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Interested in being a community advisor to Deceleration? Introduce yourself via this short form.
Ceiba Ily
Ceiba ili is a cultural educator and musician from Honduras who skillfully incorporates indigenous instruments and languages into her music. Her work bridges the worlds of migrant communities, and indigenous rights, and promotes environmental justice. Ily helps manage the Deceleration events calendar.
Nadia Gaona
Growing up in South Bexar County and because of her grandfather’s teachings, Nadia has always felt a close relationship with the land, trees, and animals around her. For the past 14 years she’s developed a love of nature and connecting with others into her work to encourage community growth, and create spaces for people to share knowledge of how to cultivate food in accordance with natural patterns. Nadia is the founder of SATX Permaculture, a group where people can connect with others and talk about and apply regenerative practices for the improved health of our soil, ourselves, and our planet. She is also a Community Health Worker on the southside of San Antonio where she is blessed to work with incredible people working to heal themselves and their community from the ground up.
Diana Lopez
Diana is a Xicana born and raised in San Antonio with roots in the Rio Bravo, the Mexican side of the Rio Grande Valley. Her work with Southwest Workers Union (Centro por la Justicia) involves linking issues around environmental justice, living wage, and accountable governance. SWU works to re-frame public policy to protect the community, build the necessary, and include the voices of local residents in every step. It has led to successful strategic campaigns targeting wages, environmental clean-up, economic revitalization, healthcare, and energy justice. Lopez sits on coordinating committees of the Grassroots Global Justice and Climate Justice Alliance. Lopez is the Executive Director of Southwest Workers Union and the Grassroots Caucus Chair for Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice. Lopez is a mother of two children and spends all her free time in deep observation and respect for Mother Earth.
Lindsay Ratcliffe
Lindsay is a teaching professor and 20-year resident of San Antonio. A transplant from the Northeast, Lindsay fell in love with South Central Texas while hiking its trails and volunteering in San Antonio’s natural areas. As a Texas Master Naturalist, Lindsay assisted city staff with extensive vegetation surveys and grassland habitat restoration projects on public lands, experiences that deepened her love of the local environment and her desire to protect it. Today, Lindsay serves as board member and secretary of the Friends of San Antonio Natural Areas. She is a full-time teacher of writing and environmental studies at UTSA, where she also advises the Green Society, a student environmental club.
Dyhanara Rios
Dy is a poet, musician, and multimedia magician from San Antonio. She graduated from Texas State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Media and Mass Communications, combining her passion for the environment and digital media in her studies, career, and writing. Her first album “Sing to the Sea – EP” is available now on all major music streaming platforms. Dyhanara is currently the community relations coordinator for the William R. Sinkin Eco Centro center for community and environmental sustainability. She uses her skills in digital media design, event planning, and public relations for her career and in volunteer organizations, including the Optimist Club of San Antonio. Dyhanara’s mission is to inspire and empower through creativity, communication, and leadership. Read more at dyhanara.com.
Enrique Valdivia
Enrique is an attorney and a director on the Edwards Aquifer Authority board. He has a long track record of environmental activism surrounding water issues. First elected to the Edwards Aquifer Authority board of directors in 2006, he was a founding member of San Antonio non-profits Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance. He was also involved in a grassroots effort to block a proposed PGA Village development and has led other challenges to development over the aquifer. He has lived in San Antonio since the mid-1990s. He also serves on the board of the Texas Fund for Economic & Environmental Education.
Kenny Walker
I am from the deserts of Nevada where rivers flow from the mountains into a great basin and do not return to the ocean. These regions taught me how environments are sites of inquiry and practice for democracy, political economy, cross-cultural transactions, ecology, spiritual guidance, and living the good life. My academic career has centered around these inquires and practices in my scholarship on environmental and ecological rhetorics, and in my practice as an engaged member of transdisciplinary environmental science teams and multiple community organizations in San Antonio and across the Southwest. As a rhetorical scholar, I consider how environmental and ecological rhetorics affect cultural and political change from the perspective of critical cultural theory and science and technology studies. I am particularly interested in the rhetorics and politics of climate and climate change from local, regional, and global standpoints.
