For my Capstone Project I chose to focus on the intersectionality between environmental policy and other policy issues like: education, health care, and environmental justice.
I wanted to gain a better understanding of how organizations work to include marginalized voices in the policy making and community building processes, so I talked to Annie Regan, Senior Program Manager at PennFuture and ReImagine Appalachia’s Campaign Coordinator. Our conversation includes discussion about her work at ReImagine Appalachia, potential environmental policies that could help underserved communities, how Annie approaches working with environmental justice communities, and some of the barriers to entry that prevent people from participating in the policy-making process. Enjoy!
Interview with Annie Regan, Transcript
Edited and Produced by Karinna Papke
Thu, 4/21 8:27PM • 34:07
SUMMARY KEYWORDS: community, Appalachia, environmental justice communities, advocacy, money, coalition, federal funding, blueprint, Pittsburgh, Reimagine Appalachia, public transportation, community leaders, industries, folks, vote, poor air quality
Karinna Papke: I would just love to first hear a little bit more about the work you do as the campaign coordinator of ReImagine Appalachia and about the organization’s mission and work more generally.
Annie Regan: I’m employed with PennFuture. I wear my PennFuture hat, which is a statewide environmental group. And of course, you talked to Rob, so he probably gave you a good summation of the work that we do there. And we do a lot of state work at PennFuture. And we’re also part of a climate action campaign that works on all things federal. I am the state lead for Pennsylvania for the climate action campaign. We were a part of the original groups forming ReImagine Appalachia; that was also federally focused. So, I’m kind of working on those two campaigns under the umbrella of PennFuture, and so ReImagine Appalachia started basically. Well, actually, it was inspired by a more local model happening in western Pennsylvania with ReImagine Beaver County. Beaver County, of course, is about 40 minutes north of Pittsburgh, the county right above it. And that group formed because of the shell petrochemical facility coming into the region. And there were a lot of concerned citizens who did not want to have a huge petrochemical facility in their neighborhood in their community, understandably so. And so, they raised awareness. And there was already an environmental group established in that community called the Beaver County Marcellus Shale Awareness Group. They go by BC Mac. But they kind of formed to educate the community and come together to put a visioning book to see what alternatives they could have, instead of conventional drilling and gas, businesses and industries coming into the community, something that could serve as an alternative to petrochemical facilities, that sort of thing. And so, they held it from visioning sessions. And they put together this booklet and send it to their Economic Development Council. And that is something that is really needed a lot because we would have state legislators call me at PennFuture, saying, I want to vote no on this bill that says we can’t give tax incentives to Shell petrochemical facilities. But I can’t vote no, and just turn down all these potential jobs. I need to give to my constituents, I need to show them why I’m voting no, and that there’s an alternative to this. He’s like, I can’t just vote no on jobs, I need something else. Environmental groups historically, I feel like, are good at saying things that we don’t want. And the things that we do want, it’s historically been like, well, the technology is not there yet, or we’re still like five years down the road, it will be there. And we kind of got impatient with that rhetoric. And so different policy think-tanks, one from Pennsylvania, one from Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky, each has their own sister think-tank institution, they came together and were like, we’re going to create a policy blueprint that serves as a way forward that counters the oil and gas industry that have historically come to Appalachia and extracted the resources. And this upper 1% The CEOs are the ones making bank and the workers are left behind and exploited. Our land is ruined. Appalachia is still one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the United States. We’ve been a part of a boom-and-bust economy. We rely on our economy, and the economy is not diversified. We relied heavily on coal and steel and when those industries went away, they left us behind and we didn’t have any skills or anything else. I mean, Pittsburgh has seen it with the steel industry withering away in the 80s. And coal, obviously there’s going to be some shutdowns of some coal powered, shuttered coal power plants. And so, people are sensitive to that. A lot of environmentalists also have kind of demonized workers when it’s not the workers fault for just trying to feed their families. And so, this coalition is talking about how it’s the CEOs of these companies making the decisions and our policymakers who are providing subsidies for these industries and how we need to diversify our economy. We need to provide apprenticeships for workers, we need to provide community labor standards for when these developments happen in the community. And we need to make sure groups have the right to unionize so that they’re paid well, and they can feed their families, and that these industries don’t harm our environment and our health. So, we created this blueprint. And this was created before we knew if Trump or Biden was going to be the president, so it could go it could have gone either way. And but either way, we knew there was going to be federal funding available. And we wanted to make sure Appalachia got its fair share. So we created this blueprint. Um, I’m asking for clean manufacturing jobs, reviving the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, which is remodeled after FDR, CCC, during the Great Depression, the New Deal. We’re really excited about that because that would particularly target folks who have been recently incarcerated. And other people that have barriers to employment targeting those types of people who wouldn’t be able to get jobs, and to plant trees and do conservation work, we’re really excited about that program. Also expanding public transportation and making it more sustainable, electrifying buses, and expanding rail. We also have some energy efficiency measures that we’re excited about, and of course, revamping old coal fields and brownfields and turning them into eco-industrial parts. We have a lot of white papers that we produced, in addition to our blueprint. And we’re very policy wonk heavy. And we have a lot of expertise. We have a lot of fact sheets, white papers, and blueprints. And we’re working with other regional experts to kind of see what the problems are, and how labor and environmentalists can come together and find a lot of common ground. We work with a lot of labor groups, a lot of unions, faith leaders, we work with a lot of restorative justice folks. Public health officials. Yeah, we’re a diversified group.
