Katie Phang

And sometimes my students take notice when I come back a little sweaty.

And one of them said to me one time, wait, we can do something about climate change?

She's 12, and she didn't know.

And that made my blood boil.

A six-year-old just the other day turned to me and said, people are bad for the planet.

I had to tell her, no, people aren't bad for the planet, but there are some people who are bad for the planet, and that is the billionaires who profit off of keeping us sick.

They pollute our communities, predominantly black and brown communities, and then they make us pay the price.

This administration is removing every single safety net imaginable

just to turn around and give corporate welfare to the Epstein class.

Every time federal lawmakers say that we don't have money to fund public services like healthcare, they are lying.

We can make high quality healthcare, education, transportation, and housing accessible for everybody.

We can balance our relationship with our environment through indigenous leadership, and we must liberate everyone who's been abducted by ICE.

This takes revolutionary optimism, and it also needs real world organizing, which is why I recently joined my local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

No more doom scrolling.

We must show up and create hope.

One of the best ways I've found to create hope is to sing.

I have a song that I wrote last summer in solidarity with our neighbors who are being abducted by ICE.

It is in English and Spanish at the same time, and it needs some crowd participation, so I hope that you'll join me, and I'll also invite Joy up quickly to get this song going.

And I'm putting her on the spot.

She's never heard this song before.