Green New Deal for Public Schools

Floor Speech

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Ms. BUSH. Madam Speaker, St. Louis and I rise today because the Green New Deal cannot wait, and my brother, Representative Bowman, understands that. I thank him for pushing this, and I thank him for speaking up and speaking out. It is not an easy place to speak out from. Especially as Black Americans in this country, it is not usually one of the things that people think that the Black community will speak out about, but this is our work to speak out about it to make sure that our communities are made whole.

Yes, today is my 45th birthday. Birthdays are both a time of celebration and a time of reflection.

Today, there are 11 more 90-degree days per year in St. Louis than the year that I was born. I am thinking about that St. Louis heat, the heat under which Michael Brown Jr.'s body lay for more than 4\1/2\ hours on the hot asphalt in August of 2014.

I am wondering how many more 90-degree days we will have when I turn 50.

What about when I turn 55?

When I turn 60?

I am wondering how many more times Black bodies will lie dead in the summer heat on that asphalt from the environmental injustice of police murder. Yes, that is an environmental injustice.

I am thinking about how in the decade I was born the city of St. Louis pledged to prioritize elimination of lead pipes. But today Black children in the city of St. Louis are 2.4 times more likely than White children to test positive for lead in their blood. For my entire lifetime, we have been promised that this problem would be fixed. But today it still persists.

I am thinking about what the world will look like when my son and my daughter turn 45. I am thinking about the opportunity we have right now to deliver them a better world. I am thinking about how blessed I am to be in a position to do something about it.

Earlier this year, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I introduced the Green New Deal for Cities Act to fund the environmental justice work of a Green New Deal in every community. Our bill would create good paying jobs in our communities to solve the environmental racism that we face each and every day. It will clean up our polluted creeks and our vacant lots. Many don't know that when you drive in some communities, Madam Speaker, where it looks like the community doesn't care, sometimes it is not that the community doesn't care, sometimes it is because the ground is contaminated in our Black and in our Brown communities that those lots sit there vacant. Those lots sit there like they are unattended to, but there is more to the story, and financially that is the issue.

When we look at cleaning up our polluted creeks and our vacant lots-- every move further we have to make sure that we replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Why are we still having that conversation?

I don't want my 46th birthday to come next year and our communities are still waiting for the people with the power of the pen and the people with the power of the purse to deliver the lifesaving changes that the people deserve. We need a Green New Deal.

For my birthday, please join me in fighting for one everywhere.

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