Karinna Papke: How do you go about getting environmental justice communities involved?
Annie Regan: A good example of that is we helped launch the Black Appalachian Coalition, and they go by BLAC, you can find it on our website. Essentially, we had a racial and Community Justice subcommittee that met. And they found that they needed not a seat at the table, but their own table to talk about these issues in federal money and how that it’s not just the environment and public health and all these other things that we’re focusing on, but rather, there’s so many other issues like the child tax credit, and other things that they’re advocating for on the federal level. So, they launched their own coalition, and we help amplify their events and their messaging. And so, they do a really good job and I think it’s, I mean, I think our biggest criticism with our coalition is that we’re still pretty white. Appalachia is still pretty white, but there are really diverse pockets of Appalachia that go unnoticed. And so, the black Appalachian coalition serves to amplify that erased history. A lot of people just see Appalachia as like, wait like country folk, and it is way more than that. And BLAC, in addition to their advocacy for certain federal policies, they also do a lot of storytelling and retelling history. And so, I think that brings in a diverse audience for them because folks feel like they’re heard and not ignored and acknowledged in a way that ReImagine can’t do in an authentic way. Because we are mostly led by a lot of white people. I think amplifying the Black Appalachian Coalition has been beneficial and sharing their stories and helping their coalition move along. I think folks in environmental justice communities really do trust us more now that we’ve been working with BLAC and have those types of relationships. For example, I have been working in the Mon Valley region, which is south of Pittsburgh, and they have a huge point source-pollution, US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works. It’s one of the biggest polluters in the Pittsburgh region. And the folks that live right by this facility are mostly low-income black communities, who all face terrible health conditions because of the poor air quality. So, the air quality kind of sticks there. And I’ve been working in that area for many years. And so, I’ve established relationships with a lot of people that are working to fight for cleaner air and their neighborhoods. And because I’ve had these sustained relationships, I’ve been able to help them get integrated into the Black Appalachian Coalition and ReImagine Appalachia. And they felt comfortable, they feel comfortable sharing their stories. And being interviewed and speaking at events, just because we’ve been in the area for so long. And the Black Appalachian Coalition gives them a chance to tell their stories that’s not also being exploited. And so having that level of comfort and people that they trust and talking about issues that are beyond our blueprint that really mean a lot to them, I think giving them that opportunity is key. Because all of them are interrelated. Like Clairton, the community that I worked in, is also a food desert. They don’t have any public transportation, they have high cancer rates, because of these things. All these things are interconnected. And people tell them, well, if you don’t like the air pollution and community, why don’t you just move. These people can’t just pick up and move their homes, so I think addressing the other issues that attack their community makes sense. And not just environmental issues and talking about how the food desert, lack of transportation, the poor education system in their community, all that’s interconnected and addressing it and helping them find resources is key to getting environmental justice communities interested and being involved.
Karinna Papke: Yeah, I guess going off that, how have you guys gone about approaching these communities having conversations about how they can be involved and that kind of thing?
Annie Regan: Well, pre COVID, I would go into the community quite a bit. And it’s different as a white organizer, going into a black community. You must be aware of how you approach things in person. My tactic was meeting with people one on one who are the community leaders and talking about who could get people to come to a meeting to learn about air quality issues. Setting up one on one meetings was helpful. Community leaders like faith leaders, the people running the after-school programs, there was a great high school student that I’m still in touch with, who’s now in college, who started an after-school program, wanted to volunteer, and was so outspoken. And I also partnered with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and I think having that name and that credibility, people trusted me, and we were trying to set up cameras that CMU would be running to track how the air pollution is moving and how it affects their communities. And so, going door to door talking and with the CMU person and talking to people in gaining their trust was helpful. And then once we got all the community leaders, they did the invitations to invite people to a community event. We had multiple community events in Clairton. And then we made a documentary featuring the citizens of Clairton who were able to tell their story. And so, because they were involved in the movie, they were excited to share and invite other people as well. So, we were able to interview a lot of folks who were able to gain our trust, and really have it being from the community, once we had one on one conversations, and I talked about what resources we could bring to them. And they were excited that they weren’t being ignored, and that they could do it in their own way. And so that was helpful. And then, post COVID, everything’s kind of been online. So just kind of sustaining those relationships with emails and sending them opportunities when webinars that are pertinent to their community. And I think also just inviting them to be speakers at events. I think a lot of people appreciate it when they get the invite to tell their story. Those are some of the tactics though, I think that are important thing with working with environmental justice communities, you don’t want to come in like you know the answers to their community or belittle them. You just want to literally, do a lot of listening and see how, what is needed from their perspective. And see, because you work at a nonprofit or government agency, what tools and resources you can do to help them achieve what they want. And so that’s kind of always been my standard when working with environmental justice communities. I think letting the community leaders do the weeding, and you are in the background assisting when needed.
