🌍 What does climate justice look like when we center people — not just policy?
In this powerful episode, Amber Amoo Gottfried joins co-hosts Victoria Cornelio and Andres Tamez to break down environmental racism, decolonial climate action, climate reparations, and the harms hidden inside so-called “green solutions.”
Amber — a climate action facilitator, consultant, and anti-colonial educator — explores how planning, pollution, and politics shape inequality across Europe and the Global South. She also shares insights on burnout, solidarity vs. allyship, youth leadership, and why imagination is essential for climate hope.
This episode goes beyond buzzwords and dives into real climate justice, lived experience, and community-centered solutions.
✅ Key Topics Covered
🔥 How Amber moved from grassroots activism to climate consulting
📘 What a climate action plan actually is — and why it matters
🏙️ Pollution, planning & inequity: when “solutions” harm marginalized communities
🧭 What decolonial climate action looks like in real life
📉 How young people of color feel alienated in the climate movement
🎭 The problem with “activist aesthetics” — and who gets excluded
🌈 Solidarity vs. allyship: what meaningful climate support really means
🌐 Climate colonialism: who benefits, who pays, and who is sacrificed
⚖️ Climate reparations, the ICJ ruling & political realities
📢 The role of imagination in moving from despair to climate possibility
🌿 Nature connection as a tool against burnout and disconnection
🤝 Why community, not individuals, should lead climate decisions
🗳️ How European far-right politics threaten environmental justice work
About the Guest: Amber Amoo Gottfried is a climate action facilitator and learning designer working across the UK and Europe. She specializes in intersectional, anti-colonial climate justice, collaborating with organizations, schools, and grassroots groups to build community-driven climate solutions.
Join the Conversation: How do you think climate justice should work in practice? What does real solidarity in the climate movement mean to you?
Share your thoughts in the comments 👇
✨ Explore More:
🌐 Website: www.TangelicLife.org
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tangeliclife/
🐦 Twitter/X: https://x.com/Tangelic_
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tangelic/
👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tangelic.org
✅ Don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe! Your support helps us amplify conversations on energy, equity, and empowerment. 🌍✨
🌱 Support Our Mission: If you believe in the power of storytelling, clean energy access, and climate justice — help us continue this work. ✨ Donate or Get Involved: TangelicLife.org
🔖 #TangelicTalks #AmberAmooGottfried #ClimateJustice #EnvironmentalJustice #ClimateActionPlanning #ClimateReparations #Intersectionality #EnvironmentalRacism #YouthClimateAction #JustTransition #ClimateSolidarity #EnergyEquity #DecolonialClimateAction #ClimateBurnout #Tangelic
In this powerful episode, Amber Amoo Gottfried joins co-hosts Victoria Cornelio and Andres Tamez to break down environmental racism, decolonial climate action, climate reparations, and the harms hidden inside so-called “green solutions.”
Amber — a climate action facilitator, consultant, and anti-colonial educator — explores how planning, pollution, and politics shape inequality across Europe and the Global South. She also shares insights on burnout, solidarity vs. allyship, youth leadership, and why imagination is essential for climate hope.
This episode goes beyond buzzwords and dives into real climate justice, lived experience, and community-centered solutions.
✅ Key Topics Covered
🔥 How Amber moved from grassroots activism to climate consulting
📘 What a climate action plan actually is — and why it matters
🏙️ Pollution, planning & inequity: when “solutions” harm marginalized communities
🧭 What decolonial climate action looks like in real life
📉 How young people of color feel alienated in the climate movement
🎭 The problem with “activist aesthetics” — and who gets excluded
🌈 Solidarity vs. allyship: what meaningful climate support really means
🌐 Climate colonialism: who benefits, who pays, and who is sacrificed
⚖️ Climate reparations, the ICJ ruling & political realities
📢 The role of imagination in moving from despair to climate possibility
🌿 Nature connection as a tool against burnout and disconnection
🤝 Why community, not individuals, should lead climate decisions
🗳️ How European far-right politics threaten environmental justice work
About the Guest: Amber Amoo Gottfried is a climate action facilitator and learning designer working across the UK and Europe. She specializes in intersectional, anti-colonial climate justice, collaborating with organizations, schools, and grassroots groups to build community-driven climate solutions.
