By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
Xiye Bastida is a 19-year-old Otomi-Toltec climate justice activist. She is currently a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. In an article in Penn Today, Bastida described the flood that forced her family to immigrate from San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, to the United States in 2015.
When she moved to New York City, Bastida was greeted by the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, which passed through the area in 2012, according to an article in Now This News. The article stated that it is from these direct experiences with climate change that Bastida was motivated to become involved with the climate justice movement and subsequently joined the environmental club at her high school. In the environmental club, according to NPR, Bastida and others organized for their classmates to join them at the Youth Climate Strike on March 15, 2019. Her work spurred around 600 students into action.
After this success, Bastida helped organize for the Global Climate Strike on Sept. 20, 2019, during which a crowd of 300,000 marched in New York City, according to Green Biz.
Now This News stated that Bastida was inspired by her grandparents and parents, who themselves were “climate activists who fought to protect their sacred Indigenous land in Mexico.” During the pandemic, Bastida shifted her activism online to the Re-Earth Initiative, which she co-founded with Joseph Wilkanowski, who, according to his LinkedIn page, is a student at Skidmore College. The aim of the initiative, according to the organization’s website, is to provide resources for people who want to participate in the climate movement to make it more widely accessible.