Palisadians Launch Local Environmental Organization

Resilient Palisades to Host Inaugural Virtual Event

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

In the works since November 2019, five Palisadians waited for an opportunity to launch their nonprofit Resilient Palisades—and now, they are ready to go, with the group’s inaugural virtual event scheduled for August 13.

Resilient Palisades is working to strengthen the community as it responds to the environmental and climate crisis, according to the group’s website, inviting Palisadians to partner in undertaking projects that support the health and well-being of the neighborhood, surrounding communities and planet.

“Resilient Palisades is a brand-new organization that aims to bring Palisadians together to work to address the climate crisis,” Co-founder Ingrid Steinberg explained to the Palisadian-Post. “We’re aiming to be the local environmental group that brings together all kinds of different interests in environmental work and we hope that, with a broad enough interest, we can develop grass roots efforts to make real change.”

Steinberg, a philosopher by training, first was inspired to create the group after running a series of workshops on environmental ethics. She shared that some of the readings she was doing showed her that “effective change has to start locally,” so she began to think about what that would mean for her community.

“For a while, if you came over for a dinner party—in the wonderful pre-COVID days—that would be the conversation because I was obsessing about it,” Steinberg shared.

After talking with friends, neighbors, and fellow Palisadian and co-founding member Ryan Craig, she saw a need for a local venue that was easy to access.

“I think the point of the organization is that everyone has an important part to play in combating climate change,” Craig said. “Even though the effects for many appear to be years, if not decades, down the road, addressing climate change means taking action starting now for everyone, and we want to make that accessible and as easy as possible for every member of our community.”

The group originally intended to launch with a communitywide event on Earth Day, April 30, but due to the pandemic, that plan was placed on hold indefinitely.

“We’ve been meeting and planning ever since, and waiting for the right time to really launch to the community,” Steinberg said. “We’re hopeful that right now, people do have a little bit more mental space to accommodate something new and we’re hoping that we can get a lot of community interest in this work.”

The goal, Steinberg shared, is for Palisadians to assist the board members to tackle the big ambitions they have in mind.

Steinberg resides in Marquez Knolls and Craig in El Medio Bluffs. Other board members are Shayna Samuels in the Highlands, as well as Karen Ephraim and Aleksandar Pavlović in the Alphabet Streets.

“I’ve been in the community for 10 years,” Craig explained. “I recognize that the climate crisis is the single defining issue of our generation—we will pass or fail from our children and grandchildren’s standpoint, depending on how we address this issue.”

Craig and Steinberg explained that, aided by a bit of extra free time recently, Resilient Palisades’ website is meant to not only share information about the nonprofit, but to become a central resource with information linking back to other groups and information about what’s going on inside the Palisades but also the surrounding communities.

“We recognize the privilege we have living in this community and we recognize the resources that most of us have,” Craig shared. “Therefore if anywhere can make the kind of changes we need to make in how we live at home, how we live in our communities, how we travel, it’s here, so we’d like very much to demonstrate that we can be a model here in the Palisades for the kind of change we’re going to need to address the climate crisis.”

For the foreseeable future, Resilient Palisades will be sticking to virtual events, with hopes to host speakers on a regular basis.

Community members are invited to sign up for the inaugural event—a Zoom conversation with California State Senator and Chair of the Environmental Quality Committee Ben Allen—which is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 13.

For more information about the event and Resilient Palisades, visit resilientpalisades.org.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story listed the inaugural event with Ben Allen as beginning at 7 p.m., which has been updated to a 7:30 p.m. start time.