IMAGINARY BORDERS

Twenty-year-old environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez narrates his brief but powerful essay on climate change, written for Pocket Change Collective. With rapid-fire speech, the youth director of Earth Guardians tells listeners that climate change "amplifies all the existing problems we experience today, from racial injustice to economic inequality to health issues to food access to war. It affects our economies, our politics, and our cultures." Pairing hip-hop verses with hard-hitting information on the warming of our planet, Martinez points out that, as "the most diverse and most connected generation in history," the youth of the world must seize the opportunity to launch a movement that will save the earth. S.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2020]