For Leah Thomas, there is no activism without craft club, self-care and community

It’s a beautiful afternoon in July, and Leah Thomas and I are in the section of Los Angeles known as Frogtown, walking along the Los Angeles River. Thomas, who is 30 years old, looks Hollywood-chic in a pair of black sunglasses, black sleeveless T-shirt, and leather riding boots . Freckles dot her cheeks and her shoulder-length brown hair swings freely as we meander down the path. A family of ducks swims along in the river, past grassy bogs and reeds, and Thomas decides we should walk down the steep concrete embankment to get a better look.

“This is where they filmed the car race from Grease,” says Thomas as we climb through the metal guard rails and down to the flowing water. “I’ve kayaked down this river. It’s a protected waterway because it’s navigable—and it got protection because a bunch of environmental hippies got in boats and paddled down it to show that it is navigable, which guarantees protection.” That was in 2008, and, under the Clean Water Act, it meant the river would be guarded from degradation, and that the water in it must meet a certain level of cleanliness.

Thomas speaks with a soft, lilting voice. Her tone and gentle demeanor belie the fact that she’s leading a powerful environmental movement.

In 2020, she founded Intersectional Environmentalism, a framework that demonstrates how environmentalism cannot exist in a vacuum—it must account for social justice, racial equity, and economic inequality. Thomas explains that climate change and pollution disproportionately affect marginalized communities, and that advocacy for the planet is inseparable from advocacy for people. “We can’t save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people, especially those most often unheard,” she says. “We should care about the protection of people as much as we care about the protection of our planet.”

She followed that up the same year with Intersectional Environmentalist (IE), an “eco-media company inspiring climate action through the power of art, education, and storytelling.”

“I’ve always loved the earth—animals, being outside, digging in the backyard. But I didn’t see myself as an environmentalist.”

- Leah Thomas, founder Intersectional Environmentalism

Her movement has caused a major paradigm shift in the way activists, nonprofits, and corporations approach environmentalism. Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, and the Sierra Club have asked her to help refocus their sustainability messaging, and Patagonia has cited her work in shaping its campaigns around social and environmental justice.

In addition, a new wave of startups and nonprofits now integrate equity and climate into their missions from the outset. Thomas has managed to make inclusion a core principle of sustainability, turning what was once a niche conversation into a touchstone for the wider environmental movement.

In 2022, Thomas published The Intersectional Environmentalist, a book that dives deeper into her movement. She’s now busy penning a new book, which focuses on ecofeminism. But the fight for environmental equality—and, frankly, the fight for a protected environment in general—has taken its toll.

The Trump administration’s attack on public lands, thirst for dirty fuel sources, and undermining of climate change science, has left Thomas weary. An hour before meeting with Thomas, the administration announced that it was shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm. When I told Thomas that, she rolled her eyes and sighed.  

In 2023, she stepped away as co-director at IE (she still serves on the board of directors). “A lot of people are burnt out,” she says. “That’s why I started crafting.”

In 2024, Thomas founded Green Girl Productions, producing cultural and community events across the country. Part of that is Green Girl Crafts, which focuses on crafting skills—everything from pottery to kombucha making. In about an hour, I’ll be joining her at one right here in Frogtown.

“I realized how much we needed mental health and well-being,” she says. “I started ceramics about a year ago and just learned how healing it was for me, so I wanted to offer that to other people. I think we need a reset, especially because I feel like the left is really fractured right now and confused.”

That’s not to say that Thomas has lost hope or stopped fighting. In addition to crafting, she’s leading “active-ism” trips for Intrepid Travel, which will guide people through America’s national parks and educate them on the work that goes into protecting them. In June of next year, she’ll lead a 6-day trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

“People aren’t just signing up to visit a national park—they’re showing up to protect them,” she says. “It feels symbolic that they also want to learn from someone with an activist background who uses their platform for that purpose.”

She also says that her crafting events may be the best place to bring together like-minded people from different backgrounds. “Crafting is activism-adjacent,” she says. “I want to show that you can be into sustainability or activism and still connect over things that actually help the community. I’m learning that having these kinds of complementary spaces is key to supporting the work people are doing to make the world better.”

Thomas fell into environmentalism by chance. Growing up in a middle-class family in St. Louis, Missouri, she says she loved being outside but never saw environmentalism as her calling. “I’ve always loved the earth—animals, being outside, digging in the backyard,” she says. “But I didn’t see myself as an environmentalist.”

“I would hear things along the lines of, ‘well we just don’t know any black surfers,’ or ‘there’s no black climbers in the campaign because we don’t know any black climbers.’ And I was like, guys, we have to think a little bit deeper here.”

- Leah Thomas, founder Intersectional Environmentalism

When she went to college at Chapman, in Orange, California, she signed up as an environmental science major on whim. “I just thought it sounded like a cool program,” she says. “But I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I thought I was going to be an actress or something.”