Join the Conversation: How do you think climate justice should work in practice? What does real solidarity in the climate movement mean to you?
Share your thoughts in the comments 👇
✨ Explore More:
🌐 Website: www.TangelicLife.org
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tangeliclife/
🐦 Twitter/X: https://x.com/Tangelic_
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tangelic/
👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tangelic.org
✅ Don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe! Your support helps us amplify conversations on energy, equity, and empowerment. 🌍✨
🌱 Support Our Mission: If you believe in the power of storytelling, clean energy access, and climate justice — help us continue this work. ✨ Donate or Get Involved: TangelicLife.org
🔖 #TangelicTalks #AmberAmooGottfried #ClimateJustice #EnvironmentalJustice #ClimateActionPlanning #ClimateReparations #Intersectionality #EnvironmentalRacism #YouthClimateAction #JustTransition #ClimateSolidarity #EnergyEquity #DecolonialClimateAction #ClimateBurnout #Tangelic
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Looking at the environmental sector as the second least diverse in the UK with the number
00:07one being farming and actually trying to do that. That's pretty much it.
00:16When thinking about youth learning design and I suppose using some of those techniques and
00:21approaching it to the youth space and thinking about how can what what do young people need to
00:27know in order to be able to take action and to feel confident in doing so to overcome that imposter
00:35syndrome and also how can they share knowledge with each other and how can that peer learning
00:42actually be quite an empowering kind of process for them and experience for them.
00:47My way of approaching it is that if we want to look at these issues holistically then we do have
00:53to look at the margins and work inwards and that's really the only way.
00:57Thirdly, the warm and engaging we're going to do for your podcast instead of green.
01:03Tell me as a suggestion that combines an upbeat and abiding spirit without any micro music.
01:09Welcome to Tangelic Talks, your go-to podcast from Tangelic where we dive into the vibrant world of
01:14clean energy development sustainability and climate change in Africa. We bring you inspiring stories,
01:20insightful discussions and groundbreaking innovations from the continent making waves in the global
01:26community. Tune in and join the conversation toward a brighter, greener future. Let's get started.
01:36Welcome to Tangelic Talks, a podcast at the intersection of energy equity and empowerment
01:41with your co-hosts Victoria Cornelio and Andres Thomas. In today's episode we're talking with Amber
01:46about climate justice and environmental anti-racism as well as burnout and being in this space which we
01:53all know can be quite draining. So Amber thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. So what's your
02:00background? How did you fall into the climate space? What do you do? So I work as a climate action
02:06facilitator and consultant which is just a bit of a clunky way of saying that I mostly either help
02:13individuals take climate action or I work with organizations to create climate action plans and
02:19my main focus is around kind of intersectional and anti-colonial approaches to climate action plan
02:24development and my route in is probably a bit of a long story but started off with more so kind of
02:30grassroots organizing and then kind of worked more into the kind of social impact space and consultancy.
02:38That's really cool and what's a climate action plan what does that look like? So a climate action plan
02:44will typically have like a list of themes running all the way from kind of food and water and energy
02:50to say equality and diversity and community outreach and it will essentially be a bit of a road map
03:00a plan for an organization how they will take accountability and also themselves take collective
03:07action to help prevent the climate crisis and I think quite a big part of it is it's in part to
03:14do with this movement away from the idea of individual contributions to climate crisis and moving more
03:21systems thinking and organizational contributions. Yeah that's super interesting so when you do you get
03:28approached by organizations and individuals or are you kind of doing the outreach and telling them hey
03:34I have this idea let's work together? So it's a it's a mixture of both so sometimes organizations might
03:41get in touch and sometimes it's through a program so for example I used to work with schools to help them
03:48develop climate action plans and that was in response to the the DfE's kind of sustainability strategy
03:56and they would sign on to a program and we would work with them to help them create like youth-led
04:01climate action plans. Right that's super cool. Yeah you mentioned that you started like with a
04:07grassroots approach right and what what sort of uh I I just want to know just so we start from the
04:13bottom what do you do as a at the bottom level right to organize for for just sustainability in the
04:21climate like what what are the starting projects that you worked on? Starting projects so
04:26so so I think one of the first organizations that I really started working with and this was on a
04:33voluntary grassroots basis um was Global Justice Now and a lot of that work looked like I suppose
04:42it's the first kind of network building there isn't an organizational platform to to jump off um so it's
