Hi friends,
Today, we’re going to make our own good news. First, this is a day of action to get the Climate and Community Investment Act over the line. Right now, the bill is in the Environmental Committees and we want to remind legislators that we are committed to seeing this through. We have already sent an organizational memo to all the NYS legislators, and now it is time to follow up.
Skim the organizational memo if you can’t recall what the CCIA is.
Use this tool to email all of the members of the Environmental Committees of both the Assembly and Senate. One minute action!
I’m overcoming my fear of call relays. This is an ingenious system (it is not phone-banking, which is apparently beyond me). There’s a sheet where you sign up for a time to make four calls tomorrow (in case the legislators don’t get the message today). The person before you texts you when they get off the phone and then you make your call (there’s a script and phone numbers). The idea is to make sure that the four legislators we are targeting get one call after another urging them to support the CCIA.
Sign up for Wednesday’s call relay to get the CCIA passed. Commit 10 minutes!
If you’d rather get away from your phone and your computer, come out this evening for a 5:30 rally for the CCIA at Cuomo’s midtown office.
Here are the details! Make a sign, grab a noisemaker, and join me to rally for the CCIA!
Yesterday, climate activists from the Sunrise Movement joined organizers of a local group, Rise St James, to protest against a proposed petrochemical complex in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The 14 new factories in St James Paris to produce plastics would contribute to the deadly pollution that has made the area notoriously unhealthy to live in.
The activists are calling on the Biden administration to revoke the federal permit that would allow Formosa, a Taiwanese plastics manufacturer, to begin construction. The 2,500 acre site also includes the burial grounds of enslaved people. The local activists envision
a memorial ground, a historical museum, or homes for the descendants of the formerly enslaved people – anything but another polluting facility.
The proposed plastics complex would impinge on nearby wetlands, reducing the natural protection of communities from flooding.
Call on the President to protect the people of St James and invest in the Civilian Climate Corps. Here’s a ready-made message!
There will be an important ballot referendum before voters in November. It’s an amendment to the NYS Constitution that says
"Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
Nine other states are also considering similar ‘Green Amendments’. Montana is one of two states that already has a green amendment, which was passed in response to the environmental damage caused by gold and copper mining.
In Montana, the power of the state's decades-old amendment - which has acted as a brake on overdevelopment and to enforce pollution laws - has waxed and waned with court decisions, the researchers found. And that took time.
After some decisions favoring developers and miners after the amendment took effect in the early 1970s, the state’s high court in 1999 reaffirmed the idea that regulations can be forward-looking and preventive rather than just be retrospective.
The amendment would be another tool in our toolbox. I promise to remind you in the fall.
Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of Yuri Kochiyama’s birth. Kochiyama, who was imprisoned with her family during WWII in a concentration camp in Georgia, became a civil rights and peace activist.
In addition to working for reparations for Japanese-Americans, Kochiyama was involved in anti-nuclear protests with survivors of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, and civil rights campaigns led by Black Americans. She understood that no one is free until we’re all free.
Learn more about Kochiyama and listen to the Blue Scholars’ Yuri Kochiyama.
Thanks to all of you who wrote yesterday. It was great to hear from you!
with love,
L