04.24.20

Next Week’s Livestream Schedule: Environmental Justice and Economic Inequality on Tuesday, COVID-19 Response in U.S. Territories on Wednesday

Washington, D.C. – The House Natural Resources Committee is holding two livestreamed roundtables next week with members of Congress and expert witnesses.

Tuesday, April 28

Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Reps. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) and Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) are holding a livestreamed roundtable discussion this Tuesday, April 28, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time on how the coronavirus has exacerbated longstanding environmental and economic inequalities in American society and how Congress should respond.

Reps. Grijalva and McEachin coauthored the Environmental Justice for All Act, which they introduced in February following an unprecedented public outreach and engagement effort with historically marginalized stakeholders. You can learn more about the bill and their stakeholder process at https://bit.ly/3eE8atm. They also led a letter with 41 House Democratic colleagues on March 26 urging House and Senate leaders to account for underlying health and economic disparities across the country in crafting future COVID-19 response bills.

Rep. Haaland is Vice Chair of the Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Lowenthal chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, which oversees fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and waters, among other issues important to environmental justice communities. Both are original cosponsors of the Environmental Justice for All Act.

Title: Environmental Justice Community Impacts From the Coronavirus Health and Economic Crises

When: 1:00 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, April 28

Watch Live: https://bit.ly/2ztH4Fn (Facebook) or https://youtu.be/Ws2BjA6JG-c (YouTube)

Speakers

  • Chair Grijalva
  • Rep. McEachin
  • Rep. Haaland
  • Rep. Lowenthal
  • Reverend F. Wayne Henley
    Cedar Grove Baptist Church, Charles City, Va.
  • Dr. Francesca Dominici
    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
  • Michele Roberts
    Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform
  • Matt Bruenig
    People’s Policy Project
  • Sylvia Betancourt
    Long Beach Alliance for Children With Asthma
  • Dr. Cecilia Martinez
    Center for Earth, Energy & Democracy

Wednesday, April 29

Chair Grijalva and Reps. Gregorio Sablan (D-CNMI) and Michael San Nicolas (D-Guam) are holding a livestreamed roundtable discussion this Wednesday, April 29, on how Congress can address serious problems with the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 in Puerto Rico, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.

Sablan is Vice Chair for Insular Affairs.

Grijalva and Sablan wrote to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on April 1 seeking more information on the administration’s COVID-19 response plans in U.S. territories, where weak economies and recent natural disasters have put hundreds of thousands of Americans at particular risk. The lawmakers published a March 27 op-ed in El Nuevo Dia calling for a more concerted federal coronavirus response for U.S. territories and insular areas. In that piece, available at https://bit.ly/39mimTx, the authors wrote:

The pandemic has not just highlighted the cracks in what we think of as everyday life. It’s put a bright spotlight on many communities we’ve ignored, neglected and conveniently forgotten about. Allowing millions of Americans across the country to live in poverty, with substandard housing and medical care, was always a policy choice, not an inevitable economic necessity, and the cost of that choice in human lives is now going up every day.

Title: Federal Coronavirus Response in U.S. Territories

When: 6:00 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, April 29

Watch Live: https://bit.ly/2KxXRcw (Facebook) or https://youtu.be/-vKeJ08ySDE (YouTube)

Speakers

  • Chair Grijalva
  • Rep. Sablan
  • Rep. San Nicolas
  • Ms. Esther L. Muna
    Chief Executive Officer, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Healthcare Corporation

  • Dr. Thomas Shieh
    MD, Board Certified Fellow, Guam’s Shieh Clinic
  • Mr. Federico de Jesús
    Senior Policy Advisor, Power for Puerto Rico
  • Ms. Justa Encarnacion
    Commissioner, U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Health
  • Ms. Sandra King Young
    Medicaid Director, Government of American Samoa

Press Contact

Media Contacts: Adam Sarvana

(202) 225-6065 or (202) 578-6626 mobile