04:49a lot of it was around bringing people together leading um and designing kind of educational workshops
04:57around what does this even mean Global Justice what do we mean by that um and how does climate fit into
05:04this how does trade justice fit into this so I think a lot of it is around network building and bringing
05:11people together communities together and as it in at least in my experience it starts to trail up to more
05:17kind of organizational um climate work then it's more like partnerships we look at partnerships more
05:24than community um yeah community from the ground up if that makes sense yeah yeah that's quite cool
05:33and I mean you've been in this space for a while now but what first inspired you to step into sort of
05:39climate justice work because a lot of times we're getting a lot better at it but a lot of times it's seen
05:45as separate things like the climate crisis is its own thing and justice is its own thing so how did
05:50you kind of find yourself in the middle what inspired that so yeah this will actually take me
05:55back to Global Justice Now so um I actually didn't start kind of climate activism or climate action work
06:03until I moved to Bristol um and for those who don't know of Bristol Bristol is quite an environmentally
06:12conscious uh city it's also quite a diverse city um and it's one with quite an interesting
06:19context around the activism and around yeah how cultures um express through art and music and you
06:30know a lot a lot of activism music scenes have borne out Bristol um so it's a place where a lot a lot
06:35is happening when it comes to climate action and I started yeah working with some of these grassroots
06:42organisations and then it was when I stumbled across Global Justice Now that I had this sense of ah
06:49it's clicked I understand what I was missing before because for me I realised why I wasn't feeling fully
06:58connected to the environmental movement was actually because that justice element hadn't been brought in
07:04and that intersectionality element had been brought in by other groups I was working with so it was
07:10when I started working with them that that's when I started going on that path and I mean it's a hard
07:16one because we always have this issue especially in activism where it's like we don't want to focus
07:22on too many topics at once right we want a unifying message and we wanted to resonate but also a lot of
07:28these topics do intersect so have you found the balance of how do we bring all the aspects we
07:34want to talk about in here without losing the focus could you say a little bit more in terms of what you
07:40mean around losing the focus well so for example um if you go to a protest about oil spillage
07:48it might for some people it might come across a bit random to then be talking about intersectionality and how oil spills
07:56affect women more than men because of x y and z you know what I mean like there's a lot of issues that
08:03are if we are talking in a holistic sense affect everyone in different ways and that's where
08:08intersectionality is a great lens to look at them but then sometimes it might just overwhelm the message
08:14yeah I think I'm always of the view that if we want to be talking about issues in a holistic way
08:19then we have to talk about the whole and often for for me or in my work that does mean if we're talking
08:28about the whole then we need to work from the out out um from the outside inwards like work from the
08:34margins inwards and so for example you know if we're looking at um pollution levels if we don't talk about
08:42how uh pollution disproportionately impacts communities that are living in like low income areas and
08:49neighborhoods and we're only talking about pollution in um you know places like clifton if if anyone knows
08:57of bristol um or just higher economic uh neighborhoods if we're only talking about that then we're not really
09:04tackling the problem we're just shifting it somewhere else so it's interesting you know my
09:11my way of approaching it is that if we want to look at these issues holistically then we do have to
09:17look at the margins and work inwards and that's really the only way I really like that yeah because
09:23I think we we get stuck in the in the big picture or in the details and kind of working our our way inward
09:31is quite a helpful approach is that something you've picked up from your years in this space or is it just
09:37how you've approached things in the past yeah I would say it's it's an approach that's built up and
09:43I think it's I suppose a way of reconceptualizing it that feels quite important especially when we're
09:50thinking about justice and when we're thinking about frontline communities um yeah it it feels like
10:00it becomes a kind of necessary way of reframing it I suppose and what are the ways it affects like if
10:07you say pollution a marginalized a more a more low-income community right I'd imagine health has an aspect of
10:14it right it disproportionately affects their health compared to other types of communities but what
10:18what other effects does it like pollution specifically right let's let's just go with that
10:23what what effects does it have on communities what effect does it have on vulnerable communities
10:27um yeah so this is this is quite an interesting example actually so for example if we if we take
10:34pollution um then some of the ways some of the approaches and solutions that have been used so far
10:42to um to try and consult this issue is say having uh low emission zones
