Queer Ecojustice Project organizes at the intersection of ecological justice and queer liberation. We are storytellers weaving together the threads of a complex, multidimensional story of queer survival and collective ecological futures through collaborative projects that aim to catalyze culture, consciousness, and community.
Culture
Curating and creating multimedia educational resources
Consciousness
Researching and teaching queer ecojustice theory and strategy
Community
Supporting self-organized nodes build community and bring these ideas into their lives and work
Collaboration
Uplifting the work of kindred communities, and amplifying the voices of those whose lives and work embody these intersections
About queer ecojustice project
Who We Are
Desi
Deseree grew up between Southwest Louisiana and the Los Angeles area where she began her movement building journey as a student organizer working on queer and trans liberation struggles in 2008. After almost a decade of working within the LGBTQ movement, Deseree shifted her focus towards land-based work as a scholar, activist and farmer. In 2015 she became a co-organizer of the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network and in 2016 she co-founded the Queer Eco-Justice Project, organizing at the intersection of ecological justice and queer liberation alongside Vanessa (below). Deseree holds an interdisciplinary MA in Social Transformation focused on African-diasporic spiritual traditions, queer ecology and land-based movements. Deseree is also an alumna of the ecological farming apprenticeship at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. She enjoys growing food and medicine, eating spicy foods, and nerding out over cats, movies and books.
Deseree is currently part of the staff collective with Movement Generation Justice and Ecology project in Oakland, California, weaving together the mycelium of movements for liberation.
Pronouns: She/Her and They/Them
Vanessa is a queer biocultural geographer, educator, and storyteller, dedicated to community healing, opening access to land and resources, and fostering a thriving local economy based on ecological resilience. Vanessa is a chronic academic: They are currently a PhD student at University of Georgia after completing a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences from University of California, Berkeley. Along with Desi, Vanessa was a founding member of the Queer Ecojustice Project in Spring 2016, educating and organizing at the intersection of ecological justice and queer liberation. In 2018, they co-organized the Queers4ClimateJustice contingent to the RISE March for Climate, Jobs, and Justice and continue to engage communities through the Instagram #Queers4ClimateJustice. In 2021, they joined the board for Out 4 Sustainability to support the Qready initiative promote resilience preparedness for LGBTQ+ communities. They love gardening, singing songs, growing interspecies community, and making magic.
Vanessa is now the director of “Fire & Flood: Queer Resilience in the era of Climate Change” a documentary about queer resilience to climate change rooted in their lived experience of the 2017 Tubbs Fire and in collaboration with other queer and trans organizers in Northern California and Puerto Rico.
Pronouns: They/Them
Vanessa
Natalia
Natalia Villarán-Quiñones is a Queer and Femme Afro-Caribbean, an intersectional ecofeminist, youth organizer, and artist based in Puerto Rico. She believes in the transformative and healing power of the community and how important it is to preserve oral and written stories and traditions.
As the community organizer for Queers4ClimateJustice, Natalia has opened new conversations with climate justice organizers in PR about inclusion of LGBTQ+ issues, organized a Q4CJ Youth Roundtable for Pride month in 2022, coordinated a cohort of 12 queer
and trans organizers from PR to attend the 2023 Creating Change conference in San Francisco, and expanded the reach and relationships of the instagram account @queers4climatejustice. She is also a poet, published in the anthology Puerto Rico en mi Corazón in 2019, and now celebrating her first book: Desamor y Memorias de una Virgo (The Heartbreak and Memories of a Virgo).
Pronouns: Ella/She/Her
Our current community-building offering is our set of curated and created multi-media resources for self-organized nodes, but we envision a future where this project has capacity to materially support the resilience preparedness of queer community.
What are you working on? Contact us if you'd like thought-partners.
We intend to be a base-building and membership-driven organization,
and we envision our base consisting of those whose lives embody these intersections:
Queer folks in rural areas, including those creating community in queer autonomous land projects, as well as those living on the frontlines of environmental harm
Queer folks who have been displaced from land-based livelihoods due to homophobia and other intersecting violences, including homeless and incarcerated queer youth
Queer folks who work within environmental, climate, or food justice organizations, and those whose work builds a queer ecological future.
We prioritize leadership from people who are most impacted
by the cisnormative, white supremacist, capitalist, ableist, settler-colonial heteropatriarchy system that is also the root of environmental degradation- as such, people of color,
two-spirit, undocuqueer, trans*, gender non-conforming, and folks with dis/abilities are centered, highly respected, and encouraged to get involved.
Future Visions
