Today’s blog post features an interview with Hannah Markelz, a student activist at University of Massachusetts Amherst, youth organizer with the Sunrise Movement, and intern for 350 Mass. This interview aims to highlight why youth climate activists like Hannah stand in support of a climate superfund in Massachusetts and how students and young people play a key role in supporting the Make Polluters Pay campaign.

– Olivier Bradley, Better Future Project, Communications Fellow

Name: Hannah Markelz

Town: Arlington, MA, but currently living in Amherst, MA!

Node / Working Group(s) / Other Civic Involvements: Sunrise Movement at UMass Amherst Campaigns Coordinator, 350 Mass Organizing Intern

About how long have you been involved? Since 2019!

Olivier: Who are you and what is your story? Why and how did you get involved in this work?

Hannah: My name is Hannah and I'm currently a junior at UMass Amherst, a climate organizer there with the Sunrise Movement, and also an intern with 350 Mass this year. Going all the way back to climate organizing and how I got into that space more broadly, I knew about social justice movements growing up—I was raised Unitarian Universalist, so that was a big sphere of influence—but my parents weren't activists or anything. I went to some nature camps where I learned about climate change and sustainability, and became very personally interested in that. A big catalyst for me was the youth climate strike in 2019 in Boston. I went with some friends who I thought were really cool and was like, “Oh, we're gonna skip school and go to the Boston Common? This is gonna be awesome.” Once I was actually there though with thousands of other high schoolers and adults and community members, I realized, “wow, other people care about this and this is a movement . . . this is not just a problem that people are worried about.” I got involved with Sunrise in high school following that, but after Biden got elected, our hub kind of fizzled out and the broader Sunrise movement I would say lost a little bit of direction. So then I focused on anti-racist work and education reform which I really enjoyed and did through high school.

Coming into college, I knew I wanted to study environmental science—I was like, “I love science and I love social justice, and environmental science is the blend of these two things.” I also knew I wanted to join the Sunrise Movement when I got to UMass because they were the founding chapter—well, Varshini Prakash founded the Sunrise Movement in 2017 after she graduated from UMass. Freshman year I couldn't make the Sunrise meetings, but wanted to get involved, so I started diving into UMass's carbon zero and decarbonization initiatives during that spring semester because I felt like there wasn’t a lot of information on how the university was going to decarbonize in seven years. Spoiler—they're not doing anything about it. I interviewed a bunch of professors and staff members as a part of that project, and really got down the rabbit hole. It was for an honors colloquium within my History of Sustainable Community Development class. I made a website about what's really going on with carbon zero and a petition. Fast forward to when I joined Sunrise in the fall, the main goal for the hub was a Green New Deal for UMass, part of which was decarbonization work. Seeing that, I was like, “hey guys, I've done all this research . . .” and they were like, “awesome!” So that’s how I got involved with them and now I'm a hub coordinator this year. In that time, things have changed a lot—Trump got elected in November. We've been grappling with how to climate organize on campus when students are getting deported, research funding is getting slashed, financial aid is getting slashed, and departments are getting, like . . . swept under the rug. All this new DEI club funding is also getting slashed. So over the course of the year going out into the campus with signs going like, “decarbonize!” just didn't feel right anymore. The movement as a whole has shifted into a much broader anti-authoritarian focus, which has been really revelatory for me. I came here as a climate activist, but my entire UMass education has taught me that the clean energy transition is not the reason why we haven't solved the climate crisis yet. It's fundamental corporate exploitation and, I mean, capitalism. But no one wants to say that. Those are the reasons why we are still dealing with the climate crisis. It's about these power structures and about people, not just about, like, polar bears from the Arctic. So I'm really excited about where we're at right now, because it feels like we're actually addressing the root cause of the issue in a way that brings more people in.

