impacts of climate change are not yet occurring in New York City; we live with increasingly regular flooding in NYC schools, apartments, and streets; worsening air quality and significant climate anxiety among kids and parents who understand that time is running out.

Polling shows that American millennials are more motivated to act on climate than any previous generation of parents, which means there are millions of parents out there with deep concern about the climate crisis. Moreover, when parents and children show up, they are uniquely effective: Research shows that intergenerational messaging (ie, let’s preserve the planet for the sake of our children) is by far the most impactful for winning hearts and minds.

Our mission is to organize a (peaceful) army of parents committed to strategic, effective and joyful collective action for a livable future, and capable of exerting palpable pressure on the powerful actors who happen to be our neighbors in New York: Wall Street, Democratic congressional leadership and our city and state government. 

Eliza was inspired to take an active part in the climate movement by the example of her teenage daughter Helen. Eliza serves as a volunteer co-shaue for Climate Families NYC 

She and Helen recently wrote about the urgent need for parents to get involved in climate activism in Teen Vogue.

David Warren is a retired Community College Professor. David initially developed counseling and special ed programs for returning Vietnam Veterans. He became interested in computers as adaptive devices for disabled veterans leading to the formation of the Digital Media program at the college. 

After retiring after 34 years he started TEDxSantaCruz and had several speakers talks uploaded to the TED website. He worked with a team for six years and there have been over 1 million views. A new management team, has formed this year, with David serving on the speaker selection team. Our recent event sold out within the first 2 weeks with over 500 attendees. The theme was Rising Together.

David is on the leadership team for the Northern California Elders Climate Action Chapter and is a board member of Santa Cruz Community TV where he and a fellow board member organized a series of panel discussions on Artificial Intelligence.

David is a retired Community College Professor and started TEDxSantaCruz. David is on the leadership team for the Northern California Climate Action group and is a board member of Santa Cruz Community TV.