Krista Schyler

Twenty years ago, I started a journey that would end at the banks of the Anacostia River. My voyage began when my friend Kaitlin introduced me to environmental issues. In my quest to paddle the shores of a new world unknown to…

As a child, I grew up across the street from the small segregated “black” park, the 61-acre Chickasaw Park established in 1923 for the use of the black community in a segregated neighborhood. It was just down the street from the whites-only Shawnee Park, which was well over 300 acres. Both are Olmsted parks which border the Ohio River. Chickasaw…

We had just launched The City Project when Erica Flores Baltodano first started working with us as a UC Berkeley law student. We were developing creative legal and organizing strategies to help Black, Latino, and low-income people fight for equal access to healthy parks, schools, and recreation. After she worked on litigation to help foster children, I asked her to return the following summer to work on green justice. It…