Breaking the Template
Aly Ferrufino-Coqueugniot expands the definition of environmentally-minded candidates—and helps them win.
Elections are a key component of Conservation Colorado’s work. Without pro-conservation candidates in office, we can’t hope to achieve the change we want to see. We need leaders who will fight for equity and justice, from the White House to our city halls.
Our Deputy Political Director Aly Ferrufino-Coqueugniot leads our efforts to elect local leaders across the state. She manages our programs to recruit, endorse, and support candidates who will fight for our issues at the municipal and county levels. This November, Aly helped candidates in all five of the local areas where we endorsed clinch wins.
Aly shares with us why this work is so important to her and to our movement, and why we need your support to keep doing it.
My passion for this movement really starts with where I come from. My dad is an immigrant from Bolivia, and my mom is a very politically-minded activist. Growing up in Aurora and Denver, my family had all sorts of practices that connected us to broader movements and environmentalism. For example, like a lot of immigrant households, we were always reusing our containers and not buying anything new. We often relied on public transit to get to school and work. And my mom started taking me to protests as soon as I was old enough to hold a sign. Both my parents taught me to be politically minded and to question injustices I saw around me.
In high school, I went on a field trip to the GrowHaus in Elyria-Swansea, and our guide explained how their programs addressed historical environmental injustice and racism and food inequity. This experience gave me the words to name what I could see plainly in my day to day life. It really explained why I could access things like fresh food and recycling in my neighborhood in Denver, but not in Aurora.
After that, I really dove into the concept of environmental justice. I felt it was the intersection of all the issues I had been thinking about, and allowed me to tap into my background as a Latina and young political activist.
There’s this template people often feel they need to fit to be considered an environmentalist. It’s associated with being white and affluent. It’s the person who goes out to the mountains, and has all the fancy, supposedly sustainable gear, and a hybrid plug-in Subaru, and recycles everything.
That template is simply not true. If you look at the history of the environmental movement, it’s been filled with Black, Indigenous, and Latinx leaders from the beginning.
When I discovered Protégete of Conservation Colorado, I was drawn to work there because of its emphasis on building a Latinx-led environmental movement. I feel so lucky I ended up here, because it was the perfect fit for everything I had been working towards.
“If you look at the history of the environmental movement, it’s been filled with Black, Indigenous, and Latinx leaders from the beginning.”
In 2017, I was a Protégete organizer, and Crystal Murillo was one of the first municipal candidates we endorsed. She ended up being the first Latina and the youngest person ever to be elected to Aurora City Council. As a Latina from Aurora, that was really inspiring for me. Now, I’m the Deputy Political Director at Conservation Colorado, and we just wrapped up backing Crystal Murillo’s successful reelection campaign.
Similar to how there’s this flawed template of being an environmentalist, I think there’s also an incomplete template of what it takes to be a candidate. Some of it is based in data, but some of it is based in white supremacy. And what I really love about my job is we get to push back on that template. So what we look for in making our endorsements is someone who is dedicated to equity, justice, and the environment, who understands the intersection of those issues, and who will do the necessary work to reach voters in their communities.
We frequently endorse first-time candidates who are deeply entrenched in their community. Often they’ll say they are not experts when it comes to the environment. But they will then continue to speak powerfully about affordable housing, public transit, or lack of public parks in their communities. Those are all environmental issues.
We aim to approach elections in a holistic way. Yes, we are working to win pro-conservation majorities. But we’re also building leaders, building trust, and building an authentic investment in activists.
Our candidates come from all walks of life. They are mothers, they are teachers, they are environmental justice advocates. They are the people you’re going to be hearing about years from now, running for the state legislature or Congress, working for change.
Donations are vital to this work. Without investment by our donors, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this. The way I see it, donating is just another way to take action. You can make a call, show up for a hearing, canvas for a candidate, and donate—they’re all tools that we need our members to use to build a movement.
I’m so excited for what’s coming up ahead, to see which amazing candidates we’ll get the chance to work with in 2022. We’re counting on your donations to make sure we do everything possible to help them win.
