350 Canada

Our Organizers

Amara Possian — Canada Campaigns Manager (Toronto, ON)

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Meet Amara Possian, Canada Campaigns Manager at 350.org. This week, Amara joined our team to help run the Our Time campaign. Amara is a campaigner, facilitator, and engagement specialist with a decade of experience organizing for climate justice. During the 2015 election, she managed Leadnow’s Vote Together campaign and mobilized thousands to vote for the candidates most likely to defeat the Harper Conservatives. . . “We won… but we didn’t *really* win. We helped elect a government that made (and broke) game-changing promises: to change our broken voting system, to tackle climate change, to renew the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples. Four years later, the alt-right is on the rise, extreme weather is forcing people from their homes, and we’re arguing about half-measures like the carbon tax. That’s why it feels so meaningful to spend this election cycle throwing down to build power and to back brave, authentic candidates who will do politics differently, and who will champion a plan that actually matches the scale of the crises we’re facing.” Photo credit: @prolibertate.photography #OurTime2019 #climatechange #cndpoli #350

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 17, 2019 at 3:26pm PDT

Atiya Jaffar — Senior Digital Specialist Canada (Vancouver, BC)

 

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Meet our Digital Campaigner Atiya Jaffar, who joined 350.org in 2014. Atiya is a climate justice activist and migrant from Pakistan, whose growing interest is in organizing that centers climate change impacts and migrant rights. We asked Atiya why she fights for climate justice: . . “Growing up, I was a child of many worlds. Before the age of 12, I had lived in 4 different countries and changed schools 7 times. Some of my earliest memories are of my brother and I tiptoeing over the hot sand on the beaches of Karachi, Pakistan, until waves of cool water washed over our feet. When I was a little older I remember boarding ferries on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, mystified every time by the ability of a thin channel of water to divide a city over two continents. And as I moved even farther West, to the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people, that some call Vancouver, I found myself in complete awe of the mountains and temperate rainforests that, as a child, I could have sworn stretched into the heavens. These childhood memories of the rich landscapes of South Asia, Turkey, and the West Coast of Turtle Island are vivid in my mind and my heart. And while will always carry with them a sense of nostalgic warmth, they also invoke sadness. As an adult, I’ve watched as massive floods, deadly heat waves, declining air quality, and raging wildfires devastate all the places I’ve called home. Love for these places and the people that live there is what drives my determination and commitment in the fight against climate change and corporate greed.” . . Photo credit: @prolibertate.photography #climatejustice #climateimpacts #OurTime2019 #NoOneIsIllegal #350

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 23, 2019 at 4:10pm PDT

Cameron Fenton — Canada Team Leader (Vancouver, BC)

 

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Meet Cam Fenton, Canada Strategy and Communications Manager for 350 who started in May 2014. Cam was the first 350 staff member in Canada and started the 350 Canada regional team. Born in Edmonton, he’s lived and organized for climate justice across the country and now lives in Vancouver, organizing, writing and living in a province decimated by wildfires each summer. We asked Cam why he fights for climate justice: . . “I spent a lot of my summers camping across BC, many of those summers with my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. I remember one of those trips to a place called Timothy Lake in the Cariboo region where my grandfather taught me to fish. A couple years ago, I was travelling home through that same stretch of BC in the midst of one of the worst wildfire seasons in history. I drove past the turnoff to Timothy Lake and saw the road closed, with fires still burning beyond. In a moment, my memories from that rip went up in flames. I had thought about climate impacts before, even sucked in wildfire smoke for most of the past few summers. But this time, for the first time, it hurt like never before. It hurt because climate change had taken something as dear and precious to me as a treasured memory of my grandfather and razed it to the ground. Today, all of us are impacted in some way by climate change. We all have something to lose, but also, something to fight for. Remembering that is a big part of why I do this work.” . . Photo credit: Marlin Olynyk #climatejustice #OurTime2019🌅 #GreenNewDeal #BCwildfires

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 26, 2019 at 12:32pm PDT

Clayton Thomas-Muller — Senior Campaign Specialist (Winnipeg, MB)

 

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Meet Clayton Thomas-Müller, Stop-It-At-The-Source Campaigner for 350.org who joined our team in 2014. Clayton is a Cree man from Pukatawagan Cree Nation, a storyteller, father and husband fighting for climate justice to protect his sons’ future. We asked Clay why he fights for climate justice. . “It is disheartening to see the alarming rise of pro-pipeline, anti-immigrant and anti-Indigenous protests in Canada at the same time as more and more migrants and refugees around the world are forced to leave their homes because of climate change. We know we cannot have climate justice without justice for migrants and refugees. We also know in our fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground, we need to respect Indigenous rights and center our movements in the simple teaching that water is life.” . #climatejustice #migrantjustice #climatechange #350

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 8, 2019 at 1:25pm PDT

Chris Gusen — Canada Digital Organizer (Hamilton, ON)

 

