 Good afternoon. I am Celeste Watkins Hayes, Interim Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan, and it is my pleasure and high honor to welcome you here tonight for a very special policy talks, Governing for Environmental Justice. This event is held in support with the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan, and you can view the recording from today's event and more great material from across campus online at their Alumni Education Gateway. To open our event, I have the great honor and privilege of presenting one of our panelists with the Ford School's Top Award for Alumni Service. State Senator Stephanie Chang is the recipient of the 2022 Neil Stabler Distinguished Service Award. This award was established in honor of Neil Stabler, one of Michigan's leading political activists who devoted his life to improving democratic government by increasing the participation of citizens in all aspects of government affairs. And I am so happy that Neil's son, Mike, could join us tonight who has really become a dear partner to the Ford School and to me in this Interim Dean year. Thank you, Mike. The Stabler Award recognizes a Ford School alum for outstanding professional achievement consistent with Neil's dedication to excellence in public service. The award has a long history of distinguished recipients, a few of whom I know are joining us virtually tonight. Senator Chang is the first Asian American woman to be elected to the Michigan Legislature. She worked as a community organizer in Detroit for nearly a decade before serving two terms in the Michigan House of Representatives. And in 2018, she was elected to the Michigan Senate, where she served as the Minority Floor Leader. Now in her second term in the Senate, Chang serves as the Caucus Policy and Steering Committee Chair, as well as the chairpersons of the Senate Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary, and Public Safety. Prior to running for office, Chang was an activist with organizations including NextGen Climate Michigan, the Center for Progressive Leadership in Michigan, the Campaign for Justice, and Michigan United, One United Michigan. She also worked as a community engagement coordinator for the James and Grace Lee Boggs School, an assistant to Grace Lee Boggs, the legendary Detroit activist, writer, and speaker. Chang is a co-founder and past president of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote Michigan, a mentor with the Detroit Asian Youth Project, a founder and board member of Rising Voices of Asian American Families, and a board member of the Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center. In the state legislature, Chang has worked on issues that affect vulnerable communities, including air quality protection, education, criminal justice reforms, improving economic opportunities, and affordable, safe drinking water. During her time at the Ford School, which we got to talk about today, that was a lot of fun, Chang has, it was a David Bonette leadership and public service fellow. That's a graduate fellowship that includes a funded summer internship with the Detroit mayor's office, where she helped with cost estimates and spatial analysis of the city's streetlight project, from internship to here. Members of our Ford School Alumni Board had the very difficult, very difficult burden of choosing between several accomplished alumni with outstanding professional achievements in public service for this award. They selected Stephanie Chang and her incredible track record of leadership on public policy issues impacting the lives of Michiganders. Please join me in congratulating this year's Neil Stabler Distinguished Service Award recipient, Senator Stephanie Chang. So, thank you, Stephanie, and I'm actually going to turn the mic over to my colleague in just a few moments. But first, we would love to just hear a few remarks from you. Sure. Well, thank you so much to the Ford School and to the dean. Is this on? It is. Okay. I can't really hear. But it's really an honor to be back and so grateful for the honor of receiving the Neil Stabler Distinguished Alumni Service Award. And this actually does really mean quite a lot. The Stabler family has contributed so much to this state and really been a model in terms of good public service over many, many years. So I appreciate this award and I'm really grateful to be a Ford School alumna. As we talked about earlier today, being a Ford School grad actually really did provide a lot of really important skills and resources to be a successful lawmaker. And just really honored to receive this award. So thank you so much to the Ford School. Welcome. You are welcome. Thank you so much. So I am now going to hand it over to my colleague, Shobita Parthasarathi, Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School and Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program. Thank you so much, Dean Watkins Hayes, and congratulations, Senator Chang. I'm incredibly excited about this afternoon's conversation because to my mind, good public policy is crucial to achieving environmental justice. Low-income neighborhoods, particularly those with Black, Latinx and Indigenous residents, tend to bear the costs of national and international economic development and sometimes even also policy efforts to improve the environment, but they often don't enjoy the benefits. This includes becoming sites for the congregation of polluting industries and disposal of toxic waste. We need to look no further than ZIP Code 48217 in Southwest Detroit, where residents have complained for years about the environmental health and lifestyle impacts of having AK steel, marathon oil, and DTE energy at their door. But environmental justice communities like the residents of 48217 often struggle to have their voices heard. As historically disadvantaged communities, they often lack access to corridors of power and their knowledge and expertise is rarely valued in the technical instruments used to evaluate the sighting of projects, the development of technologies, and public policies that are meant to benefit society and the environment. We discuss many of these cases in the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, or STPP program that I