













































Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 154 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

TreePeople: Bringing Sociology, Climate Research, and 
Community Voices into the Same Room 

April D. Laird 
Department of Sociology 

California State University, Los Angeles 
 
ABSTRACT 
This is an exploration into being the first and only Cal State LA 
sociology student intern at TreePeople, a seasoned non-profit 
environmental justice organization. TreePeople’s Policy and 
Research department teams host multi-component environmental 
initiatives which use participatory community engagement and 
outreach to dynamically record new urban climate change 
research and maximize resilience outcomes in underserved 
neighborhoods. Los Angeles is one of the most historically 
notorious urban landscapes for resource and land discrimination, 
racial and class segregationist policies, and extractive/polluting 
enterprises. My internship sought to bridge the gap between 
researchers and community members while encouraging a new 
approach to climate studies that brings all stakeholders into 
conversation equally. My team and I are employing micro to 
macro motivations, technological details, and sociological 
theoretical frameworks during the pre-outreach and beginning 
sampling stages of our initiative launch. LA provides a potent 
location for implementing more sociologically rooted 
environmental research, especially in the face of imminent climate 
crises, that disproportionally affect marginalized communities. 
LA’s Urban Soil Future combines quantitative measurements of 
soil health and biodiversity in LA and documented qualitative 
feedback and collaborative ideation about nature-based solutions, 
giving community voices an empirical and social platform. It is 
my fervent wish that organizations like TreePeople become 
progressively interested in compassionately and respectively 
widening the breadth of stakeholder collaboration and 
collectivism in all their current and future scientific research. I 
believe there is no better arena than climate justice to foster in a 
plurality in connection and wisdom, because we all share the 
threat of an inhospitable future, if we cannot work together.  



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 155 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

INTRODUCTION AND POSITIONALITY 
 When I first walked onto TreePeople’s operations 

hub in Beverly Hills, Coldwater Canyon Park, I wasn’t sure what 
to look for or what to expect. This fifty-year-old LA based 
organization began with one impassioned high school student 
planting trees to challenge air pollution, but it’s obvious from the 
park’s long attended beauty and ample resources that the 
achievements of this organization are at least due in part to a 
relatively elevated degree of privilege. Beyond the unassuming 
but cleverly curved parking area, there’s a small cluster of energy 
efficient office buildings, the foundation’s nursery, a conference 
center, a yurt village (where employees and guests alike come for 
refuge and/or work), a small outdoor amphitheater (that doubles 
as a venue and field trip teaching post) and a host of shady mulch 
laden hiking paths lined with magnificent vistas and old growth 
trees. At first, I felt uncomfortable on TreePeople’s campus, as it’s 
surrounded by some of the most obscene wealth in the nation. But 
as I ventured further, I realized that the legacy of this place 
represents a rare mainstay in publicly accessible green space. Its 
iron-clad trust agreements cannot be touched by the private 
speculation or urban development that plague many of the 
communities where TreePeople’s work takes place. This means 
that the organization has a unique opportunity to try new 
approaches to community engagement without jeopardizing its 
local social capital and municipal partnerships in the grander 
environmental non-profit sector of Southern California.  
 TreePeople’s community organizing strategies and 
mission statement reflects its central ambition to empower 
community members to think of themselves as active land 
stewards rather than passive city dwellers: 

TreePeople is Southern California’s largest 
environmental movement whose mission is to 
inspire, engage and support people to take 
personal responsibility for the urban 
environment, making it safe, healthy, fun and 
sustainable and to share our process as a model 
for the world. 

To date, the organization remains a major contributor to research 
and direct action(s), for everything from expanding canopy cover, 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 156 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

school greening and food justice, to local forestry protection 
efforts. It’s the only non-profit organization of its size and 
influence in the Los Angeles region that uses its privilege to 
confront all of these issues simultaneously and has established 
itself as an important consultant for city and county urban 
greening. Accelerating climate threats have further pushed 
TreePeople to think more creatively about how to elevate 
community involvement in vulnerable neighborhoods—including 
pursuing relationships with local universities—while staying 
cognizant of the historical tensions between the academy, race, 
and low-income urban residents.  

