Green New Deal for Public Schools

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDENAS. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Bowman for reserving the time on the floor of the House of Representatives so that we can speak the truth about what too many families and too many people--mostly poor people--have to endure, not only in America but around the world.

I was born and raised in the northeast San Fernando Valley, and I am very, very proud to say, in the Senate I have a colleague who grew up in Pacoima just like I did. His parents were immigrants of Mexico, and so were mine. We went to the same elementary school and the same high school, but yet at the same time we ended up being on the city council together for some years, he as a council president and I as a new member.

He said to me: Tony, what committee do you want to chair?

I said: I want to chair the committee that oversees the airport, the ports and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

At that time the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was the largest water and power district in America.

Why did I want to be on those committees?

Because those three entities are spewing more into our atmosphere than any other organizations in Los Angeles. It gave me the opportunity to live my values, to be able to grow up in a poor community, yes, in the hood, in the northeast San Fernando Valley, on that side of town where there are more dumpsites in that part of L.A. County--a county of 10 million people--but they have concentrated more dumpsites in my backyard than any other place in that county.

For Alex Padilla, our families, and me, we had to endure that for generations. But here Alex is, a city council member, the president of the council, choosing to put me as the chairman of that committee. And while I was on that committee, I forced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to finally clean up their act.

Believe it or not, the progressive Los Angeles Department of Water and Power belongs to the city of Los Angeles, the people of Los Angeles. We were fooled into believing that we are a progressive community and that we would not be spewing out dirty fossil fuels to create the electricity that we depend on every day. But we did, Madam Speaker.

Approximately 60 percent of all of the energy that was being produced for our city and for our community was coming from fossil fuels. Under the presidency of President Alex Padilla,--who is now our United States Senator from California--he gave me the mantle of being the chairman of that committee, we forced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to cut their emissions in half, to literally divest themselves of dirty coal plants, and to finally clean up our act.

I am very, very proud to say that as the first council member to represent that community to be born and raised in Pacoima, I was the first council member to tell a company that owned a private dumpsite when they wanted to expand it again and again and again, I was the first council member to say: No, you are not.

We denied them their expansion. That was the first time it had ever happened.

Again, Madam Speaker, for far too long we were being represented by people who didn't realize or understand what it is like to grow up in a community where environmental injustice prevails and proliferates. We suffer from asthma rates that other communities don't suffer. Our children do. Our families do. We suffer from groundwater that is more contaminated than any other place in America.

We finally brought the grants from Washington, from city hall, and from Sacramento, our State capital, to clean up our act and to clean up our groundwater.

Those are the kinds of things that we are doing in Congress. Those are the kinds of things that the Green New Deal has brought to light where before only certain people experienced it and only certain people cared.

Now, today, we are talking about something that I am very proud of. I am very proud to be one of the original cosponsors of the Green New Deal in this Congress, but equally proud, with my colleague Congressman Bowman, to be an original cosponsor of the Green New Deal for Public Schools Act. These are the kinds of investments that we need to make as Congress.

Equally important, we need to make sure that we continue to remind every single person that we are in this together. As go our communities, as goes our country, and as goes the environment, so does the planet. Even though some billionaires are flying up into the sky and getting into outer space, this is our planet, Madam Speaker. We cannot escape it.

Why try to escape it?

Why not just look in the mirror and see what we all can do about it?

That is the responsible thing to do. That is something that we can and should be proud of.

So I stand here today to encourage every single one of us to help clean up our act and to, once again, thank my colleague, Congressman Bowman, for inviting me and the rest of us to speak the truth on this floor today about how important it is that we have a Green New Deal for all.

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