If the administration takes a typical inside-the-beltway approach to implementing the Justice40 Initiative, people with money, connections and lobbyists will take advantage of the situation to pad their own bank accounts and cement their own power. The communities that are supposed to benefit will once again lose out.
But if the administration centers communities already dealing with the effects of dirty energy and climate change by adapting and creating solutions that work for everyone, then the Justice40 Initiative could be the most important living legacy of the Biden-Harris administration.
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Let’s be clear: 40 percent is not justice, because these communities have endured disinvestment and environmental degradation for generations. But it is a critical starting point. So, let’s start by meeting a few of the community groups innovating solutions on the front lines of the climate crisis:
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Tatewin Means is the former Attorney General for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and current Executive Director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation. Responding to the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, she says, “For a patriarchal system to have an indigenous woman to lead those efforts is truly a sign that the status quo of white men making decision is going to change.”Dec. 19, 2020
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leadership have advocated for a number of months that we need to move out of that space. the negotiations that was mentioned earlier, the past two weeks, the primary focus of negotiations from the camp leadership side is telling the army corps of engineers and north dakota officials, give us more time. we re cleaning up this camp. this is our responsibility. we re working with the standing rock sioux tribe, working with other organizations like the thunder valley community development corporation, the standing rock community development corporation, on cleaning up that camp. so it s absurd to kick all those people out who have been working tirelessly over the past three weeks to clean up that camp and just take over. my fear is that we re going to see this whole media spin come out saying, look, they didn t clean up their mess when we have been asking for weeks, give us more time to clean up the work and get all these tents all the tents and things out of that space. i think that nor