The desire to commit myself to a common cause around 
ecological and community healing is what first brought me to 
TreePeople. But as a white woman, it would be dishonest of me 
not to acknowledge race and class influence and bias in my own 
life. As TreePeople continues to diversify its largely upper- and 
middle-class staff of white and Latinx professionals, one of the 
crucial challenges it faces in attempting to reimagine how it values 
marginalized community input centers around the willingness to 
admit that it too will make racially biased assumptive mistakes 
along the way. 
 Low-income folks have suffered under a ruling neoliberal 
framework that pursues private market investments in socially 
vulnerable areas and enjoys tax exemptions and other wealth 
consolidating incentives at their expense. The nationwide wealth 
gap and growing wage disparity provide enough evidence of this 
reality, but it’s the largely white-benefiting spatial control and 
occupation of marginalized communities that shows the harms of 
neoliberal ideologies in urban landscapes. I am more aware than 
ever of the impact whiteness can have on the dynamics in a room, 
and that it is something that often catalyzes unintended damage in 
the non-profit industrial complex. Many years of higher learning 
and direct action helped me to accumulate the language and 
intersectional framing critical for meaningful civil activism. 
Climate justice work is a useful place to start building intercultural 
empathy and recognize shared humanity and wisdom, as no 
amount of privilege buys full protection from climate change. The 
white anti-racist group, White People for Black Lives (WP4BL) 
often asks its members to think about their personal stake in 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 157 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

toppling systems of oppression, and I revisit this notion often 
throughout my day. I believe it is the duty of white people in all 
industries to grapple with their unearned privilege and to embrace 
the interconnectedness that White Supremacist cultures 
purposefully deny, to maintain social power. TreePeople is primed 
to center this in its practices and research.  
 
METHODS 
 TreePeople’s work is boldly turning toward a research 
paradigm that establishes open communication and collaboration 
with communities (Davidoff 1965) and moves away from myopic 
practices that lead to remitting prescriptions based on limited, 
biased and/or exclusionary data. This strategy (TreePeople 2021) 
brings the contributions of scientists, scholars, and policymakers 
into equal partnership with community leaders and advocates to 
strengthen the innovation and robustness of climate change 
solutions in their unique areas and translate community response 
in a culturally and linguistically relevant way. By prioritizing a 
holistic consideration of situational circumstances involving race, 
class, gender, area history, and other factors, it also contributes to 
resistance efforts against the historical onslaught of gentrification 
and redevelopment projects that has tormented South and East Los 
Angeles in particular. The basis for this kind of approach, often 
referred to in the field as “community science” (Moulite 2017), 
will help bolster, “the stories of marginalized communities 
through an intersectional lens, by adjusting for the multiple spaces 
people occupy.” 
 This path presents an exciting and empowering 
opportunity to meet folks where they are and build resilience 
together as equal stakeholders in climate action. It’s a notion that 
also aspires to champion “resilience hubs” (Resilient Cities 
Catalyst 2023) in under resourced neighborhoods, by providing 
training and support, and welcoming alternative ways of thinking 
and knowing about land management and protection that reside 
outside of dominate systems. As a social science student, I feel 
very passionately about maximizing the collective wisdom of 
scientific research, activism, and collectivism, because it reseats 
autonomy as the core goal, rather than development (Escobar 
2020), and builds a platform for residents to become local 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 158 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

