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We will be participating in Buffalo’s Pride and Juneteenth festivities, and we would love to see YOU there!

For Pride, we are participating in a coalition bloc of community organizing groups, and we’re looking for folks to help with –

• Preparing materials tomorrow and Friday (May 30-31) from 3-5pm at our office at 371 Delaware Ave
• Joining us either to walk in the Buffalo Pride parade on Sunday or to watch it with us and call out corporate bad actors and birddog elected officials
• Tabling with us after the parade at the Canalside Festival

Please register using this link to help us plan.
Scroll down to read the statement the organizations participating in this bloc are supporting this year!

For Juneteenth, we will be tabling on Saturday June 15th and Sunday June 16th at the festival in MLK Park in Buffalo, and are looking for a few members to join us for a shift or two.

Please use this link to sign up to volunteer for Juneteenth – you can also sign up to canvass or table with us at other events later this summer using this link.

With Bread and Roses,

Bridge, Chris, Cindy, and Gia

We had several press hits this month in the Buffalo News for our Tonawanda Tomorrow Team’s work!

• Tonawanda updates 1940s zoning code to guide future growth
• The Editorial Board: Town of Tonawanda steps toward the future by overhauling its zoning code
• Another Voice: Zoning can help maintain environmental justice for residents of polluted areas

If you are interested in getting involved in our Tonawanda-area Just Transition work, please reach out to Bridge for a one on one.

Please join our friends at Nekanęhsakt: Friends of Ękwehęwę this Saturday June 1 at Trinity Church, 371 Delaware Ave, for their event Witness to Injustice: Unraveling Historic Native & U.S. Relations. There is a sliding scale of $0-$30 to support our indigenous facilitators.
Please reach out to Buffalo Nekanehsakt at buffalonekanehsakt@gmail.com or 716-361-3578 to RSVP or for more info. Click here for more details!

The legislative session in Albany is scheduled to wrap June 6 – please send a quick email to your legislators to help get some crucial environmental and climate justice legislation over the finish line with these one-click digital actions!

• Tell Governor Hochul to support the Climate Change Superfund Act and put the interests of the taxpaying public ahead of Big Oil
  
• Cleaner Heat, Lower Bills: Help Pass the NY HEAT Act!
  
• Ask Your Legislators to vote “YES” on the Packaging Reduction Act & The Bigger Better Bottle Bill!

Clean Air will be participating in the Partnership for the Public Good’s Uniting on the High Road conference June 20-22. If you are a Clean Air member and would like to attend but the registration cost is a barrier, please reach out to Bridge.

Clean Air is participating in the Justice Bloc at Buffalo Pride, which is an unofficial affiliation of organizations that pools resources for the festivities and centers a statement every year.

So far this year the bloc includes us,  1199 SEIU, Buffalo DSA, Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project, Burning Books Buffalo, Slow Roll Buffalo, SURJ Buffalo, and Workers United. The following is the 2024 statement.

By participating in this bloc, our organizations pledge to be in solidarity with LGBTQI2S+ people, including our employees and those our organizations directly serve.

We pledge to do so in our daily practices, (such as by encouraging the use of pronoun identification in meetings and email signatures), structurally (such as by rejecting funds from individuals or entities that oppose LGBTQIA2S+ civil and human rights), and through our actions (such as by being in solidarity with the LGBTQIAS2+ community during demonstrations for their, and our, civil and human rights.)

Because unions strengthen protection and support for LGBTQIA2S+ workers, we emphatically support efforts by workers to unionize their workplaces. This includes the union drive at the Pride Center – we participate in Buffalo’s 2024 Pride events in solidarity with these workers and pledge to support any community calls for action they announce.

We oppose the watering down of the political action of Pride – in particular, we oppose continuing to allow corporations and organizations which profit from and are directly inflicting harm upon our communities and of other oppressed people, including any military and police industrial complex corporations which are arming the oppression of the people of Palestine, here in Western New York, and around the world.

We are appalled by the attacks on the civil and human rights of LGBTQIA2S+ folk across the nation, in particular the attacks on our vulnerable queer and trans youth, fascist violence against drag performances, disgusting smears against LGBTQIA2S+ families and those in youth work, the attempts to police our bodily autonomy, including restrictions on health care for trans people and pregnant people, and the ongoing violence against the QTPOC community, particularly Black and Indigenous trans women.

We are alarmed by the proposals in Project 2025 and we pledge to fight back against fascism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism locally, nationally, and internationally.

We also fully support and endorse the Transgender Law Center’s Trans Agenda for Liberation. The Trans Agenda centers the lives and voices of trans people of color, who have too often had to advance our collective liberation from the margins. Trans justice is migrant justice, disability justice, racial justice, environmental justice, reproductive justice, economic justice, and gender justice.

An agenda for trans liberation is a blueprint for liberation for all.

Hands off our bodies, protect trans kids.
Oppose Christofascist white supremacist extractive capitalism and fight for our home.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation will be hosting an East Side Environmental Forum on Wednesday July 10th at 5:30 at the Frank E. Merriweather, Jr. Library at 1324 Jefferson Avenue.

Please contact Kayla Baker for more information, including about how to join online, at kayla.baker@dec.ny.gov or 716-541-9631.
Questions, or want to coordinate with Clean Air prior?
Please reach out to Cindy.