Going into Make Polluters Pay, Make Polluters Pay is a great balance of this narrative because it's a climate bill but it's really about people, about communities, and about corporate power—making corporations pay their fair share for their damages. I think that's why the Sunrise Movement has backed this bill, and that's why I've been organizing for it, as part of a lot of other work we're doing. This is only one solution, but it's really important. And the fact that it exists—we should push it through.

Olivier: What does your work involve now as a youth organizer and an intern with 350 Mass? 

Hannah: Well as a youth organizer, primarily… organizing youth! I’ll say that Massachusetts has really lost its statewide collaboration network since covid—and so all these campuses are doing their own versions of climate activism. For some people, it looks more like sustainability projects. For others, it looks more like decarbonization work, or divestment, and for some people, it's this anti-authoritarian shift. Right now there’s kind of this spectrum—where on one end you have people working with administrations focused more narrowly on sustainability and climate, and on the other end you have folks working to put more pressure on administrations and build broader anti-authoritarian student power. People fall all along that spectrum and I’d say there isn't a formal coalition yet per se. A lot of my work with 350 Mass has been just talking to student leaders and being like, “What are you doing on your campus? How can we collaborate? How can we build power, help each other build power, and build a statewide narrative and youth message?” And Make Polluters Pay has been really great for that, because it's really in the middle of this spectrum: those who are doing mostly climate work can get on board, and people who are doing more anti-authoritarian-focused work can also get on board. So it's been a good bridge. Organizing the getting students to the petition drop was a main project of mine, by 350 Mass, We were able to get a pretty good turnout, especially from Western Mass!

Olivier: Yeah, that was great. We were able to get some Community Scholars Program attendance too, which was cool [Olivier originally got involved in activism through the Community Scholars Program, graduating the program in spring 2025].

Hannah: Yeah!!

Olivier: What about divestment? Where does that stand?

Hannah: UMass divested [gestures in air quotes] in 2016 from direct fossil fuel holdings.

Olivier: What about indirect holdings? Doesn’t UMass still have endowment money in mutual funds or ETFs or something that's effectively still invested in fossil fuels?

Hannah: Yep, UMass has indirect investments. The main issue for climate activists has been that they won't tell us about their investments. We've been trying to request that information using the Freedom of Information Act and have just been hitting walls and blocks. What limited information we have gotten from the FOIA requests is not even useful, because it's all blocked out and redacted . . . it’s like privileged information or something. I think Sunrise FOIA requested before my time. War profiteering divestment, however, has been very strong at UMass, but I would say the movement's not really making a ton of traction. In general, pro-Palestine activism at UMass has been crushed pretty brutally by the administration. The movement has not experienced new growth—it's kind of the same people who are putting the same pressures, so the university is like, well, we're not really gonna care. But I think that divestment from war profiteering and fossil fuels could be a major goal of the Student Rise Up movement at UMass. By broadening this coalition and by broadening this vision scope and it being something we're fighting for along with other issues like for example affordability, free public college housing, freedom to peacefully protest on campus and not be attacked by armed police, security from collaboration with ICE, financial aid security if Trump blocks financial aid, things like that. These ideas are all circulating, so I'm hoping that the divestment movement gets incorporated into this larger movement, and gives the movement renewed traction and life.

Olivier: Absolutely. Something I’ve also been thinking about from my economics background that has some practical applications—although it's not always a perfect framework for thinking about situations—is the idea of opportunity cost. Part of what got me thinking about this concept in the context of the climate justice movement was actually a book one of my former history professors, Kevin Young, just published called Abolishing Fossil Fuels [Hannah smiles knowingly and holds up her copy of Abolishing Fossil Fuels]. If you spend time and energy on one cause exclusively, then you're not spending that time and energy on another. So I think that’s part of the reason—besides the obvious benefits of building power through strong relationships—that coalition-building is so key, because you avoid splitting up your time and energy towards competing ends. I think that collaboration will be what really moves the needle.

Hannah: Totally.

Olivier: You mentioned a “statewide network” being weakened by covid. Can you elaborate?

