About 100 people came to McKeesport’s Renzie Park for an environmental justice candidate forum Wednesday night and heard remedies for their communities from candidates running for state representative to president in next week’s general election.
Six of those candidates – including Jill Stein, who is trying a third time as a third-party candidate “to turn the White House into a Green House” – answered prepared questions by forum organizers and co-sponsors, as well as some from the audience, on a range of topics. That included explaining their solutions to air and water pollution issues to holding companies accountable and paying reparations to damaged communities to new environmental policies and regulations to improve cleanup efforts.
Forum organizers divided the candidates into two groups: John Ritter, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s 25th Legislative District, current U.S. Rep. Summer Lee of the U.S. 12th District, with Theron Gilliland Jr. standing in for Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Leila Hazou; and then Democrat state treasurer candidate Erin McClelland, Green Party state attorney general candidate Richard Weiss and Stein.
More than 20 groups sponsored the forum, including 412 Justice, Take Action Advocacy Group, West End P.O.W.E.R., Clean Air Action, Clean Water Action, and Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light.
Lee, D-Swissvale, who is in her first term, said more people need to know about the Green New Deal and understand it. “We can have good jobs and environmental justice at the same time,” she said. She pointed to the progress already made in improving clean air and water in her district’s communities, as well as removing lead pipes.
That bill, introduced in 2019, included policies that addressed climate change and investment in renewable energy. It was blocked in the U.S. Senate. It was reintroduced in the House again last year by the original co-sponsors, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, but has not been passed. The Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included some federal investment to push back against climate change.
Gilliland, who is the state Green Party co-chair for Allegheny County, said the Green New Deal brought many other problems together with environmental concerns, including housing and social justice. “We need to address all these issues together,” he said.
Lee said economic and political forces continue to hit poor and Black and brown communities “with a 1-2 punch.” “They don’t move with urgency. Legislation needs to be focused on these folks,” she said.
She said a big win for her district was pushing against fracking on the U.S. Steel Edgar Thomson site, something that occurred because advocacy groups working with elected officials like her made that happen.
Much more remains to be done, Lee said, including resolving the state Department of Environmental Protection delays in addressing complaints made against the oil and gas industry that left residents exposed to polluted water. Much of that emerged from a 2020 grand jury report when Gov. Josh Shapiro was attorney general. Although some gains have been made in air quality, health issues remain in affected communities.
“We will speak truth to power and tell U.S. Steel or anyone else what we need,” Lee said. “We set a standard for environmental justice.”
Although fracking has been portrayed in political campaigns as a needed revenue producer for Pennsylvania, Lee said when she and her team canvassed communities this election season, residents tell them they don’t want it. And she believes transitioning to clean and renewable energy sources instead will result in a better position for Pennsylvania in the future.
It will take every level of government, from local to state to federal, to make water and air quality better for Western Pennsylvania communities by enforcing and improving regulations. It’s no coincidence, she said, that companies historically built plants in low-income and minority communities.
“We can’t let industry run unfettered in our communities,” Lee said. “We have to continue on this path [to improve air and water quality].”
Audience questions for the first group asked where they stood on Project 2025’s proposal to eliminate the federal Environmental Protection Agency, single-payer health care, women’s health and maternal care, school choice and vouchers.
Lee’s commitment to continuing to fight for single-payer health care drew the largest applause from the group.
Gilliland said the Green Party believes that the larger health care issue is the need to support families.
The crowd dwindled as the second group took the stage, with Stein arriving late for the event.
McClelland contrasted herself with current Republican treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is her opponent in the Nov. 5 election, starting with “the fact that climate change exists.” She also wants the state to invest in company stocks that include environmental social and governance factors or ratings. The latter would be environmentally sound but also yield good returns for taxpayers, the candidate said.
Weiss would use his power as attorney general to sue companies for uncapped fracking wells and not cleaning up damage left behind by the process. He said his office “would ensure they are operating properly and protecting the environment.” That includes U.S. Steel and its Clairton Coke Works, as well as any successor companies taking over that company and its property.
McClelland said she had been trained by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that “corporations should do no harm to communities.” That means “make them own up to what they do and make reparations to the community.”
She said Garrity wouldn’t participate in a Biden program through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to launch community banks and minority deposit institutions. But she would. “We need to start banks in our communities so residents can buy a home, buy a car and pay for an education,” McClelland said.
Housing needs and problems can be addressed by the attorney general’s office, Weiss said, with its more than 1,000 lawyers and the public defenders in the state helping working people by preventing evictions and holding landlords accountable for their properties’ conditions.
A move to renewable energy instead of relying on fossil fuels will create more jobs, the Green Party candidate added, and that will in turn let communities prosper. “Renewable energy will create more jobs than fossil fuels, and it doesn’t cause cancer,” he said.
Both McClelland and Weiss said stronger environmental laws and policies have to happen.
When Stein arrived, a member of the audience asked her to respond to the statement that a vote for her was a vote for Trump.
“A vote for the Stein-[Rudolph “Butch ]Ware campaign is a vote for the Stein-Ware campaign,” she responded. “Politicians do not own our votes. They have to earn our votes.”
She asked the crowd to beware of “what they tell you. People have the power, and they have to use it.”
Both she and Weiss stressed to the crowd, which dwindled in number by the end of the two-plus hours it ran, that the Green Party does not accept donations from companies or political action committees, just individual contributions to emphasize “people over profits.” Regulatory agencies at all levels need “to work for us and not by donors to political campaigns.”
While it would “take a miracle to turn that White House to a Green [Party] House on Nov. 5,” Stein said, she reminded the audience that the president has a bully pulpit that can work for the people. Stein said the Inflation Recovery Act, for example, could have done more for climate justice and should be revisited to provide funding to communities with pollution issues that need it the most.
She said she “will declare a climate emergency” day one in office.
In her questions Stein said much more can be done to provide adequate housing for communities of color, as well as initiatives to create new jobs through a better Green New Deal. “We have a housing emergency along with a climate emergency as well as racial justice amid white supremacy,” she continued. Poor people spend 50% of their income right now on housing costs, for example, and at the same time deal with food deserts, statements that drew applause from the audience.
She said that although Democrats have been a friend to communities of color, they have not done enough. She called for reparations to them and people descended from slaves, free public education, and cancellation of student debt. Other Green Party platform items she cited include a $25 per hour minimum wage and equitable funding of schools at the federal level “so your education does not depend on the ZIP code and the property tax and the property values.”
In her closing remarks, Stein said this election is a reckoning. “The American people don’t buy what has been rammed down their throats and haven’t for some time,” she said.
“We can stand up,” she said, quoting Frederick Douglass and Alice Walker. “We have the power.”
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.