“This rezoning threatened the livelihood of the Sunset Park community of over 130,000 in Southwest Brooklyn,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a nonprofit focused on promoting sustainability and resiliency in Sunset Park, said in an emailed statement. “After several failed attempts at negotiations for concessions, Council Member Menchaca finally stood firm on saying ‘no’ to a development model that prioritized hedge fund billionaires over the interests of Sunset Park’s working-class and largely immigrant community.”
Progressives Killed Amazon’s Deal in New York. Is Industry City Next?
Elizabeth Yeampierre, the leader of Uprose, an environmental justice group, said residents of Sunset Park, where many small businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic and might not reopen, were worried that they would not be hired for the new jobs. She questioned the wisdom of building in a storm surge zone, and said the developers had made promises about community engagement, including proposing a public high school, without listening to feedback from residents.
“None of their recommendations came from the community, and they are inconsistent with our community needs,” she said.
Why Industry City rezoning is failing
In 2019, Uprose released its own proposal for a “Green Resilient Industrial District,” or GRID, that aims to retain the waterfront’s maritime and industrial character, creating opportunities for jobs in renewable energy production, sustainable business, and recycling and waste management. The plan would also incorporate green infrastructure to reduce flooding, such as installing rain gardens, wetlands, porous surfaces, and bioswales, which decrease stormwater runoff and remove debris and pollution. Yeampierre said the initiative would not only help improve the area’s resilience to climate-related events – it experienced significant damage during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 – but would provide higher wages than the retail and office jobs created by Industry City.
Menchaca Puts Kibosh On Controversial Sunset Park Waterfront Rezoning Proposal
Organizers in the area are hoping more attention is paid to alternative plans for the waterfront, including a proposal from UPROSE, a longtime Latino-based community organization. The UPROSE plan calls for a return to full-scale manufacturing while building wind turbines and solar panels as part of a national Green New Deal.
Advocates push NYPA to shut New York City peakers
“That was an issue of environmental racism — that they had selected these sites thinking the community would not be able to fight it,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a community group based in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood
Craig said the authority is looking at its options and is in conversations with the PEAK Coalition. That group, which includes UPROSE and NYLPI, is focused on shutting down fossil fuel peaking plants in the city.
115+ groups unveil transformational actions for next President to kick off climate justice agenda from day one
The promise of climate policy for frontline communities lies in targeted policy design that prioritizes protections, direct emissions reductions, job creation and other economic benefits, and resiliency gains for the most impacted communities, including greater control of decision-making—all of which animates the executive action platform that follows. It also lies in addressing deeply interconnected crises of housing affordability, gentrifying economic development, and financial extraction of labor, community, and natural resources. Those challenges cannot be solved by the executive branch on its own and will require extensive state and local action, major federal legislation in some cases, and massive public investment through appropriations, bonding, and other means.
Nearly 100 other groups also endorsed the proposal, including multiple local 350 chapters, Center for International Environmental Law, Climate Hawks Vote, CodePink, Data for Progress, Earth Day Initiative, Friends of the Earth US, Rainforest Action Network, SustainUS, the Climate Mobilization, the Solutions Project, and UPROSE.
One year later, what has New York’s landmark climate law accomplished?
“Billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel infrastructure is definitely not part of the equation to get us to our targets fast and equitably,” Summer Sandoval, energy democracy coordinator with UPROSE, a grassroots organization focusing on sustainability and environmental justice, told Grist. “It’s not just about reducing emissions, but also taking a hard look at the different aspects tied to emission reductions, like environmental health risks.”
New York's sweeping climate law inches along amid pandemic headwinds
“There’s still a long, long way to go to see the CLCPA be implemented with its original intentions,” said Summer Sandoval, with the Sunset Park community group UPROSE.
Both UPROSE and the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance are members of the NY Renews coalition credited with relentlessly pushing the law that forms the basis of the CLCPA. The group is pressing for more scrutiny of how clean energy money is currently being spent to ensure the state meets its commitments. Members sent a letter on Thursday calling for a full audit of Covid-19 related and all agency clean energy spending.
Examining climate justice and factors including zip code determining how healthy you are
“It’s because of residential segregation and housing discrimination,” he said. “Race is more potent, is more powerful for predicting where these landfills, incinerators, garbage dumps highways freeways and other kinds of facilities. Systemic racism will drive those things that people don’t want to other places where those populations, those communities, basically said they are expendable, they can be sacrificed. That’s how we get the concentration of pollution in Louisiana’s cancer alley, southwest Detroit, Philadelphia.”
Co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, Elizabeth Yeampierre says “I can’t breathe” takes on a dual meaning for Black and Brown Americans.
