Climate Justice and Jobs Monthly Meeting
This is our monthly Climate Justice and Jobs Meeting for the month of May. Be sure to register to the Faith & Safety Mayoral Candidates...
This is our monthly Climate Justice and Jobs Meeting for the month of May. Be sure to register to the Faith & Safety Mayoral Candidates...
Attention all people! No matter your race, income, or background, you deserve access to clean, renewable, and affordable energy. Unfortunately, big corporations prioritize their profits...
We stand for People and the Planet rather than unchecked profit that damages human communities and our earth. We lead our part of the Great Turning away from fossil fuel, pollution, and carbon as we build a solidarity economy that works for all. We fight against environmental racism and dirty energy and for healthy green jobs and renewable, affordable energy. Black, Brown, White, rich or poor, all of us need clean air, water, energy and a stable earth. That’s why we’re building a powerful movement to ensure climate justice.
We are heartbroken, we are outraged: we’re not going to stand for politicians and bosses making money for themselves while burdening all the rest of us with an overheating planet, environmental collapse and extreme weather such as floods, hurricanes, storms, and earthquakes that hurt the least advantaged among us the most.
We face the disastrous juncture of extreme inequality and climate crisis.
We are also blessed to be in a moment of dramatic potential for transformation.
POWER lifts up the moral message that solutions have to work for everyone, for the common good, not just for a privileged few, with faith as our unifying language.
POWER unites people across lines of difference refusing to be divided by race, class or geography.
POWER builds power in the streets and in the voting booth through relational organizing — “each one reach one.”
Fossil fuel extraction and burning run rampant. A few are making money while we all struggle with a scarily changing environment. Hardest hit are Pennsylvania’s low income, immigrant and communities of color which are overrun with toxic fossil fuel such as oil refineries, plastics plants, ash heaps. The cumulative impact of toxic health hazards, added to poverty, racism, and unemployment further disadvantages people already targeted by multiple burdens. These burdens, one added to the next, literally cause different life expectancies based on race and wealth: in privileged zip codes people live twenty years longer than the average in the most impacted places. These are the effects of environmental racism mixed with an unchecked profit-driven economy. We’ve had enough. We won’t take it anymore.
Because the moment is so urgent, POWER sees a great gateway of opportunity for a just transition to a green, renewable, and inclusive energy economy in Philadelphia, the region, and the state. POWER’s Climate Justice team runs strategic campaigns in Philadelphia and across the state to further a green economy, always centering racial and economic justice. POWER works closely with allies from Faith, Labor, Environment and Justice sectors who align with our Moral Framework, to build strength together.
POWER supports a rising generation of new leaders.
The roots of the COVID pandemic and of the climate crisis are the same: the separation of people by fear and division, using racialized violence, all in service of profit rather than care for our lives and our earth.
Right now we are all seeing how racism and economic inequality shape the experience of the pandemic. The virus itself is an equal opportunity danger but who gets sick, which communities are hit hardest and who dies are drastically affected by race and class privilege.
Is this fair? Is this right? Is this how the world should work?
In exactly the same unequal way, different communities are disparately affected by climate crisis. Communities that already have insecure housing, employment, transportation, energy and healthcare are also most threatened by wild weather extremes, overheating, flooding, pollution and are most excluded from having a voice in shaping solutions. When we address the roots of both the pandemic and of climate crisis, we can transform our world.
A roundup of articles examining the connection between climate and COVID-19 in the United States and around the world.
You have a climate justice story and we want to hear from you! Contact us.
Throughout Fall of 2020, the POWER Climate Justice and Jobs team trained and organized community members on providing public testimony in the state’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) public hearings. We began by offering trainings about RGGI with research and presentations led, among others, by leader-member Steve Greenspan.
Update July 2022: We won RGGI, set to start on July 1, 2022. BUT fossil fuel interests temporarily stopped RGGI in court. The legal injunction is under appeal. We will keep organizing for what we need.
Nora Elmarzouky
Recent Climate Justice and Jobs Organizer
– Russell Hicks
Climate Justice and Jobs Team Co-Chair
– Julie Greenberg
Climate Justice and Jobs, Director
– Jamir Hubbard
Climate Justice and Jobs Fellow
– Wendy Greenspan
Climate Justice Team Member
– Anthony Clarke
Climate Justice Team Member
– Terri Burgin
Climate Justice and Jobs Fellow (Three years)
– Founding Mothers of POWER’s Climate Justice and Jobs Team, 2016
– PA Climate Equity Table
– Carolyn Klepser
Climate Justice Team Member
– Aminata Sandra Calhoun
Climate Justice Team Member
– Randy Libros
Climate Justice Team Member
– Martha Griffin
Climate Justice Team Member
Steve Greenspan
Climate Justice Team Member
– Elise McCool
Climate Justice Team Member
POWER’s Climate Justice and Jobs team participates in POWER’s massive voter engagement drives throughout southeastern Pennsylvania. This is the 2022 ask of voters; every election cycle we update the outreach to keep it relevant.
POWER’s Climate Justice and Jobs team will be phone banking together on Oct. 13 and 25 from 6:30 – 8:30 and on Nov. 3 from 12:00 – 2:00. Training and a script are provided! If we care about our air, our water, our health, our energy bills, our jobs and our communities, we MUST shift the political landscape in this state. Sign up here for those dates and times.
Some of POWER’s climate justice voting engagement is supported by the Reimagined Energy for Our Communities, U.S. (REFOCUS) campaign. REFOCUS is an effort to amplify the need for a truly resilient, community-based, and decentralized energy model. In solidarity with activists in Puerto Rico, we are tying the narrative threads of the centralized energy struggle across the country and inviting organizations to sign on to the Quick Response Solidarity Program for a local, community-controlled, and decentralized energy system on the island via bit.ly/REFOCUSnow.
Please check the POWER calendar for monthly Climate Justice and Jobs team meetings or contact Julie Greenberg at jgreenberg@powerinterfaith.org for further information. When you are interested in joining the work, we’ll arrange some one-on-one sessions with you to learn more about your interests, about how you want to grow and about your vision. We’ll also orient you to the campaigns and help you engage whether it is as a leader, a funder, or a partnering organization. And we are a learning community so there is constant training in organizing, in dismantling racism and in policy possibilities that meet people’s needs. All are welcome — everyone brings our own life experience and questions to further the work and we need everyone.
You are invited to co-create this justice journey towards a better world.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Report
POWER Climate Justice & Jobs Platform 2023
POWER People’s Energy Summit (in color)
POWER People’s Energy Summit (in black and white)
Celebrating POWER’s Climate Justice and Jobs Recent Wins – July 2022
Climate Justice Strategy Framework 2021-2024
Political Landscape Strategy Overview
Redlined Real Estate and Extreme Urban Heat – Living on Earth
Bishop Royster Testimony: A People’s Budget – PA Joint House and Senate, 2/25/21
Black Work Matters: Green Jobs Report
From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring
Climate Justice Moral Framework
Change the Climate Presentation
People’s Utility Justice Playbook – Energy Democracy Project
Celebration of Terri’s completion of three year Climate Justice Fellowship!