Magical Thinking Takes Eleven Kids on Journey for Justice
On June 28, 2025, eleven Bay Area kids strapped on their horns, cloaks, and fairy ears and led community members through an imaginary journey to fight climate change and environmental injustice along the Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline in Oakland. The youth are interns at Mycelium Youth Network, a local nonprofit organization that empowers young people to tackle climate challenges through a blend of science, technology, engineering, arts, math, ancestral practices, and play.
On that sunny Saturday, more than 60 people — young and old, interns and guests, volunteers and staff from Mycelium, Save the Bay, and other partners — embarked on a quest to learn through play for the organization’s Community Day of Action.
They put on costumes. They met new people. They battled evil villains who stole a magical bird’s egg. They also learned about the MLK Shoreline’s native animals, tended to the land, and dreamed about what the shoreline could become.
“[It] puts so much pressure on young people and adults when we just feel that sense of fatalistic dread around climate change,” said Lil Milagro Henriquez, founder and executive director of Mycelium Youth Network. “But if we’re playing, then our imaginations open, and then all of a sudden anything becomes possible.”
Top banner: From left, Neto Martinez Cornejo, 12, Pinole resident; Eiyani Winston, 13, Mycelium Youth Network intern from Oakland; Doven Uludong, 14, Oakland resident; Najorae Trang-Kwina, 20, Oakland resident; Wilson Wong, San Francisco resident and Mycelium Youth Network volunteer.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline — surrounded by the Oakland Airport, the 880 freeway, the Oakland Coliseum, and industrial buildings — is one of the only accessible green spaces in East Oakland. Leading up to the Community Day of Action, Mycelium’s interns, who guided community members through the fictional quest, spent six months learning about the shoreline and restoring the habitat.
A young participant walks by a prompt encouraging community members to dream about what the shoreline could become. Milagro Henriquez believes that starting small can be less overwhelming and that local change can lead to a wider impact.
“When we improve East Oakland, when we improve the MLK shoreline, we’re having a fairly large effect across the entire Bay Area, right?” she said. “If we [improve] an area that has gone through environmental hazards, that actually improves [conditions] all across the shoreline.”
Community Day of Action participants gather around the welcome table and costume station where they gear up before the live-action role-playing begins. Participants journeyed from throughout the Bay Area to attend — from San Francisco to Crockett to East Oakland, just minutes away from the shoreline.
Oakland resident Naima Grant, 10, right, struggles to choose just three items that participants are allowed to check out from the costume station to wear during the day’s quest. She finally selected an emerald green, hooded cape, a jeweled fairy crown, and a leather satchel.
Jenna Quan, left, of Richmond, helps Allison McManis, of Oakland, gear up before the quest begins. The friends brought some of their own accessories but supplemented their outfits with crowns and capes from the costume station.
Players from the community cross over the Damon Slough bridge, or the “threshold from reality into fantasy.” On the other side of the bridge, the fictionalized universe came alive as interns in costume greeted participants and presented them with a fantasy story rooted in local lore and the ecological history of the shoreline.
Marcy Brown, Mycelium Youth Network storyteller and shoreline program manager who spearheaded the Community Day of Action, gasps as she suddenly steps into character and informs participants that an alarming incident has taken place: The magical bird Arrowhead Beacon’s egg has been stolen.
Evil villains appear from behind a treeline, led by Wilson Wong, front and dressed in black, as they confront the players and reveal that they have stolen the bird’s precious egg. After the villains disappeared, participants broke into teams led by Mycelium Youth Network interns who guided them through live-action role-playing games rooted in learning about and restoring the shoreline as they sought out the lost egg.
Artenis Elzy, 12, center, a Mycelium Youth Network intern and East Oakland resident, reads a clue that she and her team pulled out of a glass vial. The clue points them toward which learning station they should head to next, inching them closer to the villains’ final location.
Fifty students applied for the internship opportunity, which targeted middle schoolers because of their sense of play. Like Elzy, many of the students reside close to the MLK Shoreline.
Eiyani Winston, 13, center, a Mycelium intern and Oakland resident, draws a bow and arrow during a game to shoot giant artificial invasive plants propped up as targets. The game combined archery practice with an educational experience about local invasive species.
A butterfly drifts around a blackberry bush growing on the edge of the MLK shoreline.
Living in East Oakland, Elzy has been to the shoreline several times with her family for parties and hangouts. She loves looking at the water and watching the birds. Elzy’s dream for the shoreline is that the community keeps it clean, including the water, so that animals are safe.
Winston envisions more people coming to enjoy the shoreline by using the area for walking, running, and biking.
Team “Trail of Clues,” led by Elzy and Winston, visit the Arcane Aviary table and learn about native birds. Here players could choose to draw and create their own birds or use binoculars to search for birds in the area.
Costume details from players and Mycelium Youth Network interns at the Community Day of Action in late June 2025.
“When we play, then you can imagine yourself bigger and stronger and do things that you didn’t think were possible,” said Milagro Henriquez.
A team called “Rebuild the Nest” looks through binoculars at the edge of the shoreline during their quest to search for native birds. Some common shoreline species include herons, willets, curlews, and avocets.
During the live-action role-playing, storytellers presented invasive species as a threat brought by the evil villains that stole the bird’s egg. “Should we remove them and help the shoreline recover?” the team asked before grabbing their gardening tools and getting to work.
The MLK Shoreline during high tide.
“I picture a place where people can come and really restore themselves, continue to build relationships. I picture land back to the Indigenous people who continue to steward this place and have always stewarded this place,” said Mycellium’s Marcy Brown, when asked what she dreams of for the MLK Shoreline. “And I just really envision the color green. The color green.”
Mycelium intern Dia Robles, 13, left, and Modersbach pull invasive plants after their team attended an orientation by Save the Bay. Save the Bay urged participants to focus on mastering the removal of one invasive plant instead of trying to tackle them all.
Native plants on the shoreline — such as cordgrass and pickleweed — are adapted to life in the wet and dry, salty and fresh, tidal zone, and can migrate inland as sea level rises, if there is space. Weeds disrupt this natural transition.
Oakland adventurer Allison McManis wears a feather capelet during the Community Day of Action.
“When I learned [about climate change] in school, I was heartbroken and it felt like there was nothing I could do. [Today] just felt like a valuable, empowering, creative way to actually address the reality of this complex issue. And to hear the kids talk about, ‘Now when I’m outside I think about nature totally differently than I did six months ago’ — there’s just a much more felt sense of connection, which I think is so important,” said McManis.
During the climax of the quest to reunite the magical bird Arrowhead Beacon with her stolen egg, the teams gather around Brown for the final moments of the game.
“I love how people are really focusing on community-oriented solutions, even in their confrontation with an evil villain. They called the villain into community and convinced the villain to give back the egg rather than fighting for it,” said Brown. “I thought that was really wonderful.”
Finally, Wong reveals the stolen egg — just moments before handing it back to the players who have been racing across the shoreline to bring it home.
Players celebrate the return of the egg and the end of their quest.
“Peace and joy have returned to the shoreline!” Brown exclaimed as she concluded the day of action.
Storytellers and players trek along the MLK Shoreline on June 28, 2025.
Since its founding in 2017, Mycelium Youth Network has empowered more than 1,000 students to tackle the world’s climate challenges with knowledge and creativity — including the storytellers who led the Community Day of Action.
“We cannot build the world we want to see unless we can envision it first. And us being here on the shoreline, being active with our imaginations and pursuing just a day of fun,” said Brown — “I think we’re taking that first step as a community.”
