In 2019, YUCCA emerged out of Earth Care's El Puente Leadership Academy. YUCCA launched a climate emergency campaign that summer and has been leading direct action organizing and grassroots capacity-building in New Mexico to pressure politicians, candidates, and the press to address the climate crisis. Led by youth from Indigenous, Latine, Immigrant, Chicano, and low-income backgrounds, the campaign successfully mobilized thousands of youth and adults for the climate strike on 9/20/2019 and has continued to build on that momentum with a series of actions designed to hold Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham and her administration as well as law-makers accountable for inadequate action on the climate crisis. Our campaign has earned consistent media attention and has included escalated tactics, including 21 arrests for civil disobedience in October.

The purpose of YUCCA is to grow a youth-led intergenerational & intersectional grassroots climate justice movement in NM that is powerful enough to hold leaders accountable and force the passage of climate policies that address the science, move us swiftly toward carbon neutrality, and end our abusive dependence on fossil fuel extraction. We need to keep the untapped reserves in the Permian Basin – in the ground!