We are in a moment of compounding crises—climate change, displacement, economic instability, and threats to democracy—all of which fall hardest on those who have been historically marginalized. The 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last year is a reminder that climate displacement is not a future threat—it is a lived reality. More than one million people were displaced by that climate disaster, with many having to rebuild not just homes, but entire communities and social networks from the ground up. Black communities in the Gulf South bore the brunt of the disaster and were disproportionately excluded from recovery, forced to rebuild homes and communities elsewhere. Their story is that of the largest climate migration in America’s history. We are publishing the Place, Power, and Possibility: Climate and Migrant Justice Series in commemoration of that anniversary because the Black experience in climate migration remains one of the most urgent and underleveraged stories in this movement. This series is one step in a longer journey toward that fuller reckoning.
People have always moved to survive changing conditions—and the right to remain, to migrate, and to return must be recognized as fundamental rights. This series holds the experiences of three groups: climate-induced domestic migrants, cross-border immigrants, and refugees and asylum seekers. We honor their distinct experiences and legal realities. And across those differences, the common ground is clear: barriers to belonging, exposure to systemic racism, state violence, and labor exploitation, and the persistent use of fear and division to undermine their solidarity. All of them carry a deeply personal story of how the climate crisis intersects with their lives and hopes for the future.
This series was co-created alongside grassroots leaders and organizations in Buffalo, NY; Miami, FL; and the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. It was built with people working at the intersections of climate resilience, migrant justice, narrative change, and community power. Reflecting the acute challenges communities are experiencing in this current moment, these guides dive deeply into how organizations are supporting immigrant and migrant communities on the frontlines of climate change.
Those who profit from division – fossil fuel companies, private prison corporations, the border security industry – want us to see migrants as a threat rather than as neighbors, coworkers, and contributors to our shared future.
Our response is collective power and strategic unification, not the erasure of difference, but the intentional organizing across it. Because when communities that have been deliberately separated find their shared ground, they become harder to divide and harder to ignore. That is the foundation this series is built on.
Place, Power, and Possibility: Climate and Migrant Justice Series is designed to support movement and power building across governance, policy, and narrative – three fronts that are intrinsically connected, and that the communities in this guide are showing us how to run all at once.
The work ahead is hard. But across this country, communities are already showing us what’s possible. This resource belongs to the organizers, advocates, and everyday people showing up where climate and migrant justice meet. Because collective power, built from the ground up, is the only path forward.
