Progressive Act Addresses Environmental, Social Justice
By CELIA HACK/ecoRI News contributor
More than 500 community members flooded Zoom last Tuesday night to witness the launch of the Rescue Rhode Island Act, a $300 million legislative package meant to simultaneously address climate change, racial injustice, and economic inequality, among other crises.
The act will put forth
three bills to the General Assembly: one to spur green and affordable housing
construction; one to expand locally-sourced food production; and one to protect
clean air and water.
“We have the power to
ensure that every single person in Rhode Island — Black, Brown, White,
Indigenous, and immigrant — has a dignified job with a living wage, can afford
a comfortable home with enough food, and can walk or play outside with clean
air,” said Sen. Tiara Mack, D-Providence, one of the bill’s sponsors.
The legislation is
championed by three newly sworn in senators — Mack, Sen. Jonathon Acosta,
D-Central Falls, and Sen. Kendra Anderson, D-Warwick — and Reps. David Morales,
D-Providence, and Brianna Henries, D-East Providence.
All five ran as a part
of the Rhode Island Political Cooperative, which required members to support the adoption
of a Green New Deal. The Rescue Rhode Island Act bears close resemblance to the policy, which
Robert Hockett, professor of law at Cornell University and a leading architect
of the congressional Green New Deal resolution, affirmed.
Renew Rhode Island, a
newly-formed coalition co-chaired by Monica Huertas, executive director of The
People’s Port Authority, and Emma Bouton, an organizer with the Sunrise
Movement, is backing the proposed legislation.
The group has at least
15 member organizations, including organized labor, frontline communities, and
environmental, racial, and social justice groups. Thirteen more groups
indicated their support for the Rescue Rhode Island Act.
The coalition is working
within the regional Renew New England alliance, formed in early 2020, which aims to
pass similar legislation in the five other New England states.
This “unprecedented”
regional effort will “create a model for the rest of the country” to address
racial, economic, and environmental justice, Mack said.
The legislative package
In its first bill, the Rescue Rhode Island Act tackles affordable housing,
greenhouse-gas emissions, and unemployment through the Housing Jobs
Construction Program. Spending $200 million annually for the next decade, this
program will fund “thousands of high-quality, energy-efficient residential
apartments across the state that are equipped with rooftop solar panels,”
according to a coalition press release.
Apartment residents,
low- and middle-income families, wouldn’t be charged over 20 percent of their
annual income in rent. And, to stimulate employment and construction of the new
residences, the bill would launch a union-led job-training program in
energy-efficient construction and solar panel installation.
“Housing is a basic
right,” Henries said at the bill’s Jan. 12 launch, noting that about 22 percent
of Rhode Island renters put more than 50 percent of their annual income toward
rent.
To meet the need for
affordable housing in Providence alone, the city would need to build 850 units each year for the next 10
years.
The second bill would
move the state toward a more localized, self-sustaining food system by
“developing a network of community land trusts … that will pay workers … to
produce local food in ecologically sustainable ways,” according to the
coalition.
Anderson noted that $75
million a year for the next decade would ensure the growth of the program, with
funding specifically directed toward low- and middle-income communities. She
said decisions on what to grow and how to distribute the food would be
“democratically controlled” by local communities.
The final bill would
create green justice zones, the first of which would encompass Washington Park
and the South Side of Providence. The neighborhoods are in a zip code that contains a greater number of polluting
facilities than any other in Providence County. These, alongside polluting
facilities outside of the zone that contribute to pollution within it, would be
required “to shut down,” Mack said.
The bill would then disburse
$25 million annually for the next decade to fund “green justice projects” such
as replacing lead pipes; the community would ultimately decide how to allocate
the money.
Polluting facilities
include petroleum refineries, hazardous waste storage sites, and chemical
manufacturing plants.
If the bill is adopted,
new polluting facilities proposed in communities that already experience a
disproportionately high level of pollution would be “automatically” denied.
Renew Rhode Island
suggested several routes to pay for the hefty $300 million a year package,
including raising the top marginal tax rate by 5 percent on the richest 1
percent of Rhode Islanders and raising the tax on high-end real-estate
transactions by 1.5 percent.