management ambassadors. Indeed, the reason that strengthening 
collaboration in this work is so critically important is that it’s 
simply consensus and not conjecture that will move against the 
climate crisis. At its core, the story of “extractivism” (Besteman 
2020) is the story of Earth’s witness to the Anthropocene. Many 
humans have and continue to commit profit motivated atrocities 
against the land in the name of socially constructed benefits, and 
we see it filter down to every species on the planet (Klein 2014). 
To put it bluntly, climate change is the ultimate “find out” phase 
for humanity and potentially all existing life. 
 For decades, Los Angeles has shown itself to practice 
“Dracula urbanism,” (Kirk 2023) and the consequences logically 
stoke distrust and a sense of powerlessness from low-income folks 
and BIPOC, who’ve felt more of the brunt. According to Kirk 
(2023), the ongoing effects of speculative capitalism and the 
privatization of resources belies good faith “development” and 
“renewal schemes” in LA, masking a more insidious agenda to 
gentrify and exclude already disadvantaged communities from 
land occupation and ownership wherever profit is perceived. 
Thus, our collective work must be profoundly dedicated to 
“uplifting local perspectives & voices,” because “people won’t 
trust a program that doesn’t prioritize their needs, knowledge, and 
critical input” (Fabian 2022). 
 
PROJECT DETAILS 
 Headed by our principal soil scientist, Dustin Herrmann, 
I have been thrilled to be assisting in phase 3 of a county wide 
climate resilience initiative called Los Angeles’ Urban Soil 
Future, in accordance with the “LA Urban Soil Collaborative” and 
funded by Accelerating Resilience Los Angeles (ARLA), under 
the supervision of the policy & research department at 
TreePeople. This project targets residential soil health and 
biodiversity in LA, so that residents can be connected with the 
resources they need and want, with the intention to effectively 
boost resistance to forthcoming climate change challenges in their 
neighborhoods. The ultimate goal of this initiative is to capture the 
diversity of the soil in LA, to help support its health, and to inform 
new policy on building and infrastructure that considers 
hydrology conservation goals.  



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 159 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

 In phases 1 & 2 of the project, TreePeople’s scientific 
staff and community organizing team released a report in 2021, 
Healthy Soils for Healthy Communities, which recounts the 
thorough needs assessment they conducted on local soil 
knowledge in unprotected neighborhoods. Over 1300 locals from 
four stratified groups were surveyed online about their land 
management experiences and familiarity with best management 
practices (BMPs) for soil health. These surveys along with the 
subsequent discourse at TreePeople’s annual Los Angeles Urban 
Soil Symposium & Workshop in 2020 guides the community 
engagement and action strategy design for phase 3, when I began 
my internship.  
 Our team is utilizing the unprecedented aerial detail of the 
LA Regional Imagery Acquisition Consortium (LARIAC) urban 
geospatial data set to quantify soil type in socially vulnerable 
parcels of land, identify bright spots we hope to physically sample 
and evaluate, and help contextualize soil status assessments more 
precisely. Armed with this data, we are more able to discuss the 
details of the project with residents in a way that resonates with 
what they must navigate on their properties, such as limited parcel 
vegetation and shade, heavy impervious ground cover 
infrastructure, and highway corridor air quality. 
 Indeed, some of the trouble with past research and theory 
in climate justice (Foran 2017) begins with a misunderstanding of 
the foundational and ongoing implications that colonial 
imperialism and capitalistic thought have in the climate crisis. The 
field acknowledges some of the current impacts of oppressive 
systems in environmental justice, but a general disconnect still 
remains between many scientists’ and scholars’ planning and the 
ethical limitations that our institutional systems uphold. “Market 
worship” perspectives (Klein 2014) still pervade our society in 
ways that directly shape the questions we ask, our motivations and 
methods for research, and our policies. However, I am hopeful that 
climate change and its impending effects are meaningfully 
changing the way things are done, ushering in more holistic 
strategies (Escobar 2020) that may inspire greater shifts in the 
ways people “sentipensar” (or “think-feel”) about the urban land 
in which they inhabit and how it forms their lives. Going forward, 
we must remember that solidarity is not rendered through an 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 160 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