10:49and having say in a city center you know can't drive certain cars through but then there's a question
10:57of a case of where are these cars redirected and there's a lot of urban planning decisions that go
11:03into this and often you'll see that these cars are then redirected into again low economic neighborhoods
11:12right and so pollution levels are just displaced to somewhere else and that is that's something that
11:18has been planned you know it's an urban planning decision um so firstly there's that and then also
11:25there's the um issue of kind of community consultation so for example again um in bristol um we have
11:34a neighborhood called barton hill and they've had various kind of um experiments in barton hill um since
11:43the 50s and one of the latest has been around a pedestrian zone um and there's been very little
11:52kind of consultation with them and often these kinds of issues will crop up with communities that are
11:58low income just like barton hill is and also quite diverse um where there's little constant consultation
12:05and these types of approaches have kind of experimented see what will happen here maybe we can roll it out
12:10um wider so that can then have knock-on effects so if communities aren't consulted on the solutions for
12:19these issues then things crop up such as and disabled communities now aren't able to um say
12:27a car can't pull up to uh the social center that they often go to because it can't go through the
12:32pedestrian zone and they can't attend you know their their meetings and social events things like this
12:38that if they've been consulted it could have been understood so um right yeah there's kind of a
12:46a mixture of ways that it can impact but often the the issue is is it's redirecting
12:54one problem uh from one place but to another and to another community right okay would you say this
13:00is uh this is like one of those symptoms of of like institutions being so eager yes let's face the problem
13:06and then they don't take people into consideration at all right like they don't take like the actual
13:11people at the bottom like classic something so classic especially like i feel in the uk they have
13:17this because they they local local authorities are pretty powerful and they're very eager to solve
13:22things and they'll just do it and it'll and they have no idea how the effects are going to roll out
13:28basically yeah and it's a very decolonial approach as well because you're taking the time to
13:35move away from the top down thing and actually start from the bottom so we have this idea bring it over
13:41or tell us what the issue is and then we'll take that into you know into the planning and is that
13:48is that sort of how you approach climate justice in general with this decolonial approach
13:53yeah so it can exactly be that sometimes it's about organizations or institutions
13:59wanting to do good work and and feeling this sense of urgency that's often talked about when we're
14:05looking at climate crisis and so just wanting to roll out as soon as possible there is there
14:10is a big element of that um i suppose that's exactly where this idea of trying to bring in
14:17intersectional and decolonial approaches to climate action planning comes in
14:21so how can we help climate action planning teams to be able to have community-led approaches
14:28and to be able to have a broader understanding of which communities are on the front lines and
14:34most affected and which regions and incorporate that in their planning
14:38so that is quite a key element and you you are exactly right that that can happen um especially
14:45in in this sector i think people do want to do good work um but can sometimes rush rush into it because
14:52of this messaging of the urgency yeah the crisis well people often forget that just having the
15:00intersectional approach it just means remember the people involved right remember who like remember who
15:06are the ones that are that are being affected by whatever is happening right in a broad sense
15:13and it's it goes back to what you're saying of not working in silos or individuals but the whole
15:19community and taking everyone on board in that sense and with all this community engagement have you
15:24noticed any like specific challenges that marginalized communities face when they try to engage in climate
15:30movement is there something is there a pattern or something that we can start tackling maybe
15:36yeah so i suppose something i've heard quite a lot um from people of color in in the climate space and
15:45especially young people of color um is this sense of alienation and this sense of there being a right way of
15:56being a climate activist um and often um i i had someone phrased it at an event recently that uh climate
16:06activists are always either hippie or punk yeah yeah um but it's it's interesting how in in some ways that very
16:22funny way of kind of summarizing it trickles in from the grassroots but also actually to um when we're
16:30looking at like a sector level um it's interesting some of the spaces um even in a kind of consultancy
16:37space seeing the different approaches um that come in and there can be for example that typical like hippie
16:46um approach to like nature connection or climate activism um which might appropriate certain cultural
16:54ways of connecting to the natural world and advocating uh for the natural world without giving you know
17:00them the ownership and bringing that into like consultancy of facilitation spaces um and
