Roishetta Ozane and her children walk in a second line through the French Quarter during the “Power Up in the Gulf” event for climate justice on Nov. 3, 2023. (Minh Ha/Verite News)
When environmentalist Roishetta Ozane saw swing states begin to turn red on election night, she said she was heartbroken. Despite massive campaigning efforts in key states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris was losing the race to former president and now president-elect Donald Trump.
“At first I felt sad and just kind of hopeless,” Ozane said. “Then I felt angry that so many people didn’t vote. I also felt like it was just like a punch in the gut. I feel like we had done everything, we had made sure people were educated on the issues.”
Ozane is the founder and director of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, an environmental mutual aid group based in Lake Charles. The group provides rebuilding assistance to those who have been affected by hurricanes and campaigns against the fossil fuel industry, which dominates large parts of the region and poses risks to residents through ongoing emissions and, periodically, catastrophic accidents. On the day after the election, Ozane even thought about quitting her work as an environmental advocate as she remembered Trump’s first term.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Trump has undermined efforts to fight climate change, and in his first term rolled back more than 100 environmental rules, most of which regulated air pollution and emissions standards.
Sharon Lavigne, the founder of environmental justice group Rise St. James, said that the election was a setback. She said that clean air and water won’t be a priority for the administration, and is concerned about Trump’s pro-fossil fuel stance. Rise St. James is currently fighting to prevent Formosa Plastics from building a sprawling multi-million dollar complex in St. James Parish. The parish lies in what many call “Cancer Alley,” the industrial stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known for high cancer rates and heavy industrial pollution from facilities near residences.
“I’m worried about them giving more power to industry to poison us,” Lavigne said. “They’re more concerned about industry than the people.”
Lavigne’s worries were echoed by other environmentalists, such as Arthur Johnson, the executive director of the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. He is worried that environmental justice will not be a priority for the federal government after Trump takes office in January.
“You can’t depend on public entities and public leaders to make these decisions that will benefit us,” Johnson said.
Trump announced Lee Zeldin, a former U.S. representative from New York, as his pick for the head of the EPA. Like Trump, Zeldin has a pro-energy, anti-regulation stance. While in Congress, he voted against numerous environmental protection policies, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, which has put billions of dollars into clean energy initiatives, from solar-powered housing to urban tree planting. Trump has promised to roll back the IRA and increase fossil fuel production.
Ozane said that the federal government should create protections for the environment and frontline communities while President Joe Biden is still in office in order to make it more difficult for policies to be undone once Trump is sworn in. She said Biden should make sure communities receive IRA funds before the inauguration, ban drilling on public land and declare a climate emergency to help move funds to frontline communities.
But in the next couple of days, Ozane no longer felt hopeless as she remembered her history.
“We’ve always had to fight, especially as Black people, as people of color, as low-income people, we have always had to fight,” Ozane said. “We have always found a way to survive and thrive in our communities and the government is not who is going to save us. We are going to save ourselves.”
In the coming months, Ozane said she will organize and strategize to try to get the Biden administration to fulfill some of her environmental protection goals. Ozane and other Louisiana environmentalists are poised to increase community outreach and form networks that will help them protect themselves, with or without support from the federal government. Johnson said his organization will have more conversations about their work to broaden its impact.
“But we can’t just sit back and wait and say, ‘Let’s see what they’re going to do and then let’s act,’ because then we’re reacting,” Johnson said. “And my point is that we have to not react, but we have to act.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.