isolated action or protest, but through committed practice in 
“building meaningful relationships, making spaces for others, 
(un)learning, and listening” (Sholock 2012:709). 
 So called North America built itself on the deliberate 
destruction and demoralization of Indigenous groups throughout 
the continent (Dhillon 2016), and American society has a duty to 
divest from wealthy speculators and to tear down the “Terra 
nulls,” (or “nobody’s land”), justification for the seizure and 
exploitation of lands, if we are to mitigate climate change. We 
should look to Indigenous communities for wisdom and 
knowledge of the natural world and include them and other 
communities of color in developing insightful effective 
protections against future environmental threats (Klein 2014), as 
they may represent the best shot we have for avoiding total climate 
crisis. I agree that this is especially true in urban settings today, 
where demographic flux often indicates imminent redevelopment 
projects that further disenfranchise low-income residents from the 
land (Hassberg 2020). 
 LA’s Urban Soil Future operates in two very distinctive 
dimensions. On a basic level, it seeks to bridge a historically large 
gap between low-income and BIPOC communities and 
researchers so that development and execution will include local 
voices and goals in an equitable way throughout. Yet, on its most 
meta level, it is intrinsically intertwined with regional and global 
land & food sovereignty, as well as housing and other civil rights 
discriminations. Arguably, TreePeople’s most ambitious and 
expansive research project to date, a venture like this has the 
potential to inform other TreePeople projects, such as ongoing 
education focused school greening and community garden 
programs. It could be used as a steppingstone to bigger 
investments in humanity and ecological wellness in general, 
because soil is our most foundational living organism and 
supports us all.  
 
THEORIES 
 Another recent report released by TreePeople’s 
sustainability scientist collaborators, Cooler & Healthier: 
Increasing Tree Stewardship & Reducing Heat Health Risk Using 
Community Based Urban Forestry (Guzman et al. 2023) 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 161 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

spotlights resident engagement in tree planting and continued 
management programs in LA. Study participants principally 
expressed their biggest barrier to participating in a planting 
program was a perceived lack in continued maintenance support 
after initial help with planting their trees. Likewise, Buchler 
(2021) explored the frequency that residents who practiced 
mindful landscaping and gardening tested their soil health found 
that people felt the absence of a centralized testing facility in LA 
and the resulting costs of sending their soil samples elsewhere to 
be processed was a major barrier to consistent testing. Refunds, 
rebates, and other convoluted governmental incentive options 
were not what most persuaded folks to want to take part in either 
activity. Instead, earned trust and reliable, affordable, continued 
knowledge & materials support gave people more positive 
imagined outcomes, and they were far more likely to engage long 
term (Eisenman, Guzman, and Wohldmann 2023). Past research 
such as this, in conjunction with Tree People’s own focused and 
varied pre-outreach conversations with residents, has helped our 
team synthesize and operationalize theory into thoughtful 
engagement, through mailer copy, brochure literature, and 
producing an informative webinar.  
 Some of the most crucial work I have done for this 
initiative involves designing community engagement materials 
along with participant interview guides that accurately convey 
solidarity and a deeply shared social commitment to land 
reclamation and climate resilience transformation goals. This 
includes figuring out how to tell the story of microbe species 
living in soil in a way that connects people to it and inspires them 
to want to contribute more time and effort to protect it. If we can’t 
bring people into the work with us, then any and all actionable 
parts of this initiative could be lost. To establish this critical link, 
my supervisor and I utilized several sociological theories to help 
us in approach, language, and accountability. The foremost 
theories we’ve used so far as reference guides for material design 
are: community based participatory research or CBPR (Detroit 
URC Board 2011), community based social marketing or CBSM 
(McKenzie-Mohr n.d.), theory of change or TOC (Center for 
Theory of Change 2023), the protective action decision model or 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 162 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

