With giant windmill electric generators in the background, an array of community organizers was at Buffalo Harbor State Park Thursday pushing for the Green New Deal in Washington and climate justice legislation in Albany.
It was a National Day of Action. For some of the groups represented, it's been decades of pushing environmental legislation and now legislation aimed at fighting what's widely believed to be a rapidly deteriorating planetary climate.
The big legislation being pushed here and around the country is trillions of dollars in the proposed new federal budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 to change the way things are done, economically and socially. The groups want to make sure the dollars are spread equitably and skewed toward those who need the help the most.
"We need the money that is being asked for. We need to be able to have green new energy to save the planet. We need to recognize that everything is intersectional," said Luz Velez. "And that means that this is something that affects me with regard to energy. It also affects me with regard to housing. It affects me with regard to medical care and treatment, social justice."
PUSH Buffalo Executive Director Rahwa Ghirmatzion said there needs to be an independent agency to make sure the money is spent the way the activists expect.
"There needs to be some type of an independent body that is bipartisan, that also has community partners and stakeholders be part of that body and make sure that the investments are being directed where they were supposed to be and not be misused," Ghirmatzion said. "More importantly, there has to be some kind of an assessment to ensure that the goals that we have set, the impact that we are hoping to make, actually happens. If they don't, then we need to start clawbacking."
Roger Cook was there from the Sierra Club and the Interfaith Climate Justice Community. Cook reached back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s views on the "urgency of now."
"If we don't act with the fierce urgency now, it will be too late for all living creatures on the planet," Cook said. "We will be overwhelmed with raging forest fires, drought, rising sea levels, cyclonic superstorms, rising and depleted oceans, coastal flooding. Many of these disasters will not only occur individually, but simultaneously in the same place."
Rep. Brian Higgins (D-Buffalo) was also there to say he backs the legislation and is doing what he can to make sure both proposals under debate pass.
