National Public Lands Day

Last Saturday was National Public Lands Day – a day dedicated to recognizing Americans' shared responsibility to steward and care for our public lands. To celebrate, hundreds of events took place across the country that encouraged people to volunteer for clean-ups, park maintenance, habitat restoration, fundraising, educational programming, and other opportunities to take part in this shared stewardship. 

Celebrating our public lands at this scale feels especially important this year, given recent attempts by the federal government to sell off more that 3 million acres of public lands, the rescinding of environmental and conservation protections such as the Public Lands Rule, and severe budget cuts that threaten the protection, conservation, and accessibility of public lands.

While we remain wary and watchful of the federal actions on public land, we are finding hope in local policy wins and community power-building through our People, Parks, and Power (P3) initiative, where we've been able to witness and be inspired by local victories happening across the country.

We’ve shared stories from South Bronx, NY and Oxnard, CA about how community power-building and policy and systems-change advocacy led by grassroots organizations is allowing a critical mass of people to find their voice and agency in decisions being made on their local public lands. 

In the spirit of continuing to celebrate and champion our public lands, I'm honored to share more P3 stories in the coming weeks. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from my colleague Francisco Romero and me as we talk about our own journey into the field of park and green space equity advocacy and the importance of policy and community power-building approaches in protecting our parks, public land, and beyond. 

Join our P3 National Network to learn more and be involved in policy, systems-change, and community power-building approaches towards land justice and park equity.