AnMarie Mendoza

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AnMarie Mendoza was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley and identifies with both the original people (Gabrieleno-Tongva) and the distinctive working-class communities of the area. AnMarie is a proud first-generation transfer student from Citrus Community college who has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters in American Indian Studies from UCLA. Generations of her family have witnessed, endured, and contributed to the molding of Los Angeles (Occupied Tongva territory) and it is for this reason she continues her academic study in Urban Planning at UCLA. Her scholarship focuses on the barriers and opportunities that local Native Nations and indigenous people face in participating in proposed water projects in Los Angeles.

She has a passion for political organizing and is Indigenous Waters Program Director for Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, an indigenous led grass roots organization based in Los Angeles. As program director, she works with Native Nations, universities, environmental organizations, institutions and agencies to protect fresh and saltwater and coastal areas significant to Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to build the capacity of current and future tribal leaders to advocate effectively on behalf of their people for the protection of water.

AnMarie is cocreator and director of the “Aqueduct Between Us,”  a five-part social justice multimedia radical oral history documentary that aims to educate the people of Los Angeles about the Indigenous communities (Tongva –Gabrieleno and the Owens Valley Paiute/ Shoshone) who have been greatly impacted by their land and water use.  Topics covered in the documentary include: an introduction of each tribal community, their lifestyle precontract and post-contact, shared colonial struggles, contemporary environmental injustice issues, and conservation/wealth disparities in Los Angeles. Documentary can be accessed below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LldnSjDoMag  https://www.instagram.com/theaqueductbetweenus/

AnMarie is presently the Sawyer Seminar Fellow on Sanctuary Spaces for the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Liz Koslov

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Liz Koslov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, where she studies the social dimensions of climate change, questions of environmental and climate justice, and how cities are adapting to effects such as extreme weather and sea-level rise.

Recent publications include pieces on sociology and the climate crisis, flood maps, and the possibilities for collective climate adaptation amidst denial and public silence. Her current book project, Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, offers an ethnographic account of “managed retreat” from the coast in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. Koslov’s research on this topic has been cited in outlets such as Scientific American,The New Yorker, and WWNO New Orleans Public Radio.

Prior to joining UCLA, Koslov was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT.