This month, the Thriving Team will be holding an open meeting to hear from Alexa Eisenberg and Ben Levin about their recent travels to resist the expansion of Enbridge’s Line 3 Oil Pipeline. Ben and Alexa will report back on their experience directly following indigenous leadership, how this will inform their approach to activism moving forward, and what we can do as a community to contribute to this cause.
Alexa (she/they) is a housing activist researcher, a virgo, a cook, and cat person. Their research and advocacy seeks to promote housing, health, and racial justice in Detroit by mitigating the harms of property tax foreclosure and strengthening tenants rights, rental code enforcement, and eviction protections. Though Alexa typically focuses their activism in Detroit, they had the honor of (temporarily) joining indigenous leaders and their allies for the Treaty People Walk for Water, a 200-mile solidarity walk from the headwaters of the Mississippi river down to the MN state capitol, along with a group of politically-aligned Jews during mid August 2021. Alexa is eager and grateful to nurture Jewish community at home with DJJ to reflect on their time at Line 3, and to build strategy on how to collectively support this movement, protect the water, fight for Indigenous sovereignty, and follow Anishinaabe leadership over the long-term.
Ben Levin is an activist, poet, and Jewish grandson currently living in DC. He spent 6 weeks this summer and fall living in and supporting Line 3 frontlines camps in northern Minnesota. He’s excited to share some of his experiences and ways to support the Line 3 fight and other frontlines struggles.