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Abby Reyes | Author | Climate Justice Advocate

@abbysreyes

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Author of Truth Demands - out now!
Grief, oil wars & the rise of climate justice
These are my heart stories of systems change from the ground up ❤️

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Big news! UCI Community Resilience concluded this past summer.

Over the last decade, Community Resilience supported resident leaders from climate-vulnerable communities to build capacity, knowledge, and power together with their academic partners to accelerate community-owned just transition solutions.

Explore the Community Resilience Archive (link in bio) for our impact, stories, and lessons learned. The archive includes 15+ reports, academic papers, and artifacts. Highlights include several praxis principles we surfaced through this work, including how important it is to:

• Center frontline community members as knowledge producers and decision makers
• Follow community-identified priorities
• Move with those who are ready and slow down to go fast
• Create mechanisms for sustained community power
• Use participatory methods as tools for power-building
• Iterate based on learning; scale what communities identify as needed
• Build in funding lines for professional staff

Be in touch if you think your organization, campus, or community-academic partnership could use thought partnership along these lines. Our community of practice is strong, and we’re happy to help people connect.

@rositagon888 @aryehleona @melodia_libre @mextliii
featured archive artwork by Studio Silog

#ClimateJustice #JustTransition #CommunityResilience #FacilitatingPower by @abbysreyes

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9 days ago

Thinking about Venezuela, across the river from Colombia, where a farmer found the body of my partner, Terence Fretias, murdered in the region’s oil wars 27 years ago. Today is the anniversary of the last time I saw him alive.

Indigenous folks in Colombia who he worked with call oil the “blood of our mother.” Today, voices around the world insist we keep it in the ground.

What happens when multinationals, colonial forces, local elites, & mercenaries extract it? The blood of our mother turns into the “devil’s excrement,” wreaking havoc on national economies in places cursed with what my mentor Stanford political economist Terry Karl calls the “paradox of plenty.”

What of the havoc wreaked on the ground? What is the relationship between migration, Minneapolis, Venezuela, Indigenous calls to keep oil in the ground, & the bodies of my partner, his Native colleagues, & so many others, silenced & bleeding out for speaking out?

It is a familiar story for its bloodshed. It brings us to our knees.

What makes the story worth revisiting is everything else also happening on the ground now to build sovereign systems of capital and care we need for survival as dominant systems collapse.

In one set of CA communities I work with, people displaced from home by oil wars & climate destabilization are co-creating community-owned housing, food systems, work, and readiness for climate disaster - mirroring mutual aid efforts of many Indigenous Nations to stay anchored in place.

We need both parts of this story. To know what’s at stake & to build what comes next.

For our collective study:

- @nytmag Political Economist Terry Karl’s Venezuela analysis (NYT Mag, Jan 14, 2026)

- @amazonwatch Amazon Watch’s analysis of what is at stake in the Amazon in 2026

- @hop1972 Hop Hopkins’s analysis of sacrifice zones

- @fossilfueltreaty the global mobilization toward a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty - convening in Colombia this April

- ALL HANDS Curriculum: community-driven preparedness for climate disasters - trainers’ training in May (link in bio)

- My book: Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice (link in bio) by @abbysreyes

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8 months ago

Today’s the day. Truth Demands is officially out in the world.⁠
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I wrote this book for anyone who’s ever felt like their voice didn’t matter. For the communities who’ve been silenced. For the people I love—and the people we lost.⁠
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It’s a story about fighting back. About holding onto joy, even when grief tries to take everything. About the power of truth, and the price we sometimes pay for it.⁠
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Thank you to everyone who walked with me during the years it took to write this. Thank you to the compañeres and teachers who trusted me with their stories. And thank you, reader, for being here now.⁠
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I hope Truth Demands moves you. Challenges you. Stays with you.⁠
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You can find it wherever books are sold. Link in bio. by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

Seeing my name in the New York Times Book Review section for the first time was definitely a pinch me moment. The real honor here is being mentioned on the same page as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o!⁠
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I’m so thankful that they gave Truth Demands a positive mention.⁠
@nytbooks
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#TruthDemands #ClimateJustice #AuthorLife #Memoir by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

When I was writing this book, I wasn’t thinking about who might read it. I was just trying to tell the story.⁠
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So to see these words from people I’ve admired for years — people who’ve been standing up for the earth and earthrights defenders along with me — honestly takes my breath away. Their work shapes the path I walk. The fact that they see something valuable in mine? That means more than I can say.⁠
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Thank you. Truly.⁠
⁠ by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

On Mother’s Day, I was reflecting on something I’ve seen again and again around the world: how the most enduring, life-sustaining leadership often comes from women and those who lead with feminine strength and care: holding grief, circling in story, training each other, and acting with fierce grace.

From women holding the line against big oil in Colombia to urban community rebuilders across California, I’ve learned that transformative action begins in the stories we dare to carry, and our capacity to roll up our sleeves with others to act on what we know.

These are some of the stories and truths that continue to guide me.

