I have spent my adult life in rooms where the air feels heavy with unspoken truth. In boardrooms that were alabaster by design. Donor retreats wrapped in recycled bamboo and good intentions. Places where the words “equity” and “justice” show up on the slides, but the people most harmed by the crisis sit nowhere near the table. Sometimes not in the building. Too often, not even in the imagination of those shaping the agenda.
I’ve learned that erasure rarely arrives with a shout. It walks in quietly. Slow steps. Soft shoes. It hides inside the priorities we set without thinking, the decisions we rationalize in the name of progress, the silences we refuse to disturb. And in the environmental movement — the so-called Big Green universe — it has shaped leadership for generations.
I say this with both love and disappointment. I say it as someone who has walked alongside these organizations for decades, believing in their mission, fighting for the same planet they say they fight for. But belief is not the same as blindness. And love is not the same as complacency. At some point, the truth has to be said out loud:
There are not enough African American, Latino, or Indigenous leaders at the highest levels of the Big Green world. Not nearly enough. And the reasons are older than any of us wants to admit.
The ‘Someone’ Keeps Looking the Same
I’ve watched this play out like a slow-moving storm. A drizzle at first. A small oversight here, a missed opportunity there. Leaders retire. Others ascend. The door opens for someone new. But somehow the “someone” keeps looking the same. Keeps coming from the same pipeline. Keeps reinforcing the same patterns of safety disguised as expertise.
And when the storm intensifies — when the Trump Administration erases entire offices dedicated to environmental justice, when frontline communities are ghosted from federal decision-making, when staff of color are pushed out or sidelined — suddenly Big Green organizations look around and realize something unsettling:
They don’t have enough leaders who understand the stakes because they’ve never made it a priority to elevate those who live with the stakes every single day.
Ignoring the Truth Won’t Save Us
That is how erasure works. Not abruptly. Not violently. But quietly. One leadership choice at a time. One complacent moment at a time. One undocumented brilliance left sitting in the shadows because someone “wasn’t the right fit” for the culture. Culture, of course, meaning comfort. Comfort, of course, meaning the status quo.
I don’t write this to shame anyone. Shame has never built a movement worth following. I write it because ignoring the truth won’t save us. Not from rising seas. Not from poisoned air. Not from communities being turned into sacrifice zones by bureaucratic neglect and corporate greed.
And certainly not from the climate crisis barreling toward us with the force of a thousand hurricanes.
Decision-Makers, Strategists, and Vision Shapers
The movement needs Black leaders. It needs Latino leaders. It needs Indigenous leaders. Not as tokens. Not as public-relations décor. Not as a bullet point in a glossy annual report. But as decision-makers. Strategists. Vision shapers. People who understand that saving the planet cannot be separated from saving the people who have borne the cost of its destruction.
Green 2.0 has been telling this truth for years. Spotlighting the good, the bad, and the unequivocally ugly. Naming the places where progress is real and the corners where old habits cling like vines around a dying tree. They’ve shown us the data we don’t want to see, the patterns we keep repeating, the leadership gaps that widen each year we pretend everything is “moving in the right direction.”
Big Green Must Walk the Talk
But this moment is different. The Trump Administration has made a sport of erasing the talent, contributions, and humanity of people of color across government. Policies that once protected communities are torn apart. Scientists are silenced. EJ offices are gutted. Hard-won gains are rolled backward.
We can’t let the environmental movement mirror that same erasure in softer tones. We can’t claim to fight for justice while replicating injustice behind closed doors. We can’t demand representation at the federal level while failing to practice it in our own institutions.
Because the truth is simple, even if the journey is not:
We are going to need everyone if we’re going to win on the climate crisis.
Everyone. The communities that have been ignored. The leaders who have been overlooked. The wisdom that comes from struggle. The insight that comes from living at the edge of disaster and still believing in a future.
The movement needs Black leaders. It needs Latino leaders. It needs Indigenous leaders.
Diversity is not a nicety. It is a survival strategy. A moral imperative. A scientific necessity. A reflection of the world we say we want to save.
The earth doesn’t ask for perfect leaders. It asks for honest ones. Brave ones. Leaders who understand that justice is not an accessory but a foundation. Leaders who know that a movement built without the people most affected will never be strong enough to withstand the storms ahead.
I believe we can build that movement. I believe we can widen the circle. I think Big Green can evolve into something braver, broader, bolder than its past.
But only if we choose truth over tradition. Courage over comfort. And everyone over a privileged few.
That’s how we win. That’s how we survive. That’s how we make sure no one is erased again.
Dr. Mustafa Ali is a poet, thought leader, strategist, policymaker, and activist committed to justice and equity. He is the founder of The Revitalization Strategies, a business focused on moving our most vulnerable communities from “surviving to thriving.” Ali was previously the senior vice president for the Hip Hop Caucus, a national nonprofit and non-partisan organization that connects the hip-hop community to the civic process to build power and create positive change.