The Push To Turn NYC’s Polluting Peaker Plants Into Publicly-Owned Solar Power
“The project didn’t start with the [Request for Proposal], it’s been a long time coming,” said Summer Sandoval, Energy Democracy Coordinator for UPROSE. The solar panel farm will be a 685-kilowatt system that can support about 200 local households and small businesses, which is signing up subscribers now.
For something like Sunset Park Solar to be replicable, real estate development in the city will need to change. “There are agencies within city government that are really concerned about reducing carbon, about addressing pollutants and the environmental burdens that have hurt our communities for years,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE. “But I don’t think there is an analysis about how we use the spaces that we have available to do that.”
Racism makes the impacts of climate change unequal
Elizabeth Yeampierre: Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. A lot of times when people talk about environmental justice they go back to the 1970s or '60s. But I think about the slave quarters. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. The idea of killing Black people or Indigenous people, all of that has a long, long history that is centered on capitalism and the extraction of our land and our labor in this country.
The Connections Between Race, Pollution, and Covid-19
That claim comes as an affront to people who work to clean up the most polluted neighborhoods. Trump’s rollbacks are an example of “the different kinds of ways that they kill us and have been killing us for generations,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization. Environmental regulations, she adds, can “force protections for those communities,” but “when they are eviscerated, people are left with industries that run amok.”
NYSERDA advances efforts to allow disadvantaged communities access to solar energy
Climate Justice Working Group
The Climate Justice Working Group is comprised of representatives from Environmental Justice communities statewide, including three members from New York City communities, three members from rural communities, and three members from urban communities in upstate New York, as well as representatives from the State Departments of Environmental Conservation, Health, Labor, and NYSERDA. Working Group Members are:
Eddie Bautista, Executive Director, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance
Jerrod Bley, Clean Energy Program Director, Adirondack North Country Association
Dr. Donathan Brown, CEO & Co-Founder, Adirondack Diversity Solutions
Cecil Corbin-Mark, Deputy Director, WE ACT for Environmental Justice
Rahwa Ghirmatzion, Executive Director, PUSH Buffalo
Amy Klein, CEO, Capital Roots
Mary Beth McEwen, Interim Executive Director, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida and Madison Counties
Abigail McHugh-Grifa, Executive Director, Rochester People’s Climate Coalition
Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director, UPROSE
Sunset Park assemblyman accuses opponents of putting their “knees on his neck” in heated debate
All four candidates voiced their support for rent cancelation throughout the COVID-19 crisis, as well as other housing reforms, including the “Good Cause Eviction” bill, which would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants without a reason.
An Assemblyman Accused His Opponents Of Putting “their knees on my neck” During A Debate
Ortiz, the assistant speaker, who has represented Assembly District 51 which includes parts of Red Hook, Gowanus, and Sunset Park since 1995, took frequent jabs from his challengers at a Wednesday night Zoom debate sponsored by the Sunset Park advocacy group UPROSE. His opponents — tenant organizer Marcela Mitaynes, urban planner Katherine Walsh, and tenant advocate Genesis Aquino — chided Ortiz for taking corporate, real estate, and police union contributions, as well as for an ethics scandal involving embezzlement of campaign funds by a former staffer.
Peaker Plants Harm Communities of Color; It’s Time for New York City to Replace Them
New York City’s peaker plants are a prime example of environmental discrimination: the disproportionate burden of pollution and environmental health hazards inflicted on communities of color. Studies have shown that Black and Latino communities across the United States suffer disproportionate levels of air pollution, even as the most privileged are disproportionately responsible for the consumption of goods and services that generate this pollution. Neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Mott Haven in the South Bronx rank highest on the city’s heat vulnerability index, but have one of the lowest shares of air conditioner ownership in the city. These neighborhoods are home to four peaker plant turbines that run among the most frequently of all the city’s 16 peaker plants – often on hot, poor air quality days.
There Is No Climate Justice Without Racial Justice
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, said she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence integral to her climate change activism.
Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change
Elizabeth Yeampierre: Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. A lot of times when people talk about environmental justice they go back to the 1970s or ‘60s. But I think about the slave quarters. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. The idea of killing black people or indigenous people, all of that has a long, long history that is centered on capitalism and the extraction of our land and our labor in this country.
Black Lives Matter: Eco-advocacy groups step forward with vows to fight for environmental AND racial justice
Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization and co-chair of the national Climate Justice Alliance, told ICN’s reporters that she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence an essential element of her climate crisis activism. Since “big green” eco-organizations have used the climate justice narrative without necessarily making it a priority of their agendas, Yeampierre says they should take direction from Black Lives Matter organizers in this matter.
As Protests Rage Over George Floyd’s Death, Climate Activists Embrace Racial Justice
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn's oldest Latino community-based organization, said she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence integral to her climate change activism.