Rooted

In the average dorm room, most objects demand a single function. My ceramic Frog Witch Mug refuses to be pigeonholed. It sits on my desk with its grass-green glaze, bulbous eyes fixed in placid contentment, and a removable purple witch’s hat balanced at an absurd angle. By morning, the hat sits by the side so steam can rise from jasmine tea. By afternoon, the hat is jammed onto a highlighter, and the mug holds pens, scissors, and a half-eaten granola bar. It is my only mug.

On Saturday, February 28th, I stood in the school of cinematic arts for the yearly USC Eco Media Festival. That day, although I was surrounded by a group of people I had never met, it was certain to me that we shared two things in common: a passion for sustainability and an admiration for art. In that room those two passions came together, not only forming a powerful tool that inspired social change amongst us, but also bringing us together as a community. I believe that is the essence of climate activism, and I felt this as soon as the short film screenings began.  

USC is university heaven on earth. You walk across brick quads where every leaf seems placed by design and every fountain flows with mechanical precision. Sustainable efforts to reduce waste and preserve the beauty of campus are evident everywhere.

However, as you pass through those iron gates and cross into South Central Los Angeles, the scenery shifts.

The manicured lawns vanish, replaced by the realities of a neighborhood shaped by redlining and systemic neglect. It is a community of lower-middle-class families working to build stable lives while confronting financial insecurity, food insecurity, violence, and long-standing structural disadvantages.

The first thing you notice is the light. Above the surface, the sun is flat and ordinary. But the moment your face goes under, it fractures – bending and shifting through the water, making everything below look like it exists slightly outside of reality. Then the sound changes. The surface chatter of wind and waves becomes a low hum, and beneath it, you hear life.

This collage focuses on an image of a person shushing the viewer, overlapped with an image of Wall Street to allude to corporations, greenwashing protests to showcase the public perception on these issues, and three CEOs who participate in climate hushing: Andrew Wheeler, Rupert Murdoch, and Charles Koch.

Somewhere across the San Pedro Channel, the Coliseum was roaring to life with cheers that rattled the chests of everyone in the stands. I thought I would miss the noise, the chaos of a game day, but instead I found myself feeling quietly content in the gentle rhythm of the ocean. The world was silent around me, and everything felt impossibly still. My limbs relaxed as I adjusted to the crisp, freezing water. I let myself sink deeper into this peaceful abyss. I felt my mind go soft, the constant ticking of tasks and obligations seemingly floating away in the underwater breeze. With my mind unrecognizably quiet, I began exploring the coves and reefs that surrounded the Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island.

What happens when the solution becomes the problem? In Los Angeles, the Metro rail line system intends to support marginalized communities, but it also threatens to displace those same residents in those homes through gentrification. I had the opportunity to address this paradox through my Geodesign major at the University of Southern California. This interdisciplinary program integrates spatial sciences, urban planning, and other disciplines to create sustainable solutions to complex urban challenges.

In my house, a pickle jar could never just be a pickle jar.

My family is obsessed with pickles. Be it mango, lime, chili, there was always one glistening in mustard oil somewhere on the table. The jar that it came in though, was the real overachiever. Every time the last piece of pickle was scooped out, the jar somehow never found itself in the trash. Little did it know that it would never live another day as a pickle jar.