Category: Environmental Justice

Legislative and Advocacy Priorities, UU FaithAction NJ 2020-2021

Criminal Justice Task Force

• Youth Justice Transformation. Stopping the school to prison pipeline is essential to reducing the number of individuals, especially people of color, out of our state corrections facilities. Restorative justice pilot projects called for in one of our priority bills, will work to keep young people, especially youth of color in urban areas, out of the criminal justice system and provide them with support they need in their own communities.
• Expanding Post-Prison Reentry Services. With continued corrections and parole reform, as well as Public Health Emergency Credits, more and more individuals will be released and need to reintegrate into their communities of origins. Services are critical to ensure as smooth a transition as possible. Reentry services will assist those being released in reintegrating into their home communities, becoming active citizens who can participate in the important work to be done in rebuilding their communities– often urban, and minority.
• Dismantling Racism. Three different bills address different aspects of racism within the criminal justice system: the need for an amendment to the Constitution, a bill to form a Reparations Task Force, and a bill to restrict the use of deadly force by the police. Advocacy will focus attention on how institutional racism feeds the criminal/corrections system– through our failures to protect all lives in the Constitution, to failures to protect individuals during interactions with police, and failures to correct for our history of slavery which has left African Americans — as individuals, families and as a people– robbed of their labor, their wealth and their influence in the larger society and economy.

Environmental Justice Task Force

• Reduce Fossil Fuel Emissions, especially in EJ Neighborhoods with Focus on Transportation. Follow lead of Environmental Justice partners including NJEJA, Ironbound Corp., Clean Water Action. This will have direct impact on health of residents in EJ neighborhoods.
• Reduce lead in households, both in drinking water and lead paint. Following lead of EJ partners including NJEJA, Ironbound Corp. and Clean Water Action, help promote outreach to residents about avoiding or reducing lead in drinking water and lead paint in their households
• Promote the Green Amendment. Conduct outreach, especially through UU congregations, to build understanding and support for the Green Amendment Bill in NJ promoting the right to clean air, clean water and a healthy environment. Follow the lead of “Green Amendments for the Future”. The Green Amendment is supported by our EJ partners.

Gun Violence Prevention Task Force

• The GVP task under the leadership of its chair, Liandra Pires, has been active in renewing their focus and vision. Additionally, the task force continues to advocate for the Safe Storage Bill which is in the process of being updated to centers an anti-racist/anti-oppression lens around this important legislation concerning firearm and ammunition storage. The task force will continue in the process of identifying specific legislative and educational priorities in their monthly meetings.

Immigrant Justice Task Force

• Legislative Priorities
  • Enact Covid-related relief legislation to include undocumented persons, starting with S2480/A4171.
  • Enact the Immigrant Trust Directive into Statutory Law with few carve-outs for criminal offenses.
  • Enact DACA program into statute, at federal level, with as few restrictions as possible.
• Advocacy/Educational Priorities
  • Effective implementation of driver’s license regulations for undocumented persons, with as little interaction with federal government as possible.
  • Investigate and publicize the holding of children separated from parents at southern border in South Jersey foster homes
  • Promote need for as much funding for legal representation of detainees as possible.

Reproductive Justice Task Force

• Support for the Reproductive Freedom Act. S3030/A 4848, which safeguards reproductive care, upholds basic rights and justice, and respects decision-making throughout pregnancy for all women regardless of race, class, sexuality, ability, or citizenship status. The bill expands the protections of reproductive justice beyond the right to abortion to include protections and expanded access to birth control and pregnancy-related care, as well as eliminating medically-unnecessary restrictions that block access to care.
• Monitor the work of the Commission to Study Sexual Assault, Misconduct and Harassment by Staff against Inmates in NJ State Correctional Facilities, especially at NJ’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, who are disproportionately Black and Brown women, poor women, and also transgender women.
• Strengthen maternal health and reduce maternal mortality, including supporting the Maternal Mortality Review Commission, and affirm our commitment to ending New Jersey’s shameful record as a state with one of the worst Black-White racial disparities in maternal deaths in the nation.
• Support the strategic plan of the Sexual Education Subcommittee of Thrive NJ, which challenges heterosexist and cis-sexist assumptions about sexuality and gender.
• Monitor the implementation of the address confidentiality law (PL 2019.c175) by reviewing the proposed regulations with assistance from Legal Advocacy, and encourage comments that will advance our goal of protecting access to abortion for all women and their providers.