In this first episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Candice Ammori to talk about the hope that still exists in the work for climate justice, on creating space for differences of opinions in collaborative work, the power of feeling with ease with people and community when we can take time to intentionally feel our feelings, and the superpower of learning how to grieve.

In 2018, Candice Ammori saw the IPCC report on the state of climate change and she realized that it was time to take her research in environmental policy, biostats, and ethical AI and her passion for collaborative community spaces and mesh them into one. Today, Candice leads Climate Vine, the interdisciplinary action-lab dedicated to making a space where people could come together from policy, investment, non-profit, tech, science, and art fields to have conversations about the climate work we need to do, together.

Want to know what Candice is queering? “The sense of certainty. Why was I so certain? Why did I not know that things could change all the time? I surprise myself all the time. And so I think that’s one way that I’m queering it. Living a little bit more comfortably in the ‘I don’t know what I’m certain about’ space.”

Listen to the full episode to learn more.

Kelsey is looking for more cool queers doing cool shit to care for their communities. Have a suggestion of who she should sit down with next? Send your suggestion to coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com

Show Notes

You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack by visiting https://kelseyrhodes.substack.com/

You can connect with Kelsey for freelance writing at https://kelseyrhodes.com/ and follow her on social media at https://twitter.com/KelseyDotOrg and https://www.instagram.com/kelsey_dot_org/

Want to learn more about Candice and Climate Vine? Check it out by visiting https://www.climatevine.co/

Correction from the show: Hu was bought by Mondelez, not Nestle. Both are enormous business conglomerates that aren't doing much for climate justice, FWIW.