Many people identify themselves as climate activists, but not many would call themselves climate optimists – especially not now. Lauren Bash, however, still finds reasons to be hopeful, and offers ways to combat the environmental crisis centered around the principles of climate action, connection, and community.
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“Given the hand we’re dealt now, where the federal government is just going to be unhinged and unregulated and so reckless, the only thing we can do is organize hyper locally,” she says. “Call it what you want – mutual aid, collective care, community organizing – is truly the only way that we can be resilient or resistant to all of these things that are perhaps coming our way.”
Lauren has formed some of her most meaningful connections within Girl Gang Crazy, an LA-based run club. She didn’t start running until she was 24, inspired by her then-boyfriend, now-husband, who was an avid runner. She couldn’t run a mile without stopping, but she signed up for a half marathon. When she successfully ran the race, “I felt like a rock star. I was like, ‘This is amazing. This feels so good.’”
She ran the LA Marathon two years later. “It was awesome; it was like a homecoming thing, running past all the big sightseeing things you would go see on a tour,” she says. Running helped with the grieving process when her father passed away in 2022, but she needed something more. She signed up to run the LA Marathon again, telling her husband, Brooks, “ I want to do something good for myself to make myself proud, make dad proud and just really start feeling like myself again. But I want to find some women to run with.”
One day when Brooks was running at their local track, he saw a group of women doing drills. “And so, courageously, he goes up to this group of 20 women and is like, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’ They’re looking at him like, ‘What?’ and one was like, ‘We’re Girl Gang Crazy. We’re a
women’s run club, we’re all training for the LA Marathon together.’ And he goes, ‘This is amazing. My wife’s actually looking for some women to run with. Could I introduce her to y’all?’”
Lauren showed up for one of the club’s runs and knew that she had found a place where she belonged. “It’s truly an inclusive run club where it’s not only about pace and racing. It’s just about community and being together. And we’ve got sexy pace ladies who run however fast, however slow they want. And then you’ve got girls who are running three hour marathons. The true range and the diversity of this group is so beautiful. I found a couple of girls the first day who are still my dear friends, and we all trained for the LA Marathon together. I was like, ‘Wow, this is such an answered prayer.’ All I wanted was to find some women. And now these are some of my best friends.”
Running also connects Lauren to the natural world, something else that gives her cause for optimism. “I remember two weeks, maybe, after my dad passed and those were really, really dark days and it was just a very, very heavy time. And I remember walking outside and putting something in the car and looking up and clouds were passing. And I was just standing there long enough to watch clouds move. And I remember thinking even on my darkest days, the world is still turning. No amount of human destruction or greed or evil or anything will stop this beautiful thing from existing. Yes, it will cause extreme harm. It can cause entire species to become extinct and ecosystems to collapse, but it cannot stop this beautiful thing from turning. Even on our darkest days, the earth is still turning. And isn’t that a miracle? Isn’t that magical?
“I know that this administration and the damage that they’re causing and threatening to cause will wake so many people up to say, ‘Okay, I get it now and I get that I have to take action.’”
Lauren suggests using Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Climate Action Venn Diagram to figure out how you personally can best help with climate solutions. “Instead of trying to force yourself into something that doesn’t feel aligned, take the time to ask yourself these questions. I know everyone has their own unique way of contributing. And this is the type of stuff that just wakes people up to tap into it.
“It can’t be a couple hundred or let’s even call it thousands of people doing this work. This has to be a mass mobilization of everyone finding the way that they can contribute in their own unique way.”
Resources
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