Breaking Down or Breaking Free: Climate, Race and the Struggle for Justice

York St John's Discussing Decolonisation event series for 2025/26 launches on Wednesday 8 October with a guest lecture by Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins on race, climate and the struggle for justice.

The event takes place on campus in York, as part of the University's programme of events for Black History Month, but will also be live-streamed for those who are unable to attend in person. Tickets are free and all welcome.

Breaking Down or Breaking Free: Climate, Race and the Struggle for Justice

As the climate breaks down, it deepens the racial and social injustices in our societies. Those least responsible for the crisis - especially those in the Global South and the marginalised in the North - are hit first and worst. The choice before us is stark: either we confront the inequalities, oppression, fossil fuel dependence and ecocide at the heart of the system producing these overlapping crises, or we endure social collapse.

Breaking free means fighting for a just transition - rooted in racial justice - that transforms everything about how we live, work and relate to one another and to the Earth. This talk explores the solutions that can lead us there, and the mass movements already building the power to win them.

Speaker Bio

Leon Sealey-Huggins is a Senior Campaigner in Global Climate Justice at War on Want. Here he leads on the Global Green New Deal framework for Just Equitable and Ecological Transitions. This work includes interventions at the UNFCCC climate talks alongside partners from the global climate justice movement. Leon is also a visiting Fellow in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick where he was until recently an Assistant Professor. His scholarship and activism focus on climate justice, asking what kinds of societies we must co-create as we face up to climate breakdown. Leon considers the sociology and politics of the climate crisis, investigating what climate justice means in the context of global historical, and present, inequalities. @Leon_Ayo

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