For decades, too many of us have viewed the struggles against pollution and systemic racism as unrelated or even at odds. In this time of pandemic and antiracist uprising, more and more people are coming to understand the inescapable connections between these movements. Rev. Small will tell his own story and invite us all into more powerful activism.
Cited by Bill McKibben as “one of the key figures in the religious environmental surge,” Rev. Fred Small is Executive Director of Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light, which mobilizes people of faith as climate activists. He also serves as Minister for Climate Justice at Arlington Street Church, Boston. A Unitarian Universalist parish minister for nearly two decades, Fred is also a singer-songwriter and environmental lawyer. In 2015 he left parish ministry to devote his energies to climate advocacy. One of the first to engage in civil disobedience to draw attention to climate change, he was arrested with 21 others in prayer outside the US Department of Energy in Washington, DC, in May 2001. In 2007, he was a lead organizer of the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue from Northampton to Boston, Massachusetts. Grist Magazine has named him one of 15 Green Religious Leaders worldwide.