Abby Reyes

Abby is a human rights and environmental lawyer. While at the Mesa Refuge, Abby worked on Truth Demands (forthcoming spring 2025) in 2018 and returned on an Alum Week to complete it. As a 2024 spring Writer on the Edge, Abby wrote:

“Through the story of a murder, an oil company’s role, and a global community’s response, Truth Demands charts my navigation through the waters of grief and the churn of oil wars to the sure footing of community resistance and resilience. As a recognized victim in Case 001 of Colombia’s post-civil war truth and reconciliation process, I bring the reader along in my demand for truth before the tribunal while awakening our collective awareness of what the truth demands of all of us in this era of ecological collapse and social transformation. I wrote at the edge of the restored wetlands of Tomales Bay. Studying the intertidal zone from atop the mesa, I could never tell whether to call it water or land. Like grief, the terrain was in constant flux.”

Abby cut her teeth doing rural environmental legal assistance in the Philippines, her father’s homeland, and walking alongside the Colombian U’wa pueblo for dignity against big oil. She now directs Community Resilience at UC Irvine and supports community-academic partnerships in climate vulnerable places across California to accelerate community-driven just transition solutions. About this work, Abby reflects, “These communities are not only stopping the harm. They are also weaving a vast net of worker-owned cooperatives, urban farms, land trusts, mutual aid, resilience hubs, and transformative justice infrastructure. They meet needs in current conditions while transforming unjust systems towards thriving. Their stories show us what it can look like to navigate the waters and find purchase. They are stories ready to tell.”

A graduate of Stanford and Berkeley Law, Abby co-chaired the EarthRights board and is an advisor to the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners. She has a TEDx talk on “How to Come Home.” Learn more about Abby’s work on her LinkedIn page.