Erie County DOH and the Tool Library announced this month that they are joining forces to launch a new Lead Safe Tool Borrowing Program to support folks remediating their homes.

NYS DEC has posted the 2024 Air Monitoring Network Plan. No major changes are proposed, but it’s noteworthy that a second API T640 PM2.5 sampler is proposed for one of the Buffalo monitoring sites.

Environmental Justice, Climate Justice, and the Just Transition

• Pro Publica – How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe
• In These Times – Shawn Fain: May Day 2028 Could Transform the Labor Movement—and the World
• Inside Climate News – EPA Formally Denies Alabama’s Plan for Coal Ash Waste
• Inside Climate News – As New York’s Offshore Wind Work Begins, an Environmental Justice Community Is Waiting to See the Benefits
• Oil and Gas Watch – New air pollution monitoring rules for refineries are driving down benzene levels at plant fencelines
• Grist – A pot of unspent federal money could have prevented Jackson’s water crisis
• Grist – New documents show oil executives promoted natural gas as green — but knew it wasn’t
• Grist – Occidental Petroleum’s net-zero strategy is a ‘license to pollute,’ critics say

Digital Actions

• Clean Air’s petition to National Grid – Allow Town of Tonawanda to Develop Cherry Farm Park and Kaufmann Playground
• Clean Air’s petition to NYS DEC and EPA – We need a Clean Closure at Huntley Now!
• BLRR’s petition to Erie County Legislators – No New Erie County Jail
• No Contract, No Coffee! Pledge To Act In Solidarity With Starbucks Workers United
• Tell Governor Hochul to support the Climate Change Superfund Act and put the interests of the taxpaying public ahead of Big Oil
• Cleaner Heat, Lower Bills: Help Pass the NY HEAT Act!
• Ask Your Legislators to vote “YES” on the Packaging Reduction Act & The Bigger Better Bottle Bill!

New Resources and Other Notable Topics

• Lawyers for Good Government’s Tracker – State-level protections for Wetlands Post-Sackett 

Are you a Clean Air member or supporter who is engaged with a current campaign, and is there a training opportunity that you would like to pursue to strengthen your organizing?
Please let a staff organizer know, as we budget to support leadership development! All Clean Air members and supporters also have free access to trainings from the Advocacy Institute.

CACWNY Events

• June 2 – Buffalo Pride Parade Justice Bloc
• June 8 – drop in Narcan and Harm Reduction Training
• June 11 – Stop the Bleed Training
• June 16-17 – Buffalo Juneteenth
• July 24 – Clean Air’s next General Meeting

Community and Coalition Events

• May 30 – Catalyst Project’s Anti-Colonial Resistance from Turtle Island to Palestine to Haiti webinar
• June 1 – Witness to Injustice: Unraveling Historic Native & U.S. Relations
• June 20 – Cooperation Buffalo’s Co-op Mixer
• June 20-22 – PPG High Road Economy Conference
• July 10 – NYS DEC’s East Side Environmental Forum
• July 23 – Center for Creative Land Recycling’s From Redlining to Greenlining webinar
• Throughout May and early June – Bike Month Events, including Bike Commuter Breakfasts on Wednesdays at Trinity Church
• Little Sis Research Training Series for Organizers – June 20, July 18, September 19, October 17, November 21
• Highlander Center’s Electoral Justice “People Practicing Power” Training Series – May 30, June 27, August 29, September 26
• Rolling Deadline – Highlander Center’s Train the Trainer Program on Cultural Organizing. Dates trainings will be held – June 26 – July 3, and July 31-Aug. 7, 2024. Highlander is accepting applications until all slots are filled. This training is free including room and board, but transportation costs might be borne by applicants. If you are a Clean Air member and interested in applying, please speak to one of our organizers! Cindy attended this training last month and can offer feedback and recommendations.

Public Comment Deadlines and Hearings

• May 31 – Comments due on 130 Main Street Buffalo/North Aud Block Brownfield Program Application and Draft Workplan
• June 14 – Comments due on 273 Hickory Street Buffalo Brownfield Program Application

Also see our regularly updated list of events at bit.ly/CleanAirEvents and linktr.ee/cleanairwny

You can also click here to join the Buffalo Snow Brigade. We also suggest checking out the resources at mutualaiddisasterrelief.org as well as their new website relieftoolkit.com. If interested in joining mutual aid efforts with Clean Air, particularly in the realm of community resiliency amid climate change,
please reach out to Bridge about trainings or to Chris or Gia about our events and membership committee.

Interested in joining our events committee, mutual aid team, or want to connect with CACWNY about an emerging campaign or issue, or interested in Interested in joining our Peabody Street, Lovejoy, TESLA, Energy Democracy Alliance, or other Just Transition campaign work?

Interested in joining our
American Axle campaign or supporting our work in the Delavan-Grider neighborhood and greater East Side?

Interested in joining our Tonawanda Tomorrow or River Road campaigns, NT Cryptomining campaign, or supporting NYRenews/climate justice?

Interested in supporting Clean Air’s grassroots fundraising efforts, or know of a grant opportunity that might support our work?

Want to donate to support our work?