Christine E. Nieves | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | Puerto Rican |
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania University of Oxford |
Occupation | Community organizer |
Employer | Emerge Puerto Rico |
Christine Nieves is a Puerto Rican community organizer and climate change activist. She is the founder of Emerge Puerto Rico, a community redevelopment non-profit.
Nieves focuses on building community resilience before and after environmental disasters, such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the series of earthquakes in Puerto Rico in 2020. [1] [2] [3] Her organization, formerly called Apoyo Mutuo Mariana, provided free meals for a mountainous community that was heavily impacted by the storm. [4] [5]
Nieves attended the University of Pennsylvania for her bachelor's degree. [6] She later earned a master's degree at University of Oxford. [6] [5]
Nieves emphasizes the importance of community and self-sufficiency when preparing for climate change, in part because of the lack of government assistance after Hurricane Maria. [1] Nieves has worked with "anarchist organizers" to accomplish greater community independence. [7] [8] [9] She also speaks about mental health and challenges that come after disasters. [3]
Nieves founded Emerge Puerto Rico, a "climate change leadership startup" and non-profit. [10] She gave a talk about her work toward community-based resilience at TEDMED in 2018. [11]
She is a 2020 Echoing Green fellow. [12]
Tourism in Puerto Rico attracts millions of visitors each year, with more than 5.1 million passengers arriving at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in 2022, a 6.5% increase from 2021, the main point of arrival into the island of Puerto Rico. With a $8.9 billion revenue in 2022, tourism has been a very important source of revenue for Puerto Rico for a number of decades given its favorable warm climate, beach destinations and its diversity of natural wonders, cultural and historical sites, festivals, concerts and sporting events. As Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, U.S. citizens do not need a passport to enter Puerto Rico, and the ease of travel attracts many tourists from the mainland U.S. each year.
Aibonito is a small mountain town and municipality in Puerto Rico located in the Sierra de Cayey mountain range, north of Salinas; south of Barranquitas and Comerío; east of Coamo; and west of Cidra, and Cayey. Aibonito is spread over 8 barrios and Aibonito Pueblo. It is part of the San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Nuyorican is a portmanteau word blending "New York" and "Puerto Rican", referring to Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, their culture, or their descendants. This term is sometimes used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeastern US Mainland outside New York State as well. The term is also used by Islander Puerto Ricans to differentiate those of Puerto Rican descent from the Puerto Rico–born.
Jenniffer Aydin González Colón is a Puerto Rican politician who serves as the 20th Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico. González has served in leadership positions in the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (PNP) and in the Republican Party of the United States. These positions included being the chairwoman of the Puerto Rico Republican Party, speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico, and vice-chair of the PNP. González is the youngest person to be Resident Commissioner and the first woman to hold the role.
La Perla is a historical shanty town astride the northern historic city wall of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, stretching about 650 yards (600 m) along the rocky Atlantic coast immediately east of the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery and down the slope from Calle Norzagaray.
Michael D. Nieves is the president and CEO of Hispanic Information Television Network (HITN), the largest non-commercial, Spanish language television network in the United States. Since taking the role in 2015, HITN has added over 10 million new Latino households to its viewing audience and secured a partnership with Sprint Communications that will support HITN’s mission for at least the next 30 years.
Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez is a writer at Marvel Entertainment, Editor-in-Chief at Darryl Makes Comics LLC, Art Director/Owner at Somos Arte and Studio Edgardo creative services, and creator of La Borinqueña, an original comic book character that has grown into a cultural phenomenon and a nationally recognized symbol of Puerto Rican patriotism, social justice, and equality.
Climate change has had large impacts on the ecosystems and landscapes of the US territory Puerto Rico. According to a 2019 report by Germanwatch, Puerto Rico is the most affected by climate change. The territory's energy consumption is mainly derived from imported fossil fuels.
Hurricane Maria was a deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, which accounted for 2,975 of the 3,059 deaths. It is the deadliest and costliest hurricane to strike the island of Puerto Rico, and is the deadliest hurricane to strike the country of Dominica and the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The most intense tropical cyclone worldwide in 2017, Maria was the thirteenth named storm, eighth consecutive hurricane, fourth major hurricane, second Category 5 hurricane, and deadliest storm of the extremely active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Maria was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Mitch in 1998, and the tenth most intense Atlantic hurricane on record. Total monetary losses are estimated at upwards of $91.61 billion, mostly in Puerto Rico, ranking it as the fourth-costliest tropical cyclone on record.
Wanda Emilia Vázquez Garced is a Puerto Rican politician and attorney who served as Governor of Puerto Rico from 2019 to 2021. Prior to her tenure as governor, she served as the 19th secretary of Justice, from 2017 to 2019. A member of the New Progressive Party and Republican Party of Puerto Rico, Vázquez is the second female governor in Puerto Rican history, after Sila María Calderón. She assumed the office following the resignation of Ricardo Roselló, and the judicial annulation of Pedro Pierluisi's short-lived government, in the aftermath of the Telegramgate Scandal. On August 16, 2020, she failed to secure the New Progressive Party nomination for Governor of Puerto Rico in the 2020 elections, losing to Pedro Pierluisi.
Ana María Archila is an immigrant rights, worker justice, LGBTQ rights, and women's rights advocate who ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York. She was formerly the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and a co-founder and co-executive director of Make the Road New York and Make the Road Action.
Taína Asili is an American musician, singer, songwriter, poet, artist and activist. Born in Binghamton, New York to Puerto Rican parents, she first came to prominence in the late 1990s as the singer for the punk band Anti-Product, and later for her social justice themed music with the band Taina Asili y la Banda Rebelde. Asili’s musical career has spanned genres as diverse as Afro-Caribbean music, flamenco, hardcore punk and opera, and her art is driven by her work on prisoner justice, climate justice and food justice.
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a bilingual Puerto Rican poet who writes in Spanish and English, focusing on the experience of being a migrant to the United States, the colonial status of Puerto Rico, and of identifying as a queer Puerto Rican and Philadelphian of non-binary gender. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and was selected as the fourth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2018. He currently lives in Puerto Rico.
Ciencia Puerto Rico is US-based non-profit organization that advocates for science in Puerto Rico and supports Puerto Rican researchers. Their online community of more than 14,000 researchers, educators, students, and allies work to show that science can empower people to improve their lives and society. They provide resources in both English and Spanish.
Yarimar Bonilla is a Puerto Rican political anthropologist, author, columnist, and professor of anthropology and Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. As of 1 July 2023 she is a Professor at Princeton's Effron Center. Bonilla’s research questions the nature of sovereignty and relationships of citizenship and race across the Americas.
Grizelle González is a soil ecologist working for the United States Forest Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is known for her work on soil ecology, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem ecology at the Sabana Field Research Station in Puerto Rico.
Salvador Gabriel Gómez-Colón is a youth activist from Puerto Rico. In 2017, Gómez-Colón founded the humanitarian initiative Light and Hope for Puerto Rico in response to Hurricane Maria. He is also the author of Hurricane: My Story of Resilience.
María Isa Pérez-Vega is an American politician and musician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2023. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), Pérez-Vega represents District 65B in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, which includes the cities of Saint Paul and West St. Paul and parts of Dakota and Ramsey Counties.
Sofía Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican visual artist and filmmaker. She was born in Hato Rey in San Juan, Puerto Rico and graduated from New York University earning her BFA in Film & TV Production and Latin American Studies.
Elizabeth Yeampierre is a Puerto Rican attorney and environmental and climate justice leader. She is the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn's oldest Latino community-based organization.