PADM (Lindell 2012), and the health belief model or HBM 
(Washburn 2020).  
 My other important role has been designing and authoring 
recognition and compensation materials for the study’s 
participants, offering them an appropriate menu of beneficial 
options in exchange for allowing us to enter their property, collect 
and catalogue soil samples, and interview them about their 
personal land management interactions and perspectives on larger 
environmental issues. In my view, the likelihood that a resident 
takes part in this study may very well rest on how well executed 
recognition and compensation materials are, and I believe 
environmental justice non-profits in general should allocate more 
resources to developing sincere recognition platforms for study 
participants, both on site, on social media and at community 
event(s). In order to establish solid resilience hubs in LA that will 
also expand and share TreePeople’s larger mission, all of our 
participants must be officially thanked and acknowledged for their 
contribution and encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings 
on the experience with the wider community, so that they feel 
appropriately valued as an essential part of climate resilience 
solutions. I have also assisted TreePeople and its partners to 
formulate a plan for keeping the project transparent and the 
research accountable to communities, so that all findings can be 
disseminated in a timely and inclusive way, something I see as a 
crucial component of sincere community science efforts. As we 
continue outreach to engage target residents about the study, we 
cannot forget that we are also meaningfully inviting them to 
participate and contribute to the process of sampling, management 
program design, and implementation in their communities, so our 
methods must stay clear and inclusive.  

The sociological theories we’re utilizing can be applied to 
studies such as the tree stewardship one mentioned previously, 
even with the added constraint of it being written based on needs 
assessment data alone. For example, a CBPR focused 
environmental program would address past distrust in 
governments and non-profits by consulting community leaders 
and other residents on blueprinting short-and-long-term 
components of the plan(s), as pertains to the community’s 
particular constraints and concerns. CBPR rightly includes 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 163 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

feedback from the community from the beginning, often even 
prior to official research, and implements their input throughout 
the entire process of an initiative, so that blind spots can be 
identified ahead of any rollouts. LA’s Urban Soil Future was not 
designed to include community input at the start, but there are 
already plans to amend that oversight in future TreePeople 
projects. The CBSM framework compliments the CBPR 
approach, because participants are far more likely to 
organize/nominate their neighbors to participate in environmental 
desired behaviors when there is an understanding that all locals 
are treated as equal partners in planning solutions.  
 Additionally, the theory of change (Center for Theory of 
Change 2023) offers researchers a platform for preparing against 
community disengagement by critically diving into, “the ‘missing 
middle’ between what a program or change initiative does (its 
activities or interventions) and how these lead to achieving desired 
long-term goals. Behavioral hypotheses are strengthened using 
this model, by creating an “outcomes framework” which 
endeavors to determine what nuanced context may most 
successfully activate participation before community engagement 
begins. Essentially, TOC aims to make social research more 
robust and efficient by working backwards from the goal to the 
plan. TOC also invites researcher and participant evaluation 
throughout, creating a more flexible planning environment 
(Center for Theory of Change 2023). We believe this model has 
been very helpful with our outreach campaign, fortunately 
bolstered by TreePeople’s established relationships with an array 
of seasoned local consults and staff, which have offered us advice 
while building our outcomes framework and engagement 
materials.  
 The final two specified theoretical models we are 
employing get to the heart of individual perceptions in an 
emotional and existential way. PADM analyzes the social and 
environmental cues that most influence decision-making about 
perceived threats to health and safety (Lindell 2012). As stated in 
the tree stewardship report (Eisenman, et al. 2023), “Heat 
exposure is a public health hazard that burdens disadvantaged 
communities in urban areas disproportionately and threatens the 
livability and sustainability of cities.” Because climate change is 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 164 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

very much manifested through increasing heat, both regionally 
and globally, appealing to an urgent need for temperature 
mitigation is a great way to call folks in to actionable behaviors in 
land stewardship. Healthy soil can majorly reduce erosion, trap 
carbon and water vapor, and support shade providing plants like 
trees; By this logic, green infrastructure begins to make sense. I’m 
excited about the potential for protective action decision making 
models to show people that green infrastructural solutions are not 
just desirable but essential, and they are cheaper and more 
gratifying than most tech-based resiliency options.  
 To aid my individual work further, I’m borrowing the 
well-known Japanese concept of “Ikigai,” a concept meaning “a 
reason for being,” because it helped me to visualize what internal 
elements compose our human need to serve, something that has 
often alluded my conscious mind. Ikigai can communicate the 
intertwined needs, desires, and abilities that can bond us to land 
stewardship. This concept (Figure 1) is typically represented as a 

Figure 1 Ikigai: A Japanese Concept Meaning “A Reason for Being”.  
      



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 165 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

Venn diagram with four main parts: what you love, what you are 
good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. This 
concept is culturally tied to the Japanese belief that a life’s work 
never ends. Retirement is not even a word in the Japanese 
language, instead, they acknowledge that all individuals have a 
purpose and an avenue for contributing to the world. It’s common 
practice in Japan (Pasricha 2016) to carry reminder “ikiagi 
card(s)” to jot down daily or weekly affirmations and aspirations 
throughout one’s life. Keeping the first three components, I 
augmented the last to “what can benefit your community,” to 
connect individual behavior(s) to community vs. profession. With 
that, a reason for being transforms into a reason to be a good land 
steward. I think this idea is best located in the PADM realm, 
because it may be a good way to challenge people with reasonably 
few resources from discounting themselves altogether as land 
managers/protectors and help residents to mitigate feelings of 
overwhelm and burden when it comes to climate action.  
  Finally, HBM explicitly acknowledges (Washburn 2020) 
that individual health in the short and long term is impacted by 
behavioral choices. This model was originally developed for use 
in the medical field, but I believe it provides a perfect opportunity 
to convey the necessity of initiatives like ours to the public, 
especially in historically disadvantaged communities. Some 
elements of the self-efficacy theory are incorporated into HBM, to 
help empower people who may have negative perceptions of their 
own impact on their health. I believe these theories, taken 
together, will advance LA’s Urban Soil Future’s final success 
tremendously. I am excited by the connections with community 
members that have already been mindfully built and am eager to 
bear witness to what is possible when an epistemological 
“pluriverse” (Escobar 2020) is further embraced.  
 
EFFICACY 

For years TreePeople has also been working toward 
increased diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as an overtly 
anti-racist approach to their work. However, it continues to be an 
ongoing challenge. Our entire team must stay acutely aware of our 
personal biases and assumptions throughout this project, and 
continually ask locals to point out inevitable misinterpretations or 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 166 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

deficiencies, to honor self-determination and avoid unhelpful 
deficit thinking. This can be especially difficult for white 
academics and practitioners who have not had enough meaningful 
contact with underprivileged residents in LA, something 
TreePeople has been working to correct for years. This city’s 
socio-political history is riddled with discriminatory dynamics 
based on race, class, and gender, and attitudinal context often 
differs from neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes even from 
street to street. I appreciate the work TreePeople does to invoke 
this notion in its work, through implementing community led 
needs assessments, participatory workshops, and educational 
discourse throughout the process of many projects, such as the 
“Learn@Home” webinar series which translates complex 
scientific research to the public and “T.R.E.E. Talks” lectures that 
facilitate and encourage community members to discuss their 
actionable role(s) in climate related issues.  
 Moving forward, it is also essential to continue cultivating 
successful collaboration between nonprofits, researchers and 
communities to persuade municipalities to make genuine 
investments in community-based climate action(s) and continue 
support for scaling them up. Importantly, TreePeople’s collective 
has been accepted as a consultant for the City and County of Los 
Angeles Urban Forest Management Plans (UFMP), LA City 
Biodiversity Guidelines, and LA City Bureau of Engineering’s 
Biodiversity Checklist. Building climate resilience undoubtedly 
requires a reexamination of urban ecosystems on every scale. It is 
in the best interest of all stakeholders that this initiative collects 
useful data and supports local efforts to mitigate extreme weather 
effects. Our grant initiative is therefore funded by Accelerating 
Resilience LA (ARLA), and in conjunction with the LA Urban 
Soil Collaborative, is partnered with a multitude of municipal and 
community based groups, including the US Natural Resource 
Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) and US Forestry Service 
(USFS), the city and county of LA Chief offices of Sustainability 
and Public Health, the Safe Clean Water Program (SCWP), LA 
Compost, and several South LA community leaders, including 
organizers from the Watts community garden. The coalition 
power of these groups demonstrates how the positionality and 
mission of organizations like TreePeople can facilitate critical 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 167 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

connections and conversations between government agencies and 
grassroots community action.  
 
