Weaving stories of resistance and resilience in the struggle for environmental rights in cities, pueblos, and villages across the globe to reveal the kinship and sacredness between plants, humans, animals, and land.
About Us:
Radix is a story-sharing collective of resistance and resilience for healing our land and people. We are people of faith and consciousness who come from various backgrounds. We reside in the Ventura River Watershed, Los Angeles River Watershed, Ballona Creek Watershed, and Willamette River Watershed on Chumash, Tongva, and Kalapuya lands. We share stories about how communities and individuals resist destructive social structures and environmental degradation to create a better world for all living beings. Our hope is that these stories will inspire emerging leaders to cultivate a vocation that intersects soil, sanctuary, streets, and soul.
Vision:
Our vision is to inspire emerging leaders to cultivate a vocation that intersects soil, sanctuary, streets, and soul.
Team Bios & Photos:
Grecia Lopez-Reyes (she/her) is senior community organizer with Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), working around faith, labor and environmental justice. Grecia grew up in Guatemala with her grandmother and sisters. Her grandmother planted the roots of her vocation through her life of simplicity, compassion and service to others. Her grandmother’s compassionate and fierce character instilled the importance of always standing alongside communities fighting for change. Grecia currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband Josh.
Josh Lopez-Reyes (he/him) is a son to Rocio and Manuel, brother to Abraham and husband to Grecia. He is a Californiano with family roots in the lands today known as México and the southwest of the United States. Josh currently serves as the director of the Echo Park Refugee Welcome Center. He is passionate about the Radix storytelling project because of the ways that it brings together issues revolving around land, life, liberation, and justice for oppressed communities.
Jeannette Ban (she/her) is a public health practitioner and regenerative farmer with a passion for environmental justice, climate change adaptation & mitigation techniques, and food policy transformation. She was born to immigrant parents in Tongva lands, now known as Los Angeles, California, and currently resides in the unceded Chumash Territory called Ventura, California. Her interest in the power of community-rooted systems change and the enduring struggle for land, water, and health rights in neighborhoods around the world drew her to the Radix storytelling project.
Lola West (she/her) has worked as a writer and storyteller for non-profits in the environmental, agricultural, and social services sectors. Growing up in Southern California (on unceded Chumash Territory), Lola spent afternoons in her childhood traipsing through wild grass to play with the animals that lived in the surrounding mountains or making mud pies out of soil, water, and wildflowers. Along the way, she cultivated an interest in the stories that all living things have to share. Currently, Lola lives in Ventura, CA with her partner, Jeannette, and their two lively pups, Margot and Olive.
Bethany Renata Loberg (she/her/hers) grew up in Salem, Oregon (on unceded Kalapuya territory) in a family that believed deeply in the interconnection and importance of peace, justice, and faith. Bethany’s parents took her to her first protest denouncing U.S. policy in Central America when she was nine days old. Trained in justice, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation, Bethany’s work has centered on immigrant rights, solidarity with Central America, and racial justice. Bethany currently lives in Salem, Oregon and until recently worked as Youth Ministries Leader at Salem Mennonite Church.
Gabriela Worrel (she/her) grew up close to the US-Mexico border in San Diego, California, and her earliest memories involve traveling across the border to her mother’s native Baja California. Her family’s immigrant background is a formative force in her life, and brings to bear questions of how cultural ancestry impacts identity, vocation, and establishing and caring for ‘home’ on this earth. Gabriela is trained as a biologist and urban planner and resides in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, two children, and two rascally rabbits.
Watershed Discipleship 