17:07and yeah not necessarily kind of giving the the credits um so it's interesting that something um that kind of cultural
17:18pattern crops up in a lot of quite different spaces that fall under the climate movement um but i'd say
17:25that's one of the biggest elements i've had um you know that people have cited is that feeling of alienation
17:33that they're not being a climate activist in the right way right yeah right right and i i definitely
17:41i definitely 100 feel that specifically right because i i it's just like why do i why would i i want to fight
17:50for the environment i want to fight for the justice why do i have to align with like a certain aesthetic or
17:54a certain like a historical thing and it's sometimes it sometimes can be very frustrating yeah and it's
18:02there's a profile to stick to sometimes and you've you've worked with a lot of organizations and a lot of groups
18:10and this something i've noticed particularly where there's a vibe if you're part of a certain group
18:17if you know what i mean so an xr protester is very obviously an xr protester and just up oil is very obviously
18:25just up oil and it's you know part of the branding we need to do marketing but do you think that also alienates people
18:31from wanting to engage because they probably don't fit the aesthetic in quotations yeah and i think it's
18:38interesting i think in some ways probably when these movements first started attaching themselves to a
18:45certain kind of lifestyle and um anaesthetic in some ways part of that was probably um quite helpful in
18:53bringing more people in because um you know there's a sign you know you can tell that someone's an xr
18:59activist as as you mentioned in it and it you know makes people curious um but i think
19:06now really we are getting to um the stage where it is really alienating and it it doesn't necessarily
19:13kind of mobilize and bring communities together but it gives a bit of a checklist of what you know
19:20potentially makes an access and what doesn't and that can put off a lot of people especially young
19:26people um who are grappling with different ideas of identity and how to feel a part of the collective
19:34yeah yeah definitely especially if what we want is collective action kind of finding that community
19:41is key in such formative years as well right it's what we normally do at this point
19:46um yeah that's very interesting i like that and i wanted to circle back a bit on the decolonial side
19:55because i read a bit about your work where you highlight anti-racism in the climate space and in
20:00the climate justice space can you kind of walk us through what that is what that looks like yeah so i
20:06i do some work around environmental anti-racism and then i suppose there's site uh there's a few
20:13different components to that um the most commonly known understanding of what that means is around
20:19inclusion um which is looking at the environmental sector as the second least diverse in the uk
20:29with the number one with the number one being farming um and actually trying to that's pretty
20:40yeah trying to set that records jay um and yeah organizations uh like the race report uh are doing
20:49work around that um and and then there's another there's another side of environmental anti-racism
20:57which is looking at looking at the kind of trickle down effects of climate crisis and how it
21:04disproportionately impacts certain communities so my work with union of justice mainly focuses on this
21:12um in the pan-european context yeah okay so kind of what you were saying earlier about we want to
21:19decongest the city center but then the rerouting is through communities that are now going to get extra
21:26polluted and how do you see race class maybe geography intersecting in europe's climate policy
21:36is it something that's quite prevalent or is it kind of like a footnote
21:40i think this type of work is actually still quite new um in a lot of european western european
21:48countries um and it's also something that is under attack at the moment if we're looking at the far
21:57right kind of swing across europe um the idea of edis is really under attack um and then also that
22:07kind of messaging helps to cloud out the work that's really trying to uh fix you know the root causes
22:13which is what i touched on um before where there's those disproportionate impacts on um say communities
22:19of color but also disabled communities lgbt communities and so to an extent it it it's still
22:28quite new work um and for example within union of justice we're often working with quite grassroots
22:35um like grassroots groups who are working on this intersection and there are loads of organizations
22:45who you know have built up infrastructure to do so yeah what do you think is the like the biggest
22:53barrier that organizations have when they're scaling to get to what you're saying you know being i don't
22:59know having a bit more influence i guess going more mainstream when they're working in such a new space
23:05i think one of one of the biggest ones honestly is around capacity and funding um i think in order to
23:14build the infrastructure to have the time to build partnerships um outreach to um you know local
23:23councils and then building up to kind of national policy in order to have that time and capacity
23:29then it needs to be funding and i'm working um obviously i work with non-profits but i also work with
23:38funding organizations so i know from both sides of the coin how tricky and difficult that um that space
23:46is at the moment to be able to access funding i think if we can find ways of ensuring that funding is more