CONCLUSION 
 Green infrastructure (GI) solutions desperately need a 
wealth of grassroots support to affirm their validity to power 
holders and offer them as a better and more flexible response to 
future climate effects over expensive tech-based options that are 
inexorably tethered to fossil fuels. The urgency and price of 
inaction is much harder to illustrate to individuals and 
governmental bodies, without a solid demonstration of this 
approach’s strength and viability. If a community understands 
how to protect and increase the health of their soil after 
participating in this initiative, there will be better opportunities to 
build even more power, rooted in local empowerment toward 
better health outcomes. We hope to leverage strong results to 
inspire other cities, counties, and state systems to adopt urban soil 
solutions across the US, and hopefully the globe. It is, after all, 
undeniable that Earth’s hospitality to life is what’s really at stake 
(Escobar 2020). 
 Invoking the “just growth” advocacy planning model may 
also be a useful tool, as it asserts that equity concerns are often left 
underserved in the vast non-profit industrial complex, and that 
“lifting them up sharply and crisply can require the sharp elbows 
of community organizing” (Benner & Pastor 2015). This idea 
echoes arguments that advocacy and collaboration cannot exist 
separately from one another, and that in fact, a “principled 
conflict” is the vital shared platform from which people from 
different spaces can come together to solve problems. 
TreePeople’s lens (2021) anticipates that building legitimate 
climate resilience necessitates a strengthened feedback loop 
among residents, government, and other neighborhood institutions 
that can provide community members the tools to shape their 
neighborhoods both during crises and on an everyday basis. 
Indeed, every actor in planning and action has a genuine interest 
in a “shared regional destiny” (Benner & Pastor 2015) and can 
become an ambassador for change, with appropriate support.  
 Amid the grim acceleration of climate-based threats, both 
locally and globally, my experience working with TreePeople 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 168 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

shows me that hope is the collective muscle that can carry us all 
to a better world. As humanity embarks on this journey, I can’t 
imagine a better ground up starting point than improving soil 
health and resilience; urban soil health is the linchpin to natural 
solutions. In some ways, we as researchers are only there to listen 
and facilitate the implementation of nature-based plans for 
socially vulnerable areas of LA. But we also crucially endeavor to 
advocate for bridging the gap between community leadership and 
future projects and policies that will make sure informed local 
choices and needs are reflected (TreePeople 2021). With 
TreePeople’s continued support, residents in under resourced 
neighborhoods and beyond can collaborate and cultivate a 
stronger cultural bond to environmental action(s) that appreciates 
the benefits of tree and soil preservation over the limited offset 
gains available in a marginalized community.  
 

REFERENCES 
Benner, C. & Pastor, M. 2015. Collaboration, Conflict, and Community Building at the 

Regional Scale. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 35(3). 
Besteman, C. 2020. Militarized Global Apartheid. Global Insecurities. Duke University 

Press. 
Buchler, S. 2021. Harvesting Los Angeles: Community Based Urban Agriculture for Soil 

Remediation [unpublished master’s thesis]. Occidental College. 
Chazan, M. and Baldwin, M. 2020. Grannies, Rockers, and Oil Rigs: Mobilizing Age in 

Intersectional Climate Justice Alliances. Gendering Globalization, Globalizing 
Gender: Postcolonial Perspectives. Oxford University Press 

Chen, Yujuan, PhD, et al. 2021. Healthy Soils for Healthy Communities, Phase 1: Needs 
Assessment. TreePeople.  

Detroit URC Board. 2011. Community Based Participatory Research Principles. The 
Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center. University of Michigan 
School of Public Health (U-M SPH). https://www.detroiturc.org/about-
cbpr/community-based-participatory-research-principles 

Davidoff, P. 1965. Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning. A Reader in Planning Theory, 
Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 31.  

