Luke Sekera Flanders Changemakers Storytelling Initiative

Water, the building block of life, is essential to survival yet often taken for granted.  Many overlook the importance of water in the impending devastation of the climate crisis. But as this vital resource becomes scarce in the face of scorching droughts and rising global temperatures, water sovereignty is crucial to the vitality of communities. For many, this grim future is now.

Luke Sekera Flanders, co-founder of Community Water Justice, first recognized the importance of water sovereignty when he was confronted by threats to the rich water supply in his own community. In the small, rural town of Fryeburg,
Luke realized Poland Springs was taking advantage of the community’s water resources. As a child, he observed those most affected by water privatization having the least voice in the matter. 

Growing up in rural Maine there was not a strong activist culture so Luke cites the Maine Environmental Changemakers gathering in 2019 as when he first found community with other youth who felt the distress and necessity of understanding the environmental threats facing the world they were going to inherit. He remembers feeling energized emerging from an electrifying space of youth committed to issues of environmental and social injustice.

This past year, Luke was a changemakers fellow. He  regards Changemakers as one of the most forward thinking networks that emulates the action we need to see at the forefront of the environmental movement.

Currently, Luke is committed to furthering the fight against water injustice by fostering education around bills such as one that places a five year cap on contracts that can be signed against corporations who extract large amounts of water. The bill would remove the market instability of water privatizations. For background, financial institutions such as wall street are profiting off of the expectation that water is going to become less accessible. By placing a cap on the length of these contracts, Luke hopes the rate of financial institutions buying into the financialization of water will be slowed. He views this as the final frontier and believes privatizing basic necessities such as water highlights the failures of the system that we live in.

Even in the midst of widespread climate grief, Luke finds hope and joy in the people who he shares the struggle of fighting against water injustice with. Not celebrities who preach their ideals from televised podiums. He is inspired by people who continue to find the resolve to organize for a better future. People who believe that as a society we deserve a better future than what has been laid out for us. People who morph climate grief into a force for making positive change. 

-Interview Conducted by Hailey Talbert