23:56flexible um you know some uh there's something ridiculous like what's what's the percentage something
24:05like 80 percent of london grants are only one year and so yeah and so um so what does this mean this
24:17means that projects try and build up infrastructure and then they have to dismantle it after such short
24:23terms and so that really cuts off groups and organizations from being able to scale enough
24:30to have like long lasting relationships um with other organizations and councils
24:37it's a really it's a really tricky space at the moment
24:40that is that is a wild statistic i never heard that it was just one year
24:46like is it do you think it's because they just want to support as many things as possible and they
24:52just can't they don't want to commit for multiple years for certain projects it's kind of true um yeah
25:00so so a lot of funders are actually intermediary right so they're also fundraising to get the funds
25:08that they're then um putting out in in funding calls so they then have to report their impact
25:15how do they maximize impact well if they can maximize the number of organizations that they're
25:23funding if they can maximize how many projects have come out of it that's how it often leads to these
25:30very short terms um and you know yeah huge amounts gotcha so this is they basically say this is your
25:38stuff to get started go ahead face the world
25:46it feels a bit like a cycle as well because if they have to do the thing so they can keep doing
25:50the other thing and it's true if you can't sustain a project for long term you can't really
25:57scale it up right it takes at least six months to make sure the project even works
26:02yeah that's optimistic i would feel right six months you're rubbing off on me i'm getting optimistic
26:15and i was reading as well that you describe yourself as a youth learning designer for social change
26:21what is that i really like it like what does that involve how can like learning design drive deeper
26:27climate action um yeah so so learning design can range from a application to a lot of different
26:35types of spaces so for example i used to work with choreo on a project for the greater london authority
26:44um and when when constructing kind of fellowship programs um for those working in civil society then
26:53we can use learning design to think about okay how can they share knowledge with each other what kind
27:00of knowledge do they need from us to be able to design um more community focused programs and things like
27:07this um but when thinking about youth learning design and i suppose using some of those techniques and
27:14approaching it to the youth space and thinking about how can um what what do young people need to know
27:21um in order to be able to take action and to feel confident in doing so to overcome that imposter
27:28syndrome and also how can they share knowledge with each other and how can that peer learning um
27:35actually be quite an empowering kind of process for them and experience for them i think that
27:43i really like it it's a great tagline and i can imagine you face this both in the more campaigning
27:49aspects and advocacy of your work but also in education kind of balancing um how much science
27:56and data you're using but also bringing in lived experiences to central justice and there have you
28:02found that balance yeah i think they go hand in hand so for example our latest research report with
28:10union of justice um it's called what's race got to do with it climate injustice in europe uncovered for
28:16anyone listening that's interested yeah we're gonna put it on the blog guys oh brilliant and um and for
28:25example when doing this research report we didn't only want to find kind of quantitative data around
28:31experiences of environmental injustice we also wanted to uplift community voice and so it feels really key
28:40to have that mix of data and numerical data that kind of making the case um you know factual information
28:48but also uplifting stories from communities around what have been their personal journeys um with these
28:55issues what what are they noticing communities are asking for and struggling with and also what kind of um
29:04what kind of gold have they struck in in encountering these issues and working through them and i think
29:11it's it's amazing to hear some of the wisdom that comes from grassroots organizing um and what you can
29:18make from so little so that really is something that i think researchers need to learn from as well
29:25is kind of scaling up some of those solutions community-led solutions i really like that well we're gonna get
29:31deeper into that and you can check it out at the blog at angeliclife.org thank you so much amber for
29:38being here you're not leaving yet we're going to talk a bit more about movement building and solidarity
29:42tying it back to the work that you do and just helping us understand a little bit more how we bring
29:48in intersectionality in a more natural way i guess right just like we want to live sustainably let's
29:53let's keep it in mind so thank you guys for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next one bye
30:05let's talk power let's talk change for rural lights to brighter days equity rising voices strong we're
30:16building tomorrow where we all belong angelic talks energy equity pride empowering the world side by side
30:26a spark becomes a fire a vision that's true together we rise it starts with you
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