Author: George Cassidy Payne
Tendaji Ya’Ukuu’s (they/them) environmentalism begins not in distant forests or abstract climate data, but on the cracked sidewalks, vacant lots, and neglected green spaces of urban neighborhoods. “I’m from the South Bronx,” they say. “I saw highway construction, deforestation, and environmental destruction happening before our eyes — some self-inflicted, some municipality or state-sanctioned. I wanted to tackle those issues.”
That early exposure shaped a career dedicated to healing the relationship between people, place, and ecology. After moving to Buffalo to study urban planning, Tendaji quickly immersed themself in the city’s landscape of vacant land and decades-long disinvestment. “Vacant land is a huge issue in Buffalo,” they note. “There’s a resistance here to using land as an asset for the public good. I wanted to be part of the work to change that.”…