In honor of Earth Day, InfluencHER managing editor Meg Geoghegan connected with Gloria Walton, a longtime community organizer and the President and CEO of The Solutions Project, a national climate justice organization that supports climate changemakers, innovators, and 'solutionaries’ at the grassroots level.

“What a democracy is about — an authentic democracy — is about us doing our part to help influence decisions and change these conditions. I realized either I can stand on the side and let this stuff happen or I can join these grassroots leaders and fight for change.”

— Gloria Walton

You’re from Mississippi originally, but got your start as a community organizer while a student at UCLA. What made you want to go into this work?

I was a law fellow – I was on my way to law school – when I did an internship that changed my life. I started as an intern at SCOPE (Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education) in South Central L.A. and I fell in love with the work. I was at a meeting where people in the community were talking about power and change and how they were going to achieve their vision, and what I realized at that meeting is that a lot of the conditions that I grew up with and the conditions we were living with in South Central L.A. were not happenstance or coincidence. Decisions were made to create those conditions. What a democracy is about – an authentic democracy – is about us doing our part to help influence decisions and change these conditions. I realized either I can stand on the side and let this stuff happen or I can join these grassroots leaders and fight for change.

A term that you use at The Solutions Project is ‘solutionary’ - what does that mean to you?

I’m naturally an aspirational person. A dreamer. And I feel like being Black requires you to be that way, because there’s so much trying to break you down otherwise and tell you that you don’t matter. When I think about being a ‘solutionary,’ it’s imbued with those values – of dreaming, of envisioning what’s possible, of holding the possibility of transmuting all this hate that’s happening into love and trusting that if you can do that with one person, it’s a reverberating impact. If you hold the spirit of love, it invites others to do the same.

Something that I found fascinating about your work is the emphasis on storytelling. You build capacity in grantee partners so they can share their stories and effectively leverage media. Why is that a priority?

Many of us have blind spots – that's part of the human experience. But when you share stories, you create a space to be connected. A lot of what you may feel alone in you’re actually not alone in, and for those who may not understand your story or perspective, it opens the door for empathy. We create space to leverage the voices of grantee partners and to shine a light on their experiences and their solutions.

Climate change can feel like this enormous, intractable problem. As an organization focused on solutions, does it feel solvable?

Yes, it does. As much as it’s daunting, there’s also a tremendous opportunity. Our communities are invoking the need for racial reckoning in this country and across the globe. Climate gives us that opportunity because it is an intersectional issue. It gives us an opportunity to think differently about how we operate and how we’ve been treating each other, our land, and our resources. It gives us an opportunity to disrupt how we’ve commodified our people and our resources. It gives us a chance to do better and to acknowledge the harmful practices we’ve engaged in in the past.

Read more of this week’s InfluencHER Project newsletter, Earth Day edition. Follow Gloria on Twitter and Instagram @GloriaWalton, and learn more about The Solutions Project.

Learn more about The InfluencHER Project launch and my involvement as an editorial advisor.