Karinna Papke: Do you have a sense of like, right now, are there a couple of issues that the communities you are working with are most concerned about or that you guys are most focused on addressing?
Annie Regan: Oh, my gosh, yeah, there’s a lot. It’s hard to point down but I think for Pittsburgh, particularly air quality, just air quality is in the most poverty-stricken parts of Pittsburgh and can be very insidious because people don’t realize when it’s a bad air quality day, etc. Lack of public transportation. Pittsburghers for Public Transit are trying to expand public transit. And I believe personally that public transit isolates communities; it makes the Mon Valley especially feel really isolated from the Greater Pittsburgh area. And because of that, if they want to speak out, the Allegheny County Health Department is where you go to speak out against air quality, and they hold meetings. And if you can’t get there, which is downtown, if you don’t have a car or you can’t pay for $20 parking, you can’t go and speak out against certain issues that you care about. On a democracy level, public transportation is so vital. It’s also the number one reason why people don’t vote is because they don’t have adequate transportation to transit and then also just going to the supermarket, they have a food desert. Transportation is so key to connecting you to everyday lives. Lack of public transportation and poor air quality. I’ll also say I guess childcare with the Child Tax Credit too, that’s been on everyone’s mind, especially since the pandemic and people must go back to work after being online. So that’s been on a lot of people’s radars. So at least when I’ve been doing work, those have been the top three.
Karinna Papke: Related to your point about the lack of public transportation and kind of like how that affects voting, I feel like I’ve heard a lot about how trust in government is low, not only around the country, but obviously, in these communities where that have often been left behind forgotten, underserved. And so, do you have a sense about how these communities feel about the government, about voting, and about the kind of idea of bigger legislation to kind of address these issues? And if they feel like that’s something that can positively impact their communities?
Annie Regan: Yeah, it’s, it’s hard to say. Because PennFuture is a 5013 C, we don’t do a lot of partisan work. But we do have a Get Out the Vote team. But at least in Clairton, which is in the Mon Valley with the US Steel Koch works, it seemed really divided. It’s mostly a black neighborhood. But there’s also, of course, white people there. And it seemed like the black people in that neighborhood, at this time, this was this was during Trump, they were reminiscent of Obama, big supporters of Obama. And then all the white people in the neighborhood were mostly Trump supporters. So, it did feel a bit disconnected, and kind of divided in that neighborhood. But there is, I mean, there’s a big level of mistrust, especially because when you’re out further away from the city, you don’t see a lot of those benefits coming to your communities. And a lot of those communities don’t apply for federal funding, because the bureaucracy process is so like, applying for federal grants if you don’t have a grant writer in your local community, or county or municipality, it’s so much work. And kind of confusing. And so, I think a lot of these under-resourced communities don’t see a lot of benefits that they could get from federal funding. And because of that, they are like, well, what has the federal government ever done for our committee? We don’t see any of that money. And it’s mostly the richer communities that have the resources that can apply for federal funding. And so, it’s just tricky. And, and so we’re hoping that we can, at the ReImagine Appalachia campaign, connect. There’s, there’s different federal mapping right now. And there’s the justice 40 initiative, I’m not sure if you know of that. But basically 40% of this infrastructure money has to go to environmental justice communities. And so, there’s maps, the government is trying to map out which are the poorest communities that would benefit the most from this money. We’re just trying to make sure in the Appalachian region, we can see what communities need these resources the most, and kind of make sure that they get the resources to apply to these funds. And so hopefully, once they get federal money and projects coming into their communities that can fix that distrust of the government. Or show that this is great that we’re spending money on fixing our bridges or bringing in new industries that are long-term family sustaining jobs, that sort of thing. So yeah, there is a lot of mistrust of the government. And I honestly don’t blame them. Because if I lived in a community where there wasn’t a grocery store, or adequate public transit, or poor air quality, I’d be like, my government doesn’t care about me either. It’s fair. But I think we can bridge that gap by bringing in the dollars and bringing in tangible money. It’s a big endeavor but one that needs to be done.
Karinna Papke: In terms of more statewide, are there any state initiatives or policies or even local ones that you guys are excited about right now?