Hannah: By a statewide network, I mean communication between. Collaboration between students across Massachusetts schools has dropped off, so rebuilding those connections and maybe building a statewide network. There are a couple of coalitions out there—I mean, 350 Mass is starting to tie schools together. The Sunrise Movement is obviously national, but there are Sunrise hubs in Mass so they have that connection. Then there's the Make Polluters Pay coalition, and there's a couple undergrad and postgrad students who have been tying students together, which has been a work in progress to reconcile different groups’ focuses. There are definitely schools that are still being left out of the communications, so we can definitely take more steps to build collaborative coalitions.

Olivier: Why does the climate change superfund act [H.1014] matter to you, and why does it matter to youth more broadly?

Hannah: Why it matters to me is that again, I've been thinking a lot about shifting power—it's bringing power back to communities so they can confront the damages that they are and will continue facing because of the climate crisis. We have to not only try to mitigate the impacts, but also adapt because they're here, now. We need to empower communities to address these adaptations and build this resilience and they shouldn't have to do that on their own . . . it's just so simple. You made the mess; you have to clean it up. Fossil fuel companies have an obscene amount of money, an unimaginable amount of money, especially to people in so many of these communities, like . . .  they need to pay for their damages. Using economic terms, it's an externality that they have to pay for. And I think other youth are also seeing the impacts of climate change in their communities and believe that they deserve to be able to address them without straining their local and state governments to have that ability.

Olivier: That definitely aligns with what I've been hearing from my young friends as well. When Tasnim and I were making the petition booklet for the petition drop, we were looking through testimonies, and a lot of them came from students out in Western Mass—talking about air pollution, smoke from wildfires, droughts, you know, health conditions they have . . . how they've seen things changing and how they're worried about their futures. So definitely a common theme, I'd say.

Hannah: Yep, exactly.

Olivier: What has been effective in your experience in engaging more young people in this issue, especially students. What has or has not been effective?

Hannah: Yeah. When talking about organizing, what's been most effective is just emphasizing relationships and talking to people. 350 Mass and the broader climate movement are built around relational organizing, which means we build people power for our actions by getting other people in, and you need to know people to get them to join whatever you're trying to do. It’s twofold—first, just the power of relationships and the power of community as a driving portion of movements, but also talking about real people and real experiences. When you say 1.5 degrees of warming or whatever, what does that mean for real people's lives? It means that there's flooding and that Boston is sinking. It means heat waves—what do you mean it was like 100 degrees for a week straight this summer? We used to never have that. Or thinking about snow and the snowstorms I remember having as a kid—it means not having those. These impacts matter. That actual process of talking to people and hearing their stories and sharing your own is what I think fundamentally builds this movement and makes it unique.

Olivier: I totally agree—I feel like some people focus too much of their climate advocacy on the scientific causes or on the effects of crossing tipping points in the future, and while that's a really important component for convincing some people, I think we need to clearly communicate how climate change is here now, that these harms are felt most by those least responsible in our communities, and that climate change is fundamentally caused by imbalances in who has power and how they use it. What you said about the snowstorms also reminds me of that crazy nor'easter back in October 2011. Last fall during my senior year, I was walking around the UMass Amherst campus and it was like 70 degrees on the same day, 13 years later! I couldn’t believe that there were literally several feet of snow on that same day 13 years prior.

Hannah: Yeah. Also going back to that point about focusing on people and power, it seems crazy to me now that the main victims of climate change in 2015, 2016 . . . everyone talked about polar bears. Obviously natural landscapes and biodiversity and our forests are important. But it's equally important to highlight the victims of this crisis that the movement has focused less on: it's people, your neighbors, it's not just these mystical, perfect animals in a far, far away land and pristine landscapes we're losing. It's our homes and it's about people. And so I think that the climate movement risks falling very out of touch without shifting. And realizing that this is not just an idealist biodiversity movement, but that it's also about people and creating change in our communities.

