As a Black playwright, TV and film writer, director, and producer, I’m what I call an artivist: someone who includes activism in their art. I’m also a Buddhist who practices engaged Buddhism, as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, which supports social justice and ecoactivism. People often ask me why I agonize so much about the state of the world and what happens to others. I always answer, “How could I not?”

Granted, I was raised by activist parents who were both teachers. At age 12, I begged them to let me join Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, to save whales and seals. My father was a science teacher and my mother an English teacher, and they made sure I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth. They instilled a deep love of nature by taking my brother and me camping every summer. We visited most of the major national parks, and I continue to explore their stunning beauty today. (Yosemite and Olympic national parks remain my favorites.) I had the joy of going to Antarctica last year on a National Geographic Explorer cruise, where I researched a climate novel and a TV project I’m writing. It was a spectacular trip though it was troubling to see the effects of climate change on the ice.

In addition to fostering respect for nature, my parents taught me to investigate everything and never accept anything (especially from authority) at face value. When I had difficulty figuring out the irrational reason for a harmful policy or event, my dad’s motto was, “Follow the money.” In the years since I first heard that advice, it has proven true over and over again; greed and profit (and desire for the power it represents) are behind most conflicts, abuses of civil and human rights, and threats against our environment. They are the reason, for example, why industrial facilities that pollute the air and water are located in poor neighborhoods, causing high levels of asthma, cancer, and other illnesses. The poor and unhoused are treated as expendable, and we see this worldwide when it comes to the climate crisis.

People often ask me why I agonize so much about the state of the world and what happens to others. I always answer, “How could I not?”

My devotion is to not look the other way, whether it’s personal (as when my brother, Chris Cooper, was famously and falsely maligned by a White woman while he was birding in Central Park) or not, as with families I don’t know being bombed in military attacks. I don’t believe in sitting on the sidelines or reserving my indignation and action only for certain groups. I feel a calling to stand up against injustice wherever I see it.

This is what it means to be an artivist. Taking a stand feels second nature to me, and my way of processing what I see in the world is to write about it: in my stage plays about Rwanda or the labor movement, and in my TV work about unfair workplaces, medical inequity, missing Black women, and the fight against gun violence. I tend to write genre work (thriller, sci-fi, and horror), so that I can address difficult issues from a unique point of view. Lately, many of those difficult issues relate to the climate crisis. I’ve been focusing on the people climate change most affects: marginalized communities, especially the poor, unhoused, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color. I explore this perspective in all my work. It might be via a line or a small scene in some works, or an entire feature premise in others, as it is in “RISE,” a short story I wrote about a family facing the climate crisis in Brooklyn. I’m currently developing the young adult Emily Windsnap book series as a TV series, which gives me a chance to focus on ocean conservation through a main character who is an eco-activist. I want to normalize discussion around climate in engaging and relatable ways that reach a wide audience.

I’ve been fortunate to find my people — those who also agonize over the state of the world. Reaching minds and hearts with truth that moves people to take action is my goal. I like to tackle difficult subjects in ways that challenge people to think critically and listen to the voices of those who are not usually seen or heard. That includes the huge variety of living things who will become silent if we do not change the way we share the planet with them.