Featuring mark! Lopez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, this is a story about inheritance as action—about community as legacy, the fire passed between generations, and the responsibility to carry stories, build power, and fight for the right to breathe with dignity.
Carry What We Cannot Keep
Want to bring the episode into classrooms, community spaces, or organizing conversations? This guide can help support that deeper engagement.
The guide is designed for educators, organizers, advocates, and anyone who wants to go deeper — with discussion questions, context on environmental justice and freight pollution, and tools to bring these conversations into classrooms, community spaces, and organizing work.
Watch the Episode Now
Interested in Bringing ‘the lives we live on’ to your community?
If you’d like to explore ways to share this story with your community, we’d love to hear from you.
To learn more or start planning, please reach out to us at: comms@movingforwardnetwork.org. When you email, please include any potential dates, your needs, and any details that will help us better understand what you’re envisioning and how we can support you.
Highlighting the Work and Legacy of…
mark! Lopez
mark! Lopez, a Goldman Environmental Prize recipient and Eastside Community Organizer at East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, helped form the Moving Forward Network and launched its international education work to deepen cross-border relationships for environmental justice. Rooted in a family legacy of organizing, he connects local clean air fights to global campaigns while mentoring the next generation of organizers through his pedagogical approach to movement building.
Juana Beatriz Gutiérrez
Juana Beatriz Gutiérrez, a fearless matriarch and founder of Madres del Este de Los Ángeles – Santa Isabel (MELASI), led her community to defeat prisons, chemical plants, oil pipelines, and toxic incinerators while building East LA’s first community garden, youth jobs, and the transformative Mono Lake Outdoor Education Program. Rooted in the philosophy that “the way you are part of a community is by contributing to the community,” she connected neighbors to Indigenous water stewards and carved paths of resistance and renewal that continue to inspire environmental justice movements today.
We are grateful to the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council for their support in making this docuseries possible.