NATIONAL – Today the EPA announced $600 million in grants through the 2023 Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking (EJ TCGM) Program. The EJ TCGM Program was created to reduce barriers to the application process and increase the efficiency of the awards process for environmental justice grants.Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) was selected to receive a $50 million grant for its UNITE-EJ (United Network for Impact, Transformation, & Equity in Environmental Justice Communities) application and to serve as a National Grantmaker for EJ TCCGM to provide support to the Western United States (EPA Regions 8-10).
(The $600 million is only a small part of the windfall the EPA received from the Inflation Reduction Act.)
The Climate Justice Alliance explains what they want to do with the money:
In this role, UNITE-EJ will provide technical support to regional grantmakers and grassroots organizations, as well as serve as a regrantor of tens of millions of dollars in public funds to environmental justice communities over the next three years. As firm believers that those closest to the problems hold innovative and visionary solutions, we trust in the wisdom and leadership of EJ communities to effectively deploy these resources to the projects that need them most.
On the very top of the CJA webpage is a link to a section called Free Palestine.
What does Gaza have to do with "climate justice"? Nothing at all. But millions of taxpayer dollars dollars are going towards creating that link.
It gets worse. Climate Justice Alliance is actively pro-Hamas.
That webpage encourages people to download "Palestine Art for Protests." One of the posters they want people to use glorifies the October 7 massacre with a depiction of the Hamas bulldozer breaking the fence in Gaza to allow thousands of people to murder, rape and kidnap Israelis and Jews.
One of the organizations that CJA is passing millions of dollars to in the name of "environmental justice" is the NDN Collective, whose mission statement does not even mention the environment. They are explicitly antisemitic, claiming that Israel is an exercise in Jewish supremacy identical to white supremacy.
We should not treat the struggles we face against zionism, white supremacy, and imperialism as separate from one another, because they act as one to oppress and eliminate us. Only through solidarity and fighting for justice, can we create change for our people and Mother Earth. Understanding that the zionist settler project requires the elimination, removal, banishment, and identity theft of Palestinians on their homelands is the same formula that u.s. settlers use in our communities. zionism has a few founding narratives: the idea that those who develop the land own the land; claims that israel is a superior nation granted by God and ordained by a higher power to Jewish people alone; and that Palestine was barren just seven decades ago.
In fact, NDN Collective's slogan is "Defend. Develop. Decolonize." They spent money to send members to the various anti-Israel encampments nationwide.
The "decolonize" part means to dismantle the United States itself, especially the military. And they want to do it with US funding.
Another grantee from CJA ia the Fund for Frontline Power, one of whose own grantees is the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which calls President Biden a racist, Zionist imperialist. "President Biden and his administration have had the power to stop this genocide at any point in the last 9 months. Whether driven by commitments to U.S. imperialism, by his own racism or Zionism – or all three – Biden’s words and deeds aid and abet a fascist genocidal regime. "
Some of this was highlighted by U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito in a press statement two weeks ago, and the media ignored it.
I'm afraid this may be only the tip of the iceberg on how antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American organizations are leveraging US funding and grants to actively fight against what America stands for. There seems to be little accountability for the direct recipients of the Inflation Reduction Act and the EPA, and there is no oversight whatsoever as to who they give their own grants to in turn.
|
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
|
