Pictured above: U.S Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
By Meryl Phair ‘21
Environmental Editor
Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey and Carmen Yulín Cruz, former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and current Harriet L. Weissman and Paul M. Weissman distinguished fellow in leadership at Mount Holyoke College, met in conversation for a virtual webinar-style town hall on April 7 at 11:30 a.m. EDT. The town hall was the second of the “Our Voices, Our Platforms” series, created through a collaboration of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Miller Worley Center for the Environment with co-sponsored support from the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives and the Division of Student Life. The event included questions from current Mount Holyoke College students.
After introductions from Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and Professor of English Amy Martin, Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Olivia Aguilar and Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens, Cruz started the conversation.
Cruz spoke of her experience with Hurricane Maria in 2017 as the mayor of San Juan, describing it as the moment when “climate change hit the island of Puerto Rico.” Cruz described how after the hurricane, it became clear to her how climate change isn’t taken seriously. “We are talking about people’s lives,” she emphasized.
She stressed that those who are disadvantaged experience the worst impacts of climate change. Turning to Markey, Cruz asked when his turning point was regarding the impacts of climate change. Markey remembered Cruz’s remarkable leadership during the Hurricane Maria crisis. He recalled how his own visit to Puerto Rico opened his eyes to the magnitude of the damage wrought by climate change-induced disasters and the breadth of aid needed to recover.
Markey spoke about his childhood in Malden, Massachusetts, where he lived four blocks from the Malden River. His mother would often warn him not to swim in the river because of the pollution. Nearby coal companies had come to use the river as their own sewer, turning the waters black. Markey says that this story of an urban polluted environment is true for community after community across the country. He spoke about how this experience showed him the importance of engaging in actions to clean the planet because pollution will impact those who are most vulnerable.
Cruz then asked what sparked the interaction and collaboration with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the formation of the Green New Deal, noting that she would love nothing more than to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Markey explained how two weeks after Ocasio-Cortez had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2018, he called her and asked if she would like to have lunch. “We talked for over two hours about the ability to create a Green New Deal,” Markey said. He spoke about how the formation of the Green New Deal was so much more than infrastructure legislation but inspired the creation of a political movement of young people. “What we were attempting to create was a political climate crisis army that would arrive for the 2020 elections,” Markey said. The Green New Deal has laid much of the groundwork for Biden’s current infrastructure plans, and Markey considers it one of the most successful political movements in American history.
Cruz posed the question of what environmental justice really means, to which Markey used the example of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a community with a large immigrant population. The city, located near Boston Logan International Airport, stores all the oil used by Massachusetts. When COVID-19 hit, Chelsea was one of the most impacted communities within the United States because the respiratory illness reacted with underlying issues within the community, such as asthma, created by environmental conditions. Markey spoke to the essential need for funding from the Green New Deal to focus on those who have borne the brunt of pollution from the fossil fuel industry’s strategies over the last century. “That means putting front-line communities at the front of the line for the new jobs,” Markey said.
Cruz then turned questions over to Mount Holyoke students. Robin Kerr ’21 posed a question about how the Green New Deal was centering uplifting Indigenous voices. Hareem Khan ’20 asked how the Green New Deal addresses food justice. Isabel Wholin ’21 asked about what role college and university campuses play in reaching the Green New Deal’s carbon neutrality goals.
Cruz concluded with a note for Mount Holyoke students that what happens on Mount Holyoke’s campus reverberates everywhere.