A union of labor and environment
Renew Rhode Island’s explicit coalition of labor with environmental groups
marks a notable shift in the state’s political dynamics. In the past,
environmental, social-justice, and community groups clashed with unions over fossil-fuel infrastructure projects such as a proposed power planet in Burrillville
and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facility in Providence. Generally,
labor unions approved of the projects, with environmental, social-justice, and
community groups opposed.
“A wealthy and powerful
few have long sought to divide labor and environmental social- and
racial-justice groups because they can only maintain their power when we are
isolated and divided,” Bouton said. “But by joining together … to fight for a
common goal — good jobs that meet Rhode Islanders’ most urgent needs — we can
build more power than we ever could alone.”
The coalition currently
has only one labor union in its membership, Carpenters Local 330. Ben
Branchaud, a spokesperson for the group, noted that the union initially joined
the Renew New England coalition to advocate for legislation that focuses on
supporting fossil-fuel workers in a transition to green energy. Of the Rescue
Rhode Island legislative package, the union is particularly in support of the
housing bill.
“It provides
sorely-needed safe, healthy, affordable, and low-income housing, while creating
construction jobs that pay fair wages,” Branchaud said.
A.J. Braverman, Rhode
Island organizing director for Renew New England, noted that Renew Rhode Island
is seeking to grow its union membership. In particular, the group is reaching
out to the Rhode Island Building & Construction Trades Council, an
organization representing 16 affiliated unions in the state.
The council supported
the proposed fossil-fuel infrastructure in Burrillville and the LNG facility in
Providence. The council’s president, Michael Sabitoni, didn’t respond to a
request for comment regarding Renew Rhode Island and the Rescue Rhode Island
Act.
With a total of eight
senators and five representatives co-sponsoring the legislation, the Renew
Rhode Island coalition will need to gain more support in the Statehouse for the
legislation to succeed.
The impacts
While Braverman noted that the coalition has “had conversations with a number
of supportive members of the Democratic caucus,” the group is also relying on
constituent support built through the Renew Rhode Island coalition.
With more 500
participants tuning into the virtual launch, dozens of messages flooded into a
Zoom chat about how the Rescue Rhode Island Act could impact lives:
“My family can buy food
without feeling burdened by other bills.”
“Knowing my son will
have a livable future.”
“Elevated lead level
would not have been an issue for my child.”
News of the
legislation’s launch spread through Twitter, which is how Providence native
Danny Cordova, 26, heard about it. Growing up on the South Side and West Side
of Providence, Cordova said these neighborhoods are “often forgotten about.”
Cordova lived near a
highway and said he experienced a lot of pollution. Centering the Rescue Rhode
Island Act around investment in these communities and undoing environmental racism
gave him hope.
“Having some more focus
on rebuilding communities, like investing in solar panel apartments, affordable
housing, community gardens, these are things that really stuck in my mind,”
Cordova said. “It’s something that I really think would help out those
communities.”
The food and housing
support system the Rescue Rhode Island Act offers could also be a lifeline to
workers in the arts such as Kathryn Boland, 32, of Newport, who writes about
and teaches yoga and dance. Affording rent without a 40-hour a week well-paying
job “can be a real struggle,” she said.
She noted that balancing
a budget with factors like safety and proximity to public transit can make the
search for housing difficult.
Limiting rent to a
certain percentage of income, as suggested by the Renew Rhode Island Act, would
alleviate the type of struggle Boland has faced before, especially when living
in cities such as New York and Boston.
“I would tell people
what I make and what I have to pay in rent, and they’re like, ‘They allow you
to do that?’” Boland said. “Because of the percentage that it is of my income.”
Providing support
systems to people in between jobs or in poverty is a need Cheyenne Thompson of
Providence is witnessing firsthand. With her job lost because of the
coronavirus pandemic, Thompson’s 20-year-old sister and her newborn baby
recently moved in with Thompson.
“Because she’s
low-income, because she’s a single mother, what systems are in place to
actually make sure that she gets the help she needs?” Thompson asked.
To Thompson, the
proposed Rescue Rhode Island Act paints a clear picture of how policy can be
used to break cycles of poverty and allow low-income people to “live their
lives the way they want to live it, without having to sacrifice their basic
needs.”
Celia Hack is a senior
at Brown University studying environmental studies.