Keanu Arpels-Josiah

Keanu Arpels-Josiah is a freshman at Swarthmore College and has been involved in organizing various climate movements, including for Fridays For Future NYC. Keanu started getting involved in organizing after attending Greta Thunberg’s climate strike in 2019 in NYC. Although Keanu has been quoted in many articles, he does not view himself as a public figure. Rather, he views himself as a connector of different spaces.   

Photo by Climate Words

Keanu Arpels-Josiah

He/him

Core Organizer with Fridays for Future NYC

Lower Manhattan 

What originally drew you to your work in the environmental/climate space?

For as long as I can remember, even thinking about [the climate crisis] played a really big part in how I thought about my life growing up and my future. I think that's the case for a lot of people in our generation. 2019 was really the big moment for me, getting involved in the global climate strikes. I was in eighth grade at the time. I remember going to the big climate strike that year when Greta Thunberg was in New York for the General Assembly. And really coming to an understanding of the people who are on stage organizing this, the 200,000 people who are on the street – like they are my age or around my age. So A) I don't have to wait until I'm older to do something about this. And then B) the reality of we can't wait until we're older. COVID kind of slowed me getting involved. 2022 is when I started organizing more formally. I joined Fridays For Future initially as someone from my school getting people to come out. I think there's this perception before you get involved in organizing that it's a really big world and that there's a ton of people doing this who already have it covered. That's not the case. In 2023 I was one of the lead organizers for the March to End Fossil Fuels in September, which had 75,000 folks. That was really how I got more involved in federal organizing and the international climate space.

What motivates you to be an organizer, or be in the public eye in terms of addressing the climate crisis?

I don't see myself as someone whose primary role in organizing is being in the public eye. That is what kind of comes across with the press side of things. People see us organizing big marches and speaking at them. But ultimately, most organizing is just talking with our friends, talking in our schools. Most organizing is sending email after email, being on Zoom calls, making spreadsheets. I see my role in organizing as connecting different spaces. 

I really see the climate crisis as the intersection of all the biggest social issues we're facing at the time right now. There's no way we're going to achieve racial justice if Black and Brown communities are getting desecrated more and more by fossil fuels. There's no way we're going to achieve gender justice or reproductive justice without really talking about climate justice seriously.

Part of my family is from Pakistan. I remember in 2022 the strike I organized, a week before a third of Pakistan was underwater in 24 hours [affecting 33 million people]. The climate crisis is here, and I think there's really no way to go about our days without acknowledging that. Every fossil fuel infrastructure project that we stop, and every piece of climate legislation we're able to win is meaningful towards achieving what we're fighting for. And if we don't all kind of take that role, no one else is going to. 

Do you come across people who are not climate change deniers, but maybe are like “I don't really care if what I'm doing is bad for the environment”? If so, how do you confront that?

It's around 76% or so of Americans, maybe higher, that believe the climate crisis is happening. I think sometimes this discussion around climate is so often denial. And I think it's really important that we don't do that. Yes, we need to confront denial. But also the bigger thing that's stopping us from the change is the feeling that we can't do anything, which is very intentional by the fossil fuel industry, or a sense that this is an issue that's far in the future. We encounter all these things as organizers. But the thing that's hard to wrestle with is this idea of, like, there's nothing we can do about it. And that's because of just how broad of an issue this is, and how big the stakes are. Historical movements all have had incredible, seemingly insurmountable odds that they've had to overcome. 

That's definitely something I've come across too, where it's not like people don't believe in climate change, but they don't understand how it's such an intersectional issue that impacts everything. 

There's also a lot of traditional environmentalist history within which people think about the climate crisis as something that's just affecting polar bears, or think about the environment as this whitewashed space – that conservationist movements are just big environmental groups. I think it's our job as climate justice, and environmental justice organizers to expand that to the reality of what the environment is. Yes, it's polar bears and all species, but it's also very much humans. 

What scares you the most about the climate crisis?

This idea of responding to the climate crisis by protecting billionaires. We see this from Elon Musk and Trump right now at the federal level. Their response to [the climate crisis] is to ignore 99.9% of the American population that's going to experience it and protect themselves. That kind of mindset is really scary. I feel, more often than scared, I'm angry. That's something that's much easier to turn into action. 

What are some challenges you face as an organizer? How have you overcome them? 

One of the challenges that I think we as movements face all the time is [being] siloed in different spaces around different social issues. [For example,] there's a climate movement, there's a climate justice movement, there's environmental conservation movements. We're all kind of in these different spaces, and there's affinity within that. I've been really thinking a lot about what solidarity looks like within our spaces; be serious about showing up to actions around other issues, and be serious about understanding the intersections. Within climate spaces, you also see intergenerational organizing. 

What's your favorite thing about what you do?

New York is such a beautiful place to organize. There's always something different happening any given day. What I described is definitely a really hard challenge of organizing, but also a really beautiful thing [of coming together]. Just being in community with people and across different spaces, whether that's talking about the nitty gritty of organizing an action, or about an issue you're all passionate about, or just about something funny. That community is really the strength of organizing and is definitely one of my favorite parts. 

Do you have any climate mentors or inspirations?

The organizers of the 2019 strike have been really close mentors for me. Ayesha Siddiqa. There's some other really great folks who are organizers for different organizations in New York City. 

If you were trying to convince someone, why should people show up?

This is our future that's disappearing in front of our eyes and we have an opportunity to protect our communities and to shape that future into some place we want to live in. It's about everyone we love and care about. Even if it's not you being directly affected, it's only a matter of time. We can't sit by and do nothing. 

Do you have a message that you want, Gen Z, or anybody really, to come away with?

We have to believe another world is possible. You don't have to be a part of this movement in all the same ways, but we do have a responsibility to orient our lives in some way to bring forward action. Really think about how you can get involved and show up in your communities. It's kind of daunting to make that step and to join an action. Do it and bring a friend with you.