Olivier: Exactly. I think highlighting those connections is especially important when I see so many people talking about “people, economy, environment,” or like “people, planet, profits.” A lot of conversations around sustainability are framed that way, and I think it's a terrible way to talk about sustainability. The economy and environment and people are fundamentally interconnected, and not just in abstract theoretical ways. Obviously the environment doesn’t exist to serve us, but it performs so many ecosystem services for us that we’d otherwise have to rely on markets to provide—air and water purification, food provision, carbon sequestration, flood and erosion and disease control, you know? All these things are connected and we need to be communicating that.

Hannah: Yeah, and the economy only exists to serve people in the environment. Right, like it's not its own entity that needs to be preserved. And the environment doesn't just exist to serve people, in my opinion. People and the environment are far more related to each other than we might imagine and they are far less separate from the economy than we’ve been led to believe.

Olivier: You spoke a bit to the coalitionality of this movement, or lack thereof in some cases. To what degree is this work coalitional? Where it is happening, what does that look like? Where it’s not, how might we better practice solidarity and collaboration across movements for justice?

Hannah: It is coalitional in some ways, but it's not coalitional quite yet the way that I want it to be. I think that it unfortunately took the second election of Trump for us to get here, but I think people are finally realizing that there are bigger problems underneath all of these issues. Every issue that movements are focused on right now, there is a common theme of lack of freedom, and people in my eyes just forget the power we have over the system we're part of. I'm an organizer with Sunrise at UMass as well, and one thing that Sunrise is very excited about is this Students Rise Up campaign. That officially has launched and the first monthly day of action for it is on this Friday, November 7th. It's not just Sunrise—it’s Sunrise, Campus Climate Network, Ohio Student Association, national College Dems, national Dissenters, and others have been signing onto this campaign. And it's basically this idea of a larger student's resistance movement against authoritarianism and corporate power and reminding everyday people that we can rise up in the face of oppression and create social change, because we actually do have the power over the system if we organize. I talk a lot about institutional pillars that hold up the status quo and power and things like that and a lot of power mapping but . . . I feel like people have forgotten that we can have agency if we work together and that things just don't have to be the way they are. That's been happening on the student side of things, and other community organizing groups have also been realizing this—even though there’s no direct action involved, the No Kings protests are based on this same idea of rising up and saying “this is not okay.” And I'm noticing in 350 spaces as well that are traditionally climate-organizing-only spaces focused on heating policy and other nitty gritty climate things. And now people are like, so what do we do about this authoritarianism thing? I really see this as a catalyst to a change point in the environmental movement and other movements as well realizing that we can, all of our issues related. And I'm really hopeful for collaboration that is beyond anything we've seen in a long time.

Olivier: Agreed. I think the treatment of these deeply connected issues as separate is definitely an obstacle to people realizing that a lot of their interests are more aligned than they think. I also think that just as problems of injustice follow from power imbalances in our political and economic systems, working towards justice in all its forms follows from building and exercising the structural power we have as advocates, workers, consumers, and community members to build the liberated futures we want to see. If the problems are connected, then the solutions should be, too, I feel.

Hannah: And what those solutions look like in practice will always be a debate, so I'm interested to see specific demands outlined for this campaign. The goal is to work with labor unions as well, so the long term vision is students building demands and movements on their own campuses, then a national day of student strikes on May Day 2026 to 2027, and major unions have aligned their contracts to end in 2028. So the vision is the first U.S. general strike in history in 2028, which would be like mass government and economic shutdown.

Olivier: Although unlike the current shutdown, it’d be for social change instead of against it . . .

Hannah: I know, right? that's not okay—the fact that the government's been shut down for over a month and is simply choosing not to serve its people is not okay. So why are we operating in a way as if it is? But I see hope in these coalitions that are building, and I see hope in the determination of activists across generations. Now it's just getting out there and doing that work and talking to people.

Olivier: Well, don’t let me keep you from doing that! Thanks, Hannah.

Hannah: Thank you so much, Olivier.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.