WE ACT for Environmental Justice (West Harlem Environmental Action)

WE ACT advocates policies to require a significant portion of government funding on environmentalist efforts to be spent on ethnic minority and low-income communities. It is a supporter of the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which is said to be implemented under Executive Order 14008, which states, “40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.” ^{5 6}

History

WE ACT for Environmental Justice, formally known as West Harlem Environmental Action, was founded in 1988 as an environmentalist activist organization that organizes to oppose supposed environmental racism, more specifically “white environmental advocacy.” In 1991, WE ACT attended the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit where the Principles of Environmental Justice were first drafted and later adopted by WE ACT’s Environmental Justice Leadership Forum. ^{7 1}

In 1994, the Clinton administration invited WE ACT to the signing of Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. ¹ The Executive Order directed federal agencies to “identify and address” “adverse human health or environmental effects” on low-income and ethnic minority communities. It also stated that agencies should implement so-called “environmental justice” upon their discoveries. ⁸

In 2008, WE ACT founded the Environmental Justice Leadership forum, creating a coalition of environmentalist groups to adopt its principles, including reparations from victims of broadly described “environmental injustice” and claims that “governmental acts of environmental injustice” are genocide under federal and international law. ^{7 1 9}

In 2012, WE ACT opened a federal policy office in Washington, D.C. to expand its policy advocacy at the national level. ¹

Environmental Justice Leadership Forum

WE ACT for Environmental Justice is the founder and organizer of Environmental Justice Leadership Forum, a coalition of environmentalist activist organizations that advocate for policies based on their ideas of so-called environmental justice. ¹⁰

Environmental Justice Leadership Forum’s advocacy is based on its “Principles of Environmental Justice.” Its principles include calls for bans on nuclear energy, “production of all toxins,” “hazardous wastes,” and testing of medical treatments on ethnic minorities. ⁷ The list equates a lack of policies banning them to genocide based on federal and international law. It also demands reparations for so-called victims of environmental injustice, which it claims are typically ethnic-minority and low-income communities. ⁹

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

WE-ACT has repeatedly opposed the use of carbon free nuclear energy.

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 19 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ¹¹ An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ¹²

In August 2021, as one of 17 members of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum, WE-ACT cosigned a letter to Congressional leaders regarding the then-proposed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “In addressing our climate crises,” wrote the signatories, “we oppose any funding towards false ‘clean’ energy solutions that will increase pollution burden in environmental justice communities.” The letter listed nuclear energy, carbon capture, and carbon taxes as specific examples of the “false clean energy solutions.” ²

WE-ACT, the Center for Biological Diversity, and four other groups co-signed an October 2021 memo addressed to the “White House, Senate, House of Representatives” with the subject heading “Final negotiations must re-center climate and environmental justice as pillars of the Build Back Better Act.” The signatories wrote that nuclear energy was an example of “harmful and unsustainable technologies” that should have “no place in renewable and just climate policy.” ³

In October 2015, WE-ACT issued a statement regarding then-President Barack Obama’s proposed Clean Power Plan. The WE-ACT director of federal policy said that the Clean Power Plan should create “a stronger reliance on real renewables like wind and solar and not allow nuclear, biomass, incineration or natural gas to be defined as clean energy.” ⁴

Advocacy

WE ACT for Environmental Justice campaigns in support of the Green New Deal as it claims there is a need for a “full governmental response” to implement environmentalist policies. During the 2020 election cycle, WE ACT reports that it supported candidates that were proponents of the Green New Deal and, more specifically, promoted policies that would eliminate the use of conventional energy and prioritize the hiring of ethnic minorities in a publicly funded transition to reliance on environmentalist energy. ¹³

WE ACT’s federal policy office campaigned in support of Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Act of 2019, which would have created a grant program to fund the development of cosmetics and personal care products that do not contain so-called harmful chemicals to be marketed towards Black women. WE ACT claims the grant program is necessary because there are beauty products on the market that are targeted towards Black women that are harmful. ¹⁴

Under its belief that healthcare and health outcomes are a measure of environmental justice, WE ACT advocates for regulatory guidance from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for hospitals to maintain their nonprofit status by requiring them to engage with the community to the extent necessary to meet the “health needs” of the community. It argues that because under the Affordable Care Act everyone should be insured, the burden for hospitals to maintain their nonprofit status by subsidizing care for uninsured patients is greatly reduced and should be required to maintain their nonprofit status by expanding their charitable acts. ¹⁴

People

Peggy Shepherd is a cofounder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice. She has served as co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, chair of the New York City Environmental Justice Advisory Board, and chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the Environmental Protection Agency. She also sits on the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network and Board of Advisors of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. ¹⁵

Financials

According to its tax returns, WE ACT for Environmental Justice reported $16.2 million in revenue in 2021. ¹⁶ It also reported $3.8 million in total expenses, $2.2 million of which was spent on salaries and compensation of its employees. ¹⁷