Biography
Currently the Southern California Program Co-Director at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), Roberto is an experienced organizer in environmental justice and tenant organizing. As an alum of CBE’s Youth Program in Huntington Park, Roberto was part of the first generation of youth participants and closely participated in direct action organizing to demand clean air and water in Southeast Los Angeles. Roberto has had the privilege of organizing low-income immigrant populations living on the frontlines of environmental impacts, socio-economic burdens, and institutionalized racism. He has created educational materials, workshops, and local campaign development. As Southeast Los Angeles Community Organizer at CBE, Roberto organized with predominantly immigrant women and youth living along the frontlines of polluting facilities to successfully stop a proposed 943-megawatt power generating station and ensure the closure of the Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in the city of Vernon, CA. Roberto strives to address the impacts of systems of oppression of communities of color through community empowerment, education, and engagement of the most vulnerable sectors of our society to create collective solutions that will reduce climate changing greenhouse gases and demand clean energy. With the support of allies and community partners, he wants to hold government agencies accountable to the people living on the fenceline of environmental injustices.
