Green New Deal advocates rouse supporters in Little Village gathering as they call for federal funding
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Fueled by a seemingly bottomless box of churros, Chicago civic and educational leaders gathered in Little Village Saturday to share their visions for a better environmental future.
Chicago was the second stop this weekend on the Green New Deal for the People tour, a national movement for greater federal investment in climate policy. The tour aims to pressure President Joe Biden to commit to climate goals ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Elected officials including U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman are calling for $1 trillion in state and federal investment every year between now and 2030.
U.S. Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García and Delia Ramirez , each among national politicians pushing for Green New Deal legislation, led the charge Saturday.
“My kids and your kids deserve a safe place to live and work and play,” Garcia said. “A place where your ZIP code does not determine your life expectancy. The clock is ticking and we’ve got to grapple with the real impact of climate change.”
As of this year, Earth will be 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than during preindustrial times, said Saul Levin political director at the Green New Deal Network.
The Green New Deal hype tour is supported by Sunrise Chicago and the Chicago Teachers Union. Advocates previously gathered in Dearborn, Michigan and will visit Pittsburgh next. Supporters at the federal level will urge Biden to declare a climate emergency, putting a stop on new fossil fuel development.
Ramirez wants to see $1.6 trillion go into public schools over 10 years. Another $230 billion at stake in the Green New Deal Health Act she co-sponsors.
“When you talk about the climate, you have to connect it to housing,” Ramirez said. “You connect it to health care. You connect it to dismantling white supremacy, dismantling institutional racism. We have to go above and beyond strategic investments.”
Speakers criticized recently passed climate policies at the federal level, including the Inflation Reduction Act and funding packages from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as insufficient. Cook County received $305 million in FEMA funding to combat the effects of summer flooding, a measure Garcia called “a Band-aid solution.”
“We applaud the Inflation Reduction Act,” Garcia said. “But it is only a down payment of what we must do as a leader in this world.”
Congress has passed about 2% of the kind of funding advocates are asking for, Levin said.
“People in communities like this one and across Chicago are already dying from the impacts of climate change and suffering from asthma, from flooding impacts, having trouble breathing from fires as far away as Canada,” Levin said.
The Green New Deal network is also calling for higher taxes on wealthier taxpayers, as well as “reparative investments” from corporations with a history of pollution, to fund annual $1 trillion packages.
Several of Saturday’s speakers highlighted the disproportionate impact of climate factors like flooding, heat waves and industrial pollution on Black and brown communities citywide.
“Chicago is a city with a deep legacy of environmental racism and redlining, but it is also a city with a brilliant history and legacy of resistance,” said Jung Yoon, campaign director at Illinois Grassroots Collaborative.
Advocates also discussed the connection between environmental justice and affordable housing. Communities historically exposed to industrial waste are also more vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather, said Kennedy Bartley, executive director at United Working Families.
Growing up in Waukegan surrounded by polluted air, Bartley developed asthma, along with her entire family.
“We know that our communities will be the first to be in flames,” said Bartley, who is Black. “This summer, when we saw the air quality index rise, we saw that it was our people who were sleeping on the streets.”
Water pollution has also been a major issue in Chicago, an area that centers in many ways around Lake Michigan, said Eira Sepulveda, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner. Green New Deal funding could build better water processing facilities, Sepulveda said, and find long-term solutions to flooding.
Advocates also hope the legislation will fund affordable housing units built to use clean energy. City sustainability coordinator Angela Tovar highlighted a similar project in Auburn Gresham, where 29 units of new affordable housing will use heat pumps rather than fossil fuels.
Tovar, who in 2020 became Chicago’s first chief sustainability officer since 2011, will join a resurrected Department of Environment under Mayor Brandon Johnson’s newly passed city budget.
“Illinois residents deserve to live in community-owned, publicly funded, tenant-governed, accessible, green, social housing,” said Kendrick Hall, an organizer at People for Community Recovery.
Green New Deal advocacy has also seen support among student activists in the Chicago area. CPS students see between underfunding in South Side schools as related to environmental disenfranchisement citywide, said Lexi Henderson, organizer at Sunrise Chicago.
Henderson and others are calling for schools to be used as safe zones for people experiencing flooding and poor ventilation. Other goals that could use Green New Deal funding include electric school buses citywide, composting at CPS schools and job training for students wanting to work in sustainability.
“I’m angry to learn about students suffering from bad air quality just in traveling to and from school,” Henderson said. “Chicago has already lead the country in support for the Green New Deal, but now we must come together to make sure institutions and leaders deliver the support they promised us.”
If a Green New Deal came to pass, the Chicago Teachers Union hopes some funding would be used to rebuild Chicago schools. The average CPS school building is 84 years old — twice the national average — and many contain lead and asbestos, said environmental science teacher Ayesha Qazi-Lampert.
“We all have too many personal stories about when our classrooms and school buildings were too hot and too cold to teach and learn,” Qazi-Lampert said. " ... The Green New Deal, in collaboration with labor unions, captures the scope of political investments and protections that are needed to modernize our aging buildings.”
An earlier version of this story misstated the positions of two speakers. Kennedy Bartley is the executive director at United Working Families, while Angela Tovar has been Chicago’s chief sustainability officer since 2020.
