Every week at All Saints Church we put our faith into action. This week we have two actions.

In one, we urge our members of Congress to support the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act.

At All Saints and within the Episcopal Church, we are taught to love our neighbors and care for God’s creation. Unfortunately, not all people are able to care for or have a healthy environment. Communities of color, low-income communities, and tribal communities are less likely to have access to clean air, water, and land. The Episcopal Church opposes environmental racism and calls on us to seek environmental justice for communities that are facing the burden of climate change, pollution, and land loss, while also lacking opportunities to seek sustainable solutions to these problems.

The A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act (H.R.1705/S.919) seeks to help these communities directly, while guiding the United States into a more sustainable future. This bicameral bill was reintroduced in March and would:

• Amend current laws to prohibit discrimination from federal agencies and protect environmental justice communities against harmful federal actions
• Develop annual reports on the disproportionate harm to human and environmental health in environmental justice communities
• Strengthen community protections under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and consider the cumulative impacts and violations of permitting decisions
• Establish environmental justice grant programs
• Create streams of communication between the federal government and environmental justice communities
• Encourage a just clean energy transition

We are urging our members of Congress to support the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act!

We are also asking our members to stop an act of environmental injustice by supporting the Save Oak Flat from Foreign Mining Act (H.R.1351). Oak Flat is an irreplaceable natural area and site sacred to the Apache Nation in Central Arizona that will imminently be turned over to a multinational corporation to be turned into a gigantic copper mine nearly 2 miles wide. The copper will be sold to other countries, not in the U.S., and the mine will use huge amounts of water in an already drought-stricken landscape. This beautiful, sacred place, home to many wildlife and plant species as well as Indigenous burial and artifact sites, will be lost forever. This mining company has already destroyed a 46,000-year-old Indigenous site in Australia in 2020. This is an unconscionable act of predation and needs to be stopped.

Options to Take Action:

1. Sign a letter at the Action Table on Sunday.
2. Download, sign and mail an action letter to your members of Congress.
   Letter for California Residents        Letter for Residents of Other States
   
3. Go to the Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) and participate in the action there.

++++++++++

If you ever need to look up your member of the U.S. House of Representatives or your U.S. Senators check here: www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.

To find contact information for your California State Senator or California State Assemblymember check here: www.senate.ca.gov and www.assembly.ca.gov.