Then, in 2014, when Thomas was a sophomore, 18-year-old Michael Brown, a Black man, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Feguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. That led to the Ferguson uprising, a series of protests and civil unrest that drew attention to systemic racism, police brutality, and the deep mistrust between law enforcement and Black communities.

Thomas was deeply affected. “All I really cared about at the time was social and racial justice,” she says. “Then I realized, through my studies, that conversations weren’t happening about how environmental issues specifically impact black and brown communities.”

But when Thomas would bring that topic up in classes, she was routinely dismissed. “I could tell that professors and other students just felt like it was an annoyance,” she says.

After graduating in 2017, she took a job at Patagonia, working as an assistant for Rick Ridgway, who oversaw environmental affairs and public engagement, and Vincent Stanley, informally, the company’s chief storyteller. She also served as an assistant on their communications team. Thomas loved her job, but even felt that Patagonia, widely considered one of the most progressive companies in the world, was dropping the ball when it came to equality.

She recalls working on campaigns in which there were no people of color being represented. “I would hear things along the lines of, ‘Well we just don’t know any black surfers,’ or ‘There’s no black climbers in the campaign because we don’t know any black climbers.’ And I was like, guys, we have to think a little bit deeper here.”

All the while, Thomas continued to think about how black and brown communities were being disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution, and how racial justice and environmental justice were so closely intertwined.

In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas was furloughed from her job at Patagonia. When most of us were baking bread and binging on TV series, Thomas was working on her manifesto. On May 28 of that year, she posted a primer on Intersectional Environmentalism to Instagram, and it went viral.  

“It was all pretty surreal,” she says. “I got a call from my dad and he told me that he registered the domain intersectionalenvironmentalist.com. I was like, OK, I’m never gonna use that but thanks.”

Three weeks  later, she officially launched Intersectional Environmentalist as a non-profit and let Patagonia know that she wouldn’t be returning after the furlough. Immediately, Intersectional Environmentalist began working as a consultancy, helping companies shape their messaging around her cause, including for Patagonia.

“Leah has helped us look at climate, social justice, and human rights as being interconnected, rather than separate boxes on a checklist,” says J.J. Huggins, who works in Patagonia’s communications department. Thomas’s influence, according to Huggins, led the company to join the Home Planet Fund, a nonprofit that supports local and Indigenous communities who work in concert with nature to stop climate breakdown.

Thomas also continued to educate through various media channels, including social platforms, through articles for Marie Claire and Vogue, and as a guest on shows like Good Morning America and various podcasts. In 2024, Forbes put her on their 30 Under 30 list, and in 2022, Time included her on their Next 100 list.

“I think Leah has shown that our input on environmental issues matters,” says Teresa Baker, founder of the In Solidarity Project, which connects leading outdoor brands with inclusion advocates to advance representation for people of color across the industry. “Traditional agencies and companies often act without considering those who steward the land. IE creates space for those voices and can grow as far as Leah and others take it. Once we get past this crappy moment in time, I think people will start speaking about inclusion again.”

It reminds me about what Thomas had said; that she began crafting because it provided a respite from the uphill fight against a political machine that seems, at the moment, unwilling to consider the importance of environmental justice.

Thomas and I walk from the river, just a few hundred feet, to Forager Crafts, an old airplane factory that’s been turned into a craft store. Kitschy art supplies line the walls—plant-based paints, white, blue, and brown yarns, stamps with frogs and mushrooms on them—and in the back of the room are long tables filled with candles and jars of herbs.

People begin filing in, and, eventually, 16 of them take their seats at the big table. For this event, Thomas has brought along Allie Brown, who bills herself as a mindfulness, sound, reiki, herbal, and Chinese medicine practitioner.

Brown used to work at non-profits focusing on environmental justice and connected with Thomas over social media. “I thought, wow, this is someone I would absolutely vibe with,” says Brown. The two eventually met over a cup of tea, and tonight, Brown will lead this crafting class through a lesson on tea-making. She’ll end it with a sound bowl session, during which everybody will lay on the floor and relax while she uses a mallet to produce soothing frequencies.

The group begins making tea as Brown explains what each herb does for the body. “This is passionflower to regulate your nervous system,” she says. “This is good for right now—for whatever this is we’re going through. Hopefully it’s just a reset.”

It reminds me about what Thomas had said; that she began crafting because it provided a respite from the uphill fight against a political machine that seems, at the moment, unwilling to consider the importance of environmental justice.

But as I watch the group move from the table onto their backs for the sound bowl portion of the evening, I also see Thomas’s point about how events like this bring people together. I look around and see different races, sexes, presumably creeds and religions. During the evening, they laugh and bond over various topics: Movies, dating, current events. Environmentalism even comes up a few times.

At the end of her book, Thomas writes, “Together, all of our voices are so powerful, much more powerful than we might think.”

I wonder if these crafting events aren’t, in a small way, a means to helping build a community of intersectional environmentalists, ready to stand up and speak out when it’s time to restart the fight.