WE ACT ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE CENTER INC
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Mission Statement
WE ACT’s mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. WE ACT envisions a community that has: -Informed and engaged residents who participate fully in decision-making on key issues that impact their health and community. -Strong and equal environmental protections -Increased environmental health through community-based participatory research and evidence-based campaigns. The WE ACT Environmental Justice Center in Harlem is now under construction! The center is an outcome of 35 years of WE ACT’s experience and leadership in taking community-based action in partnership with the most affected people. We work with our members and community stakeholders to address frontline communities’ concerns and priorities through successful environmental justice advocacy campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels. In the new WE ACT Environmental Justice Center, we will strengthen our ability to serve as a movement-builder, sharing our knowledge, experience, and best practices, along with capacity-building resources, including funding, with allies across the country. The Center will be a convening space and technical assistance hub for environmental justice organizations and other grassroots advocates. With a permanent space to call our own, equipped with the technology for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) education and citizen science, we’ll also scale up our community-based education, workforce development, and civic engagement efforts that directly empower Northern Manhattan residents.
About This Cause
WE ACT has its origins on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 15, 1988, when 100 Harlem activists came together to protest the threat to their community’s air quality posed by the North River Sewage Treatment Plant. Those activists included the Sewage Seven, led by WE ACT’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Peggy Shepard. They were arrested that day for civil disobedience but won their fight to reduce Harlem’s exposure to toxins and hazards. Since then, WE ACT has evolved from a volunteer organization into a national environmental justice leader with its base in Harlem and a federal policy office in Washington, DC. Climate policy must reflect distributive, procedural, and retributive justice if all communities are to benefit. WE ACT continues to expand its staff, policy agenda, educational tools, and technical assistance to meet the urgent need for environmental justice perspectives, engagement, and leadership to infuse public policy. In 2022, WE ACT’s efforts and resources helped to win landmark environmental justice legislation in New York, including a cumulative impacts law and a major state investment toward environmental stewardship and equitable green jobs. We launched a nationwide initiative targeting 10 cities to ensure that the unprecedented federal commitments to climate investment reach the communities where they are needed most. And WE ACT partnered with two other national environmental justice leaders to host the first-ever Climate Justice Pavilion at COP27 in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt – an important milestone in elevating the concerns of frontline communities around the world in the United Nations’ climate negotiations, as we all act to sustain a safe and healthy earth for our families and future generations.