New York Voters Want Education Justice With Their Climate Justice
By: New York State Senator Robert Jackson
Climate justice is not just an urgent fight in New York, but a popular one, too! So is education justice, which I’ve been fighting to achieve for over 40 years. Today I want to tell you about exciting new legislation to combine them.
The story starts with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), a landmark piece of legislation growing out of more than three years of grassroots organizing that we passed in 2019. The CLCPA puts New York on a path to significantly reducing carbon emissions. The renewable energy transition program it sets forth to reduce emissions to 85% by 2050 is one of the most aggressive goalposts in the country. It also requires that forty percent of the program's benefits accrue to historically disadvantaged environmental justice (EJ) communities — working-class and/or Black and Brown neighborhoods like those I represent that have to bear the burden of adverse public health effects, environmental pollution, and climate change impacts.
I campaigned on passing the CLCPA and worked hard to get it across the finish line during my first year in the Senate. At the end of the day, the governor watered down the emissions reductions from 100% to 85% and gutted some of the key provisions for labor standards, job training programs, and measurability of investments in EJ communities. I voted yes with reservations on the CLCPA because of this weakened language.
As a mark of the strength of our advocacy, even after the governor’s watering down of the CLCPA, it remains a gold standard in the US, and New Yorkers continue to support it 2 years out. According to a new Data for Progress survey, a full 85% of likely Democratic voters, along with nearly half of independents and over a quarter of Republicans approve of the CLCPA. That’s over 60% of all those surveyed! There’s no question in my mind that New York continues to have an appetite for bold climate justice legislation that sets us up for a brighter future.
Public education is also an enduringly popular issue, and one I’ve dedicated a majority of my life toward. I filed a court case called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in 1993 to challenge the chronic underfunding of disadvantaged school districts like mine in Northern Manhattan, and in 2006 we won a decision from the highest court in New York that required to state to increase funding to these poor and Black and Brown school districts statewide by nearly $11 billion. The mechanism to equitably distribute funds came to be known as the Foundation Aid formula. This year, we finally achieved the fight to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula, 14 years after it went into effect. The legislature stood united against the governor to demand a full phase-in over the next 3 years. Candidates for local and statewide office alike often talk about this fight for public education because it remains a cornerstone of our society, the key to uplift all people.
It should come as no surprise, then, that using revenue from the next landmark climate legislation in New York State — the Climate and Community Investment Act — to invest in education and childcare is a very popular idea! For too long, corporations in the fossil fuel and related industries have polluted the air and dumped their toxic waste in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, sacrificing these communities' health to make their profits. Children attending schools in these neighborhoods have borne the consequences, as research from Los Angeles began to show in the early 2000s.
The CCIA aims to make big industry pay for that pollution, raising $15 billion per year from corporate polluters at the outset to invest in creating green jobs in frontline EJ communities to build a renewable economy for New York State. One-third of the funds raised will go to community-based organizations in frontline communities for local programs like community-owned solar, apartments, and schools. The CCIA would create and sustain over 150,000 green jobs over the first decade. It also includes gold-standard labor provisions, including prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements. With people in frontline communities, formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, women in non-traditional trades, and people coming off unemployment prioritized for jobs building our renewable economy.
It makes good sense that funds generated from this pollution tax that aims to mitigate the climate crisis for our kids should go toward preparing them for that future. Across the political spectrum in New York, there’s broad support for this intersection of climate and educational justice in the CCIA: 72% support this notion, while only 19% oppose. If that’s not a mandate for progress, I don’t know what is! Let’s work together to get the CCIA passed as soon as possible. For us, and for our children.
New York State Senator Robert Jackson (@SenatorRJackson) represents District 31 in Manhattan covering Marble Hill, Inwood, Washington Heights, and parts of Hamilton Heights, West Harlem, Morningside Heights, the Upper West Side, Hell's Kitchen, and Chelsea.