By: Gustavo Andrade, Organizing Director After the horrific display of violence and hatred in Washington, DC last week, we must unite to uphold our most basic common values of democracy and safety for all. We fully support the bi-partisan efforts to impeach, convict and remove this president. There is no place for white nationalism in a just society, no “middle ground” between fascism and fairness and no excuses for violence and murder. We must focus on holding all those involved in the failed insurrection fully accountable, while also moving forward

By Mihir Vohra, Research Associate For over 40 years, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), located on Navajo nation land near Page, AZ, was the largest coal plant in the American West. The NGS and the coal mine that fed it shut down in 2019, and on December 18th, 2020 its three smokestacks were finally demolished. Air pollution from coal plants is associated with higher risks for asthma, cancer, heart and lung diseases, and neurological dysfunction. The burden of these facilities disproportionately affects poor and minority communities. A 2012 report from

By: Zack Schiffer, Organizing Intern It has been one week since I began my community organizing internship with CHEJ. Many pride CHEJ on its ability to organize ordinary citizens and lead them towards accomplishing extraordinary things, but until spending a week with this dynamic team, I did not truly appreciate the level of dedication and energy that underlies this organization. On my second day, I attended a virtual meeting where environmental activist Pam Kingfisher spoke about organizing against a poultry feeding operation in Delaware County, Oklahoma. In many ways, Kingfisher became

By: Julia Weil, Organizing Intern Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have increasingly seen many social, economic, and environmental injustices in our society highlighted. One injustice that encapsulates all three is being demonstrated by the increasing pattern of oil and gas companies, struggling as the demand for their product decreases, paying out their executives just before filing for bankruptcy, making the rich richer, and exposing at-risk populations to higher quantities of dangerous chemicals than ever.  This practice of paying executives vast sums of money before going bankrupt is known as a

By: Shaina Smith, Organizing Intern The relationship between Native Americans and the United States has always involved genocide and theft. An estimated 5 to 15 million indigenous people already inhabited the land when European settlers first discovered America. By the late 1800s, only 237 thousand people remained. During this period of colonization, the United States took more than 1.5 billion acres of land from Native Americans. To force people onto land and then to contaminate the air, soil, and water of that land is environmental genocide. Environmental genocide by the