Moms Clean Air Force staff and members make news throughout the country!
MOMS IN THE HOUSE (OF REPRESENTATIVES)
When the U.S. House of Representatives asked, “can I get a witness?” to detail the harm that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will inflict on our children with its regulatory rollbacks, Moms Clean Air Force National Field Director Heather McTeer Toney didn’t hesitate to sign up. As part of a two-day series of hearings on the impact of Trump administration policies on kids (“A Threat to America’s Children,” organized by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform), Heather gave testimony on the Administration’s ill-conceived plan to scrap the legal foundation of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (or MATS). Heather reminded us that the Trump administration’s case against these life-saving standards was “faulty and disingenuous at best then [in 2018, when the rollback was announced], and it remains so now.” Industry outlets Energy & Environment Daily, Inside EPA [article behind a pay-wall], and the magazine American Prospect quoted Heather’s testimony on the Hill.
Moms Clean Air Force is cited in a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, also about the Trump Administration’s dozens of regulatory attacks on children: “Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration’s Assault on Science Is Harming Children’s Health.”
MOMS SHOW SOLIDARITY IN HOUSTON AND IOWA
Texas Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, Catherine Flowers, teamed up with several Houston-area partners including Environment Texas and more than thirty colleagues from across the country as part of a press conference to spotlight a new report showing the extent to which there is “Trouble in the Air” in many of our cities. As Catherine said, “As a mother of an asthmatic son raised in Houston, I know firsthand that he suffers most on high pollution days. But my son is not alone. There are thousands of children suffering from asthma in Houston. It’s why we need to strengthen, not weaken, our clean air protections.” Houston Public Media and local NBC affiliate KPRC in Houston [skip to minute 17:23] were on the scene reporting.
Two days before the Iowa Caucuses, our Moms Clean Air Force and Ecomadres state chapters teamed up in Des Moines to take part in one of the state’s largest climate rallies. A few reporters on the scene, including the Indianola Independent and Telemundo, took note of our large contingent. The latter’s footage showed our members proudly carrying signs and drumming as they marched.
MOMS SHARE WHY CARING FOR CLIMATE ISN’T A “WHITE THING”
Against the backdrop of Black History Month, Moms Clean Air Force’s Heather McTeer Toney has been quoted in a number of articles on environmental justice. Correspondent Stacy Brown of the NNPA – an association of more than 200 African American-owned community newspapers from around the United States – interviewed Heather about the need for African-Americans, especially Southerners, to engage in climate justice conversations globally: “Climate action is the social justice movement of our time. African-Americans should demand action from state, local, and federal leaders on climate action now,” Heather said.
Meanwhile, Heather McTeer Toney’s 2019 New York Times op-ed, “Black Women Are Leaders in the Climate Movement,” is back in the news – this time, in an Essence Magazine essay: “‘Black women are everyday environmentalists; we just don’t get the headlines too often,’ wrote Heather McTeer Toney, a sentiment echoed by Jamaican-born sociologist Dorceta E. Taylor Taylor: “If you look at the South Side of Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York City, you see a lot of Black and Brown women who are fiercely fighting, educating themselves and their community in tremendous ways, and empowering the youth, all without a lot of resources, … African-Americans have been doing environmental justice for a long time. We just didn’t call it that.’”
In a radio interview with KCSB-FM (Santa Barbara, California’s 91.9 FM), Heather reinforces this message as she shares her reverence for many elders who — in many cases — have been in this arena fighting for longer than she’s been alive. As a mother and a woman of color, Heather also shares what compels her to be a climate activist and what we can all do to make a difference.
In Heather’s interview with Inflection Point podcast host Lauren Schiller, she shares how her two terms as the first African-American, first female, and youngest mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, enable her to be an even more effective activist.
MOMS SOUND OFF ON METHANE
Member Emily Muller from Media, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia), had a letter to her local Delaware County Daily Times editor published in which she thanks Governor Tom Wolf for proposing a rule to reduce methane emissions from the state’s oil and gas operations. Emily doesn’t mince words in saying that the state needs to rein in this expanding industry in order “to protect our children, which is paramount.”
MOMS ‘COMMUNE FOR CLIMATE’ IN WEST VIRGINIA
West Virginia newspaper My Buckhannon profiled Leah Barbor, Moms Clean Air Force’s organizer in the state, around her first-ever “Communing for Climate” gathering. Leah encouraged new members to find connections between daily life and climate impacts and then take action with op-eds, letters to the editor, and phone calls to elected officials: “They [elected officials] want to hear from us…when someone like Senator Joe Manchin does something responsible with respect to climate action, we can thank him as a group – put a five-minute call into his office and commend him for that action…[At the same time], we need to hold them responsible when decisions are working against our issues.”
MOMS CONFRONT TOXIC CHEMICIALS
Ronnie Citron-Fink, Editorial Director for Moms Clean Air Force, spoke about toxic chemicals in personal care products to a West Hartford, CT, audience. Her book, “True Roots: What Quitting Hair Dye Taught Me About Health and Beauty,” shares her journey to find answers about the risks associated with hair dye. Local outlet We-Ha.com praised the book “because it has opened eyes to the potential dangers of hair dyes, and helps put a spotlight on the safer products available to women and men who dye, not to mention the people who work in the hair and beauty industry.”
TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE: IT’S BEYOND TIME FOR CLIMATE SAFETY