Frustrated With Political Leaders, Community Activists Fighting Climate Crisis, Winning Elections

Last edited Wed Dec 25, 2019, 05:51 PM - Edit history (1)

‘My moment’: the activists fighting climate crisis and winning elections. The Guardian, Dec. 25, 2019.

Amid mounting frustration with political leaders, a number of community activists are running for office on climate and environmental justice platforms in local and state elections. The climate crisis is hurting communities across the United States. Hurricanes, heatwaves and torrential downpours are on the rise, and have already exacerbated devastating floods, droughts and wildfires in communities from South Dakota to California, Florida and North Carolina in recent years.

The threat of environmental hazards is also increasing as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolls back regulations on clean water, toxic coal ash, fossil fuels, air pollutants, pesticides, smog and vehicle emissions. Such deregulation may benefit big business polluters, including some of Donald Trump’s biggest donors, but the public health threat disproportionately affects millions of black, poor and Native Americans and Alaskans.

But amid mounting frustration with political leaders, a growing number of community activists are running for office on climate and environmental justice platforms in local and state elections – and winning. “This was about about my kid’s health, and my health, and I didn’t have the luxury of someone else taking care of that,” said Eric LaBrant, who was elected in 2015 as a commissioner of his local port authority in the Pacific north-west.

Such candidates “are deeply engaged because they have firsthand experience of climate and environmental issues in their communities”, said Alex Cornell du Houx, co-founder of Elected Officials to Protect America, a group working with local and state representatives on these issues. He added: “They learn quickly once elected and have the capacity to make a big difference.”

Extreme weather events and environmental injustice also exacerbate food and water insecurity, housing shortages, economic hardship and other inequalities. We profile four first-term officials who used their experience as community organizers and alarm over inaction in combating the climate crisis to win public office.

Veronica Carter, 59, a retired military officer, was elected to Leland town council in North Carolina in November 2019. Carter moved to Leland, a coastal town of 24,000, in 2003, where she joined a fledgling grassroots group to oppose a huge toxic landfill planned for neighbouring Navassa. This economically deprived, predominantly African American community already had a superfund site and six of the seven brownfields in the county. “This was my introduction to environmental justice violators and it was a textbook case,” said Carter.

And when Hurricane Florence churned over the Carolinas for 72 hours in 2018, causing widespread damage that left poor people stranded, Carter was on the frontline. She organised a distribution centre, and organized volunteer teams to deal with fallen trees, flood damage and urgent repairs. “Florence was the tipping point for me to move from activism to politics,” she told the Guardian. “I realized that we needed to build for the next storm, and incorporate resilient methods and technology to improve our infrastructure and build affordable workforce housing … all this was swirling in my head when an opening came up on town council.”

Carter ran her campaign on safe air and water, infrastructure, climate resilience and workforce housing. She beat the incumbent by two points. “I want to us see us build smartly, be more inclusive, and help our neighbours in Navassa get more attention in the state capital. I’m only one voice, but I will use my experience and ability to make sure every permit and ordinance the council considers is looked at through an environmental justice lens,” she said.

Eric LaBrant, 39, lives in Fruit Valley in Vancouver, Washington, a blue-collar neighbourhood with 1,200 residents and the Port of Vancouver located on the Columbia River. He was elected to the port authority and helped stop what would have been North America’s largest oil terminal..

Regina Romero, 45, was elected mayor of Tucson, Arizona, in November 2019 after campaigning on a climate crisis platform. She was elected alongside three council members who also ran on environmental and sustainability issues. In her first council meeting as mayor, the city signed up as an amicus brief in a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s promised border wall. “We took a position against militarizing our borderlands, separating our communities and environmental destruction by a border wall that will not make us more secure,” she said...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/25/activists-fighting-climate-crisis-and-winning-elections