Dhillion, J. 2016. Indigenous Youth are Building a Climate Justice Movement by Targeting 
Colonialism. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/indigenous-youth-are-
building-a-climate-justice-movement-by-targeting-colonialism/ 

Eisenman, D.P., Guzman, E.B., and Erica Wohldmann. 2023. Cooler & Healthier: 
Increasing Tree Stewardship & Reducing Heat Health Risk Using Community 
Based Urban Forestry. Sustainability, 15:6716. https:// 
doi.org/10.3390/su15086716  

Escobar, A. 2020. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Latin American in 
Translation. Duke University Press. 

Fabian, A. 2022. New Beginnings: An Overview of Shared Perspectives on Sustenance, 
Resilience, and Grassroots Agency in South Central Los Angeles, Long Beach 
& Neighboring Communities. Accelerate Resilience LA (ARLA), TreePeople 



Creative Works | Op-eds | Laird 169 
 

CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 6 

Foran, J. 2017. Sleepwalking is a Death Sentence for Humanity: Manifesto for a Sociology 
of the Climate Crisis & of Climate Justice. In K. K. Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya 
Kurian, and Debashish Munshi (Eds). Climate Futures: Re-imagining Global 
Climate Justice 1st Ed:105-113. Berkeley: UC Press/Luminos, resilience.org.  

Hassberg, A. Dr. 2020. A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power and Resistance in the 
City. Citified Sovereignty: Cultivating Autonomy in South Los Angeles. New 
York University Press.  

Herrmann, D. 2023. Los Angeles’ Urban Soil Future. Grant Proposal for Accelerate 
Resilience LA (ARLA), TreePeople. 

Kirk, R. 2023. What Los Angeles Tells Us About Dracula Urbanism. Urban Geography, 
DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2023.2226551 

Klein, N. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Alfred A. Knopf, 
Penguin Random House. 

Lindell, M. K., & Perry, R. W. 2012. The protective action decision model: theoretical 
modifications and additional evidence. Risk analysis : an official publication of 
the Society for Risk Analysis, 32(4):616–632. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-
6924.2011.01647.x 

McKenzie-Mohr, D. n.d.. Introduction to Community Based Social Marketing. Tools of 
Change: Proven Methods for Improving Health, Safety and Environmental 
Citizenship. St. Thomas University. 
https://toolsofchange.com/en/programs/community-based-social-marketing/ 

Pasricha, N. 2016. “Why North Americans Should Consider Dumping Age-old Retirement: 
Ikigai.” Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. 
https://www.thestar.com/life/relationships/why-north-americans-should-
consider-dumping-age-old-retirement-pasricha/article_12f4d041-b492-57e4-
a892-fb042ff20073.html 

Resilient Cities Catalyst. 2021. Community Organizing Around Resilience: Guide. 
California Resilience Partnership. TreePeople.  

Sholock, A. 2012. Methodology of the Privileged: White Anti-racist Feminism, Systematic 
Ignorance, and Epistemic Uncertainty. Hypatia: Journal of Feminist 
Philosophy. (27)4:701-714. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01275.x  

Washburn, L. DrPH. (2020 November). Understanding the Health Belief Model. UT 
Extension: Institute of Agriculture. University of Tennessee. Studocu. 
https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/batangas-state-university-lipa-
campus/understanding-the-self/understanding-the-health-belief-
mode/46808046 

What is Theory of Change? 2023. Center for Theory of Change: Setting Standards for 
Theory of Change. https://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change/  

 
 
April D. Laird (She/Her) will complete a BA in Sociology, in Spring 2024. 
Her research and action interests include climate justice, labor rights, anti-
racism, abolition, and sustainable urban planning, and her professional 
ambitions in advocacy coalesce around these topics. Her experience 
collaborating with CSF as an editor and team leader has been a true delight, 
enjoying participating in the peer review process and the exciting 
heterogeneity of student sociological work at CalStateLA. Currently, April 
assists part time as a community messaging and engagement intern and 
student employee alongside the policy and research team at TreePeople.org, 
for county scale climate resilience initiatives. 

http://resilience.org/

	TreePeople: Bringing Sociology, Climate Research, and Community Voices into the Same Room - April D. Laird