Annie Regan: Community Solar. Basically, if you rent like I do, or you are low income and can’t afford to do the down payment for expensive solar panels, community solar would allow folks who are lower income folks to reap the benefits from solar power. And so, we’re trying to get that passed in Pennsylvania, because right now, it’s illegal to do that sort of thing. So that would be great. And right now, on the federal level, we’re trying so we had a bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed. And that gave us some money for some of the things that we wanted from the ReImagine Appalachia blueprint. So, we kind of see that as a down payment. And then part two, was supposed to be the Build Back Better Act. But of course, that got slashed because of Manchin in West Virginia. Right now, the Senate is working on creating a revamped, watered-down version of that. And so, we’re hearing that a lot of our climate stuff is still in that which is great. But unfortunately, a lot of the other social causes like the child tax credit, and all those other things, have been left behind. But we’re hoping we can get those passed in a separate bill, but because the climate stuff is all packaged together, we want a bold climate bill to be passed. And so that is something that we’re excited about. We heard the Civilian Conservation Corps was still in there. And there’s not a lot of money that we had hoped for these programs that we want, but we’re hoping that there’ll be a starting point, and that they can be proven to be successful, and we can allocate more money to them, as the years go on. So, we’re excited to see what happens with this new climate bill when they introduce that. We’ll be doing some advocacy around promoting that. It should be released in the next couple of weeks. So, we’ll be very busy rallying around those. But yeah, that’s kind of been on our radar. And then of course, once we get the federal funding, we want to make sure it’s implemented in an equitable way. Because it is kind of confusing to navigate through all these federal funding opportunities.
Karinna Papke: And when you say advocacy, it sounds like you guys have a lot of great information on your website, how do you go about distributing all the information and making sure that the communities you work with know what’s available? What does advocacy mean for you guys?
Annie Regan: With advocacy, we do quite a bit. We do a lot of educational webinars. And then we do action alerts, we do letters to the editor workshops, we do tweet storms, we meet with our senators, and do lobby meetings. So, there’s that sort of advocacy. And then we started a blog post about the federal funding opportunities, and so that local government officials that we’ve worked with, can kind of access as a clearinghouse of all these different opportunities. And so, we have a local government group that we send specific emails to and let them know, like, these webinars are coming up, or here’s a funding opportunity that you should take advantage of. So yeah, we’ve been kind of keeping them updated, usually through our newsletters, and then we ask them if they want to be a part of our other advocacy when we’re advocating towards Congress. And we can use our local government officials being like, I’m a local government official in West Virginia, and we need this funding, and this is why; it goes both ways. And then once we get the funding, we share with the local officials, alright, we got funding, and you can apply for this. So, they can help us with the advocacy. And then once the money is granted, we can help them with the process of applying for it. There’s just a lot of local communities that just don’t have full time grant writers or the capacity to navigate through funding opportunities. So, we’re trying the best we can we are also very limited to what we can do.
Karinna Papke: I guess I’m curious about just kind of moving forward and thinking about the crafting of new legislation and solutions related to environmental issues, what you think are the most important factors to consider when policy makers sit down to write environmental policy, especially as it relates to environmental justice communities.
Annie Regan: There is a part of our Constitution in Pennsylvania that says, every Pennsylvanian has the right to clean air and clean water. A lot of other states don’t have that in their state constitution. We are one of the few that explicitly put that in our Constitution. And so, we use that clause quite a bit in our legal cases. By saying we have a right to clean air and clean water, and certain communities don’t have that, it’s going against our Constitution. State legislators need to remember that. And they need to, especially when it just seems like profit, short-term profit and short-term jobs are more of a priority than the cleaner and clean water aspect. And especially what’s happening in Beaver County, a lot of those jobs are for people from out of state, especially with fracking, they’re coming from Texas, and they are moving wherever the job takes them. And Beaver County, they built all these hotels, just because they knew people were going to be there, for short-term oil and gas jobs. And so that’s not helping our economy in the long run. When thinking about environmental laws, and even though the jobs component is always on their mind, I think we need to realize you can have clean air and clean water and good paying jobs. And I think it shouldn’t be one or the other. They should have that mindset of how we achieve both. And there are ways to achieve both, we have white papers, we have a blueprint, we have case studies and examples happening in Europe happening in the United States. I think just replicating those models that already exist, so that people can feed their families. And they cannot have to worry about closing their windows at night because the air is bad. There are also community labor standards so that when there is new development, you have to hire locally. And you have to provide good working conditions for the worker, because a lot of the environmental jobs are like coal workers or cleaning up abandoned mines. Those are dangerous positions, and we need to create conditions that are safe for the workers. Pennsylvania politicians need to remember that we have the right to clean air and clean water. And we can do that in a way that can create good jobs and not put our health or environment at stake.