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Meet our new digital organizer Chris Gusen. Chris is based in Hamilton, Ontario and is relatively new to the climate justice movement. Before joining 350, Chris organized with @climatejusticeedmonton where he helped organize for a Green New Deal for Alberta. Chris hopes to bring his newcomer’s perspective to 350, where he’ll be using digital tools and techniques to grow and support the movement. We asked Chris why he decided to start organizing for climate justice: “In late 2018, while colleagues at the Government of Alberta debated concepts for the NDP government’s pro-TMX ad campaign, I was privately reckoning with the dire 12-year deadline the IPCC had announced that October. As the campaign rolled out, I was learning about the Sunrise Movement and watching videos of climate strikers singing “Which side are you on?” I saw firsthand that, even under supposedly progressive leadership, our governments still operate like an extension of the oil industry. I realized that focusing on reducing my individual carbon footprint had never been enough and I came to understand that collective action is the only way to confront the intertwined crises that define this moment. So when Jason Kenney took power, I quit my job to join the climate movement. The #OurTime2019 campaign was my introduction to organizing. I joined Climate Justice Edmonton after attending their Green New Deal town hall and learning about their connection to Our Time. Suddenly I had a new community, not just in Edmonton but across the country. Together, we turned our climate anxiety into meaningful action. I am thrilled that I get to work at 350 for the next year because now I have a chance to help other people get plugged into the movement and build the collective power we’ll need to win a Green New Deal.” #greennewdeal #greennewdealcanada #climatejustice

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Oct 6, 2020 at 8:13am PDT

Emma Jackson — Canada Field Organizer (Edmonton, AB)

 

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Meet our field organizer Emma Jackson who joined our team this January. Emma grew up in the Canadian labour movement and first began organizing in 2013 with the fossil fuel divestment movement across Mi’kma’ki (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). Outside of her work with 350, she’s an organizer with @climatejusticeedmonton and a solidarity organizer with Migrante AB. We asked Emma why she organizes for climate justice. . . “Between the ages of 2 and 3, whenever a figure of authority would try and tell me what to do, I’d open my eyes really wide, stare them down, and say “You’re not the boss of me, I’m Emma.” . In a lot of ways, I think we all just want some sense of authority over our own lives, whether it be the freedom to move, the ability to love who we want, or the power to shape our own future. But as a young person growing up in the climate crisis, I’ve spent my entire life being robbed of that sense of authority. . I’m 26 years old. In 1992— the year that I was born— world leaders met to talk about climate change for the very first time. We now have less than half that time to reverse the most harmful and irreparable effects of climate change. HALF. . I organize for climate justice because I’m tired of living under a system that robs us all of our collective authority. I organize because I believe all migrants deserve the freedom to move, the freedom to stay, and the freedom to return. Because I believe all Indigenous peoples should control their own territories. And because I know that fossil fuel executives and their political allies aren’t the boss of us, and I’m ready to build a world that proves it.” #climatejustice #GreenNewDeal #OurTime2019 #350

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 24, 2019 at 12:42pm PDT

Jennifer Deol — Canada Digital Organizer (Vancouver, BC)

 

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Jennifer Deol is a Digital Organizer with 350.org, and joined our team in January. She has been organizing for nearly four years, and recently left the city to start farming again in the Okanagan region in BC. We asked Jennifer why she fights for climate justice: . . “I come from a long line of farmers going back to India who have been farming for centuries. We come from the Punjab region which is the land of the five rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Growing up, my grandfather told me stories of these rivers and entire civilizations and communities that built their lives along their banks. . . Some of my earliest memories are of me frolicking through fragrant fruit trees and getting my hands dirty in my grandfather’s garden helping (but mostly hindering) him seeding food. I was so in awe of the land that sustained, nourished and raised me. . . As I grew up, I learned about the devastation and heartbreak that comes with farming in a heating world. From India to Canada, and places in between I hear of endless droughts and heavy flooding happening more frequently and intensely. Climate change and ongoing colonialism have made the land and waters sick and in turn people who depend on them sick. . . It scares me to think that those five rivers that sustained life for centuries are drying up. And it deeply angers me this is happening around the world and impacting those who have contributed the least to the climate crises first and worst. That sadness and anger fuels me to fight for those that continue to be displaced and dispossessed of their land and livelihoods because of climate change and corporate greed.” . . . #OurTime2019 #climateimpacts #climatechange #Punjab #farming #350

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on May 1, 2019 at 11:16am PDT

Katie Rae Perfitt — Canada Campaign Associate (Ottawa, ON)

 

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Meet our field organizer Katie Ryan-Perfitt who joined our team in 2015. Katie has been a community organizer for nearly a decade. We asked Katie why she organizes for climate justice. . . “Earlier this week, while the community my family is from was seeing flooding that submerged main street in town, Doug Ford announced cuts to services that not only help our communities understand and respond to flood risk, but also to emergency paramedic services that are vital to ensuring people are taken care of when disasters like these strike. This is what happens in a broken political system. While rural, working class communities like the one I come from struggle to put food on the table and feel the squeeze of economic hardship and climate impacts, CEO’s of massive corporations rake in billions and funnel money to politicians to sow division and fear. Well, I’m done with corporations and their paid for politicians running our communities into the ground. Now, it’s Our Time. Our Time to build a future that ensures no one is left behind — no matter the hand you’ve been dealt. Let’s start by putting the vision of a Green New Deal on the desks of every political hopeful in the upcoming election and building the political power we need to hold those elected to account in making sure this dream becomes a reality.” . . #OurTime2019 #KeepItInTheGround #GreenNewDeal #climatejustice

A post shared by 350 Canada (@350canada) on Apr 18, 2019 at 10:12am PDT