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Support the Green New Deal

This is how "Winning on Equity" happens!

Last Thursday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey demonstrated the meaning of radical imagination by putting forward a legislative framework to confront climate change and uplift the lives and well-being of Indigenous communities and communities on the front lines of climate threats across the nation. Their proposed Green New Deal (GND) builds on work many of you have led over the last decade: it confronts the threats of climate change by proposing a transition from fossil fuels while investing in the communities and the 100 million economically insecure people in America that have borne the worst of our carbon-based economy.

Let's show Congress that the Green New Deal has our support. Transformative solidarity is the prerequisite to realizing the promise of the Green New Deal vision.

Contact your congressional leaders and tell them to cosponsor the Green New Deal framework and move it forward into bold legislation.

Highlights of the Green New Deal include:

  • Universal Access to Clean Water and Transportation: The GND prioritizes investment in green infrastructure including drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure that can ensure universal access to clean water for the 77 million people across the U.S. who lack access to safe and affordable drinking water. It would dismantle fossil fuel infrastructure to protect our natural water systems, while developing renewable energy sources. It would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and would repair and improve our transportation, energy, housing, and other infrastructure.
  • A Federal Job Guarantee in the Green Economy: Amid growing economic insecurity and persistent racial economic inequity, a federal job guarantee can be a cornerstone for an inclusive, thriving, and sustainable 21st century American economy. By ensuring that every person who wants to work has access to a quality job, a job guarantee would eliminate involuntary unemployment, decrease poverty, and raise the floor on low-wage work while building stronger, more climate-friendly communities. The GND explicitly addresses historic, social, economic, racial, and gender-based injustices and includes a federal job guarantee as well as additional policies that ensure economic security and build wealth and ownership at the community level.

Climate change and growing inequality are among the greatest threats to our nation. As the nation's population becomes majority people of color, the Green New Deal can enable us to become a just, fair, and sustainable society where all — including working-class communities and communities of color long locked out of opportunity — can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

Tell your congressional representatives to support the Green New Deal by cosponsoring the bill, moving forward committee hearings, and shaping bold legislation.

In solidarity,

Michael McAfee, PolicyLink

Good Food Here Store Owner Guide

Overview

An initiative of the Ohio Department of Health, Creating Healthy Communities (CHC) is committed to preventing and reducing chronic disease statewide. Through cross-sector collaboration, CHC activates communities to improve access to and affordability of healthy food, increase opportunities for physical activity, and assure tobacco-free living where Ohioans live, work and play. By implementing sustainable evidence-based strategies, CHC is creating a culture of health. Learn more about their work here.

This guide offers tools for healthy food retail store owners sell healthy foods at their store.

Check out these other resources produced by the Creating Healthy Communities Program:

Good Food Here Coordinator Guide

Overview

An initiative of the Ohio Department of Health, Creating Healthy Communities (CHC) is committed to preventing and reducing chronic disease statewide. Through cross-sector collaboration, CHC activates communities to improve access to and affordability of healthy food, increase opportunities for physical activity, and assure tobacco-free living where Ohioans live, work and play. By implementing sustainable evidence-based strategies, CHC is creating a culture of health. Learn more about their work here.

This guide helps healthy food retail project coordinators with tools to provide technical assistance and resources to help store owners sell healthy foods.

Check out these other resources produced by the Creating Healthy Communities Program:

VIDEO: Creating Healthy Communities Program's Good Food Here Initiative

Overview

An initiative of the Ohio Department of Health, Creating Healthy Communities (CHC) is committed to preventing and reducing chronic disease statewide. Through cross-sector collaboration, CHC activates communities to improve access to and affordability of healthy food, increase opportunities for physical activity, and assure tobacco-free living where Ohioans live, work and play. By implementing sustainable evidence-based strategies, CHC is creating a culture of health. Learn more about their work here and through this video.

Check out these other resources produced by the Creating Healthy Communities Program:

Innovations among Food Banks in the United States

Overview

This new report by Reinvestment Fund and Bank of America looks at how food banks are adopting a variety of approaches within each of these categories to feed the hungry and permanently end food insecurity.

Video: Winfield Save-A-Lot

Overview

Check out this video about Reinvestment Fund's work to finance the fit out and equipping of a new 15,000 square foot Save-A-Lot grocery store in Winfield, KS. A veteran-owned and operated business, the store is located in a USDA food desert where the previous grocery store closed in 2013. The store will create 30 jobs and serve residents of a low-income community (23% poverty rate).

Honor Capital, a veteran-owned business with a dual mission to employ returning veterans and to alleviate food desert communities, will operate the Save-A-Lot. The store will be managed by Matt Eisenbach, a Naval Academy graduate who served 6 years of active duty. The store will seek to hire local veterans to fill the new jobs it is creating.

The Save-A-Lot will offer a full array of fresh produce and fresh cut meat in addition to typical grocery departments (dry goods, dairy and frozen). Located in a USDA food desert, the store is on the northeast side of Winfield, more than two miles from the only other food retailers in the city, a Super Walmart and a Dillions located adjacent to each other. No other stores are located within 10 miles.

Honor Capital Save-A-Lot (full profile: reinvestment.com/success-story/honor-capital-save-a-lot/)

Eight Black Women Mayors Join First-of-Its-Kind Network from PolicyLink and ESSENCE

Featured at the ESSENCE-PolicyLink Women Mayors Roundtable on January 29 are Mayors: LaToya Cantrell, New Orleans, LA; Sharon Weston Broome, Baton Rouge, LA; Catherine Pugh, Baltimore, MD; London Breed, San Francisco, CA; and Karen Weaver, Flint, MI (Photo Credit: Arthur Walton)

 

The political power of Black women has been on full display, particularly in America’s cities where a growing number of Black women have taken over as chief policymaker.

PolicyLink and ESSENCE recentley announced the ESSENCE-PolicyLink Mayors Roundtable -- a network for Black women mayors to exchange ideas, share best practices, develop strategies to create equitable cities, and shine a spotlight on their work and communities. Participating mayors include: Catherine Pugh, Baltimore, MD; Sharon Weston Broome, Baton Rouge,LA; Vi Lyles, Charlotte, NC; Karen Weaver, Flint, MI; LaToya Cantrell, New Orleans, LA; London Breed, San Francisco, CA; Muriel Bowser, Washington, DC; and Lovely Warren, Rochester, NY.

The network kicked off last Friday in Washington D.C., following the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting, and will close July 4-7, 2019 during the ESSENCE Fest in New Orleans. In the interim, the mayors will participate in monthly virtual roundtables on topics related to policy and leadership hosted by the PolicyLink All-In Cities Initiative. ESSENCE will also be publishing a series of articles and videos profiling the mayors and highlighting the work that they are championing.

Read more about the event and watch the short video clip on Essense to learn more.

January 2014

How a Group of Philanthropists Broke the Mold and Unlocked the Power of Collaboration

Overview

Winter 2014 edition of the National Civic Review features Judith Bell and Larry Cohen discussing the Convergence Partnership’s approach to place-based environmental and policy change, using the power of collaboration to create a “field of fields.”

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