Meet the 2022 Sentinel Awardees

Cesar Aguirre is a Senior Community Organizer with Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN). As a child in a family of migrant farm workers who turned into community organizers, Cesar was exposed to community organizing and advocacy at an early age. Since starting with CCEJN, Cesar works in rural communities in Kern County helping fenceline communities affected by oil and gas and pesticides.

Dr. Joy Banner and Jo Banner are Co-Founders and Co-Directors of The Descendants Project. As part of this work, they are on the front lines of the struggle against environmental racism in the form of petrochemical plants along Louisiana’s River Road, otherwise known as “Cancer Alley.”

Laurie Barr is an activist, citizen scientist, co-founder of Save our Streams PA, and a co-founder of Defend Ohi:yo‘. She has spent the last decade hunting for orphaned and abandoned wells and researching stream health in Pennsylvania. Laurie’s work has led to breaking, influential studies on the link between abandoned wells and methane emissions.

Dr Crystal Cavalier-Keck is the co-founder of Seven Directions of Service with her husband. She is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Burlington, NC. Crystal completed her Doctorate in Organization Leadership at the University of Dayton in August 2022, and her dissertation focused on the Social Justice issue of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women in Gas/Oil Pipelines in frontline communities.

Chanté Davis is an 18-year-old climate activist and ocean conservation advocate attending Duke University. She is a lead organizer with the Sunrise Movement, (a youth-led climate action organization fighting for a Green New Deal) and has done work ranging from mutual aid, campaign leadership, and electoral work supporting youth in the South.

Jill Anatares Hunkler is a mother, teacher, artist, grassroots organizer, and environmental advocate. She is a seventh generation Ohio Valley resident in Belmont County, Ohio, the most heavily fracked in the state. Jill served as Executive Director of Concerned Ohio River Residents and is currently reviving a grassroots organization she created in 2015, Ohio Valley Allies.