direct, and support communities as they advocate for more representative practices and policies through our community partnerships initiative. And things are changing. Politicians and technical experts are starting to recognize that in order to develop public policies that truly benefit all of us, and particularly that advance environmental equity and justice, they must center the concerns and perspectives of the most marginalized among us. And all of our speakers today so clearly embody this approach. Tonight's conversation will be moderated by Dr. Abdul El Sayed, a former Ford School Towsley policymaker in residence, and the newly appointed director of the Wayne County Health, Human, and Veteran Services Department. He will be joined by our honoree, Senator Stephanie Ching, whose many accomplishments you've just heard, and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Representative Tlaib serves Michigan's 12th Congressional District, which includes the city of Detroit and many surrounding communities. She made history in 2008 by becoming the first Muslim woman to ever serve in the Michigan legislature. Her work on environmental justice in Michigan includes organizing residents with the We Have a Right to Breathe campaign to protect public health, exposing environmental threats on the Detroit Riverfront, and working with the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice to fight for community benefits agreements that promote equitable development. A reminder that there will be time for questions at the end, so please write them down on the provided question cards throughout tonight's event, and then pass them to the center aisle. My colleague Molly Kleinman, the Managing Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, will be helping to curate the questions for tonight's Q&A. Those tuning in virtually can tweet your questions to hashtag policy talks. So please join me in welcoming Dr. El Sayed, Senator Chang, and Congresswoman Tlaib to reflect on their work to address environmental injustice in Michigan and beyond, and the challenges and opportunities ahead. All right, good evening. Good evening. That was pretty good. Good evening. Has it been better? All right, so thank you, Professor Parthasarathy, for that lovely introduction and getting us right to it. I want to just jump right in. This is an interesting moment to have this conversation. I got to be honest with you when I pitched this discussion, I had no clue that I would be back in public service by the time we actually had it, and I certainly had no clue that we'd be in a situation where we were discussing the second or third trained derailment in a matter of months from the same corporation, one of which led to the trucking of toxic waste products into Wayne County, which is a county that all three of us up here serve in one way or another. So I just want to jump in because I think what's interesting about both of you, I've gotten the opportunity to work with you in a number of different ways, but both of you, you did this work before you did this work. Before you were in positions and halls of power to lead on legislation, you were advocating for a more sustainable, more environmentally just Michigan and Wayne County. So I want to ask you, what do you bring of your activism and community engagement to the work that you do every day in government? Okay. Well, good evening again. Before I do anything else, just wanted to give a shout out to my colleague, Senator Sushink, who's here, as well as Jennifer Collins, State Representative. Thanks both of you for your public service and for being here. Hopefully I didn't miss anyone. Representative Reingans. Oh, and Representative Reingans. Awesome. Hello. I should have brought someone, yeah. Anyway, next time. So I think that we use, I feel that I use my organizing background quite often. And actually, I was thinking about the fact that when I was still deciding about whether or not to run for office, I don't know if her sheet remembers this, but one of the things that she said to try to convince me to run was that I would still be organizing, that I would get to be organizing my colleagues. So it's very persuasive. And so that actually did help me to realize, okay, I can use those same organizing skills. But I also think one of the most amazing things that I love about this job is being able to work with community members to come up with what the solution should be. And so whether it's, you know, Whippets in Southwest Detroit littering the streets and, you know, a huge substance abuse issue in the community, actually working hand-in-hand with them to do the research to figure out what the legislative solution should be and then actually getting it passed and having them, you know, come testify or working on water affordability and working hand-in-hand with the groups who are, you know, not only coming up with solutions, but also the ones making sure that people have access to water. I love that work. I love being able to use the coalition building skills that I had developed prior to running for office and still use those every day. And honestly, I think it's been really beneficial in terms of being an effective lawmaker. And also, I think that it really shows in the community, they recognize the work and also are happy to be a part of it because usually, community members don't get to be a part of coming up with the solutions. So when they are, I think it's even that much more valuable. Yeah. So, you know, I'm the eldest of 14, so I've been a community organizer. Plus, I grew up in the most beautiful blackest city in the country in the city of Detroit. Community organizing is just part of your nature. Even as a mother on the block, it wasn't just my mom. With the black mothers, the Latino mothers, everyone had our back and they were always organizing. I don't care if it was trying to get us to stop, you know, throwing our garbage in the streets or figuring out all these other things. But it's just part of, you know, growing up there and growing up in the community and the family that I was part of. It was just always a bigger part. So it's made me tenacious. It's made me determined. And, you know, Senator Sanders said that to me like, you know, I'm a labor