Swipe through for a few reflections from a piece I wrote about this for Katie Couric Media. You can read the full article at the link in my bio.

[Photo credits: Terence Freitas and @endemicastudios]

#FeminineLeadership #ClimateJustice #AbbyReyes #IndigenousWisdom #EnvironmentalJustice #WomenWhoLead by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

Feeling really grateful to get to spend time with two of my longtime collaborators, Angela P. Harris and Astrid Puentes Riaño, this Wednesday at @seattleulaw's Organizing & Advocacy for Justice Series.⁠
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What I've learned from both of them shows up in Truth Demands in big ways.⁠
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Angela was my favorite professor in law school, and later, together with Colette Pichon Battle, we got to co-create the Just Transition Lawyering Institute together, which I write about in the book.⁠
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@puentes.astrid was shaped early in her career by working alongside Pueblo U’wa in Colombia. Their vision and commitment to defending their culture, lands, and waters influenced her life’s work, including now as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to a Healthy Environment.⁠
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These are the kinds of people who shaped me. Who shaped this book. And I’m so looking forward to being in conversation with them. Find out more about the event at the link in my bio! by @abbysreyes

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2 years ago

🌈In 1999, Terence Unity Freitas, the partner of Abby Reyes (@abbysreyes), along with two other Indigenous activists Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (Menominee) and Lahe‘ena‘e Gay (Kānaka Maoli), were murdered in Colombia after departing U’wa territory, where they were visiting to support the U’wa community’s Indigenous education efforts.

Now, in one of her first interviews about her new book, “Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice,” Abby is here to share her story — and her journey of navigating grief and healing while fighting for truth and accountability from Big Oil.

How has the U’wa community been resisting against colonial-capitalist interests?

What does it mean to depart from urgency culture and to tap into the “slow work” of deep, social change?

And what is the relationship between engaging in the “inner” and “outer” work of systemic transformation?

🌼Listen to this full episode, @greendreamerpodcast EP450, now available via Spotify or any podcast app, and subscribe to my newsletter kamea.substack.com to receive this interview’s highlights and some of my personal reflections from the conversation.

✨Thank you for supporting our independent media projects: greendreamer.com/support

🌸Episode artwork by Lorena Arévalo; episode song feature “The Storm” by @attaboyadrian by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

I'm at the @bioneers Conference this week, and I had a special *first* as an author—I signed books for the very first time!⁠
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I was honored to meet Naomi Brave (@thegreenpowergirl), who graciously shared her deeply personal experience of navigating grief, and to reconnect with Leila Salazar-Lopez (@leilasalazar2012), Executive Director of @amazonwatch, who is generously offering support to help amplify the message of the book. Like me, both of these women began to stand in solidarity with Pueblo U'wa in our youth. ⁠
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Grateful for these connections and the meaningful conversations happening here. 💛⁠
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#TruthDemands #AuthorMilestone #BookSigning #Bioneers2025 by @abbysreyes

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2 years ago

This necklace was given to me by a mother and leader of the Colombian U’wa people when we convened to review drafts of Truth Demands. A year later, the morning after the hearing that led to Pueblo U’wa’s historic victory before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, she again gifted me a necklace, this time the one that was made for her to wear during the hearing. She said, “From my girls and from me and from the entire pueblo, we are grateful for your accompaniment...you are always with us.”⁠
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I carry their words, and these gifts, as reminders of what love, resistance, and radical connection can look like through space and time. The U’wa have fought for decades to defend their territory, their dignity, and their right to stay. Often with bodies on the line, just like we are seeing in our streets today. Manifestations again and again and again as needed, moving like water. Moving around boulders. Eroding them. Coordination across space and time that finally led to their rights being vindicated by the court in 2024. ⁠
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Decades ago, my boyfriend Terence began working on this case the year before he was killed. To witness this community's win, all these years later, and to receive such a gift from those still fighting — it moves me. Like a compass pointing our way as we collectively navigate this moment.⁠
⁠ by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

An amazing conversation with @abbysreyes about her new book TRUTH DEMANDS which is so much more than a memoir...it is a practice, an invitation, an assertion of what is possible;) by @abbysreyes

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a year ago

The dismal state of the world has me energized for change, and much change is afoot. It's everywhere when you really look. Here are some conversations I had over the summer about working for change when it feels like the world's in a dumpster fire.

- An interview on BBC New World Service Outlook podcast
- A guest essay on Rainn Wilson's Soul Boom Dispatch
- An appearance on Liz Gilbert's Letters from Love Substack
- A piece about Truth Demands in JusticeInfo.Net
- An interview with Reporting from Colombia podcast
- An interview on the Normalize the Conversation podcast

Take a listen. Enjoy the read. Links in bio.

@BBCNews
@rainnwilson
@elizabeth_gilbert_writer
@freicherter

#TruthDemands #ClimateJustice #EnvironmentalJustice #StoriesThatMatter #GriefAndResilience #CollectiveAction by @abbysreyes

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10 months ago