Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones -- co-founder of Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation Project, Incorporated -- is a grease car driver and off-grid survivor living unplugged in the hills of Haudenosaunee Territory. As an eco-justice media-making prison abolitionist since 1996, Leslie is part of a growing collective of activists of color who are creating bridges between the woods and their hoods with practical examples of health and wellth, while maintaining their cultural identities and power as people shifting their consciousness and renewing their spirits in honor of their ancestors, their elders, and future generations.

As a cultural organizer who encourages young people to connect the dots between pollution, criminalization, exploitation, and incarceration, Leslie's most recent project is an innovative, grassroots job-training program, in Ithaca, New York, which values teen’s creative insights and capacities to transform their reality as leaders and participants for change. Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective studies documentary and narrative film making; makes their own media from posters to movies; does outreach at community events; advocates for equitable living and learning environments; travels beyond Ithaca to meet similarly situated peers and share their work; gets their “hands dirty” learning about renewable energy; and, analyzes important social, political, economic and environmental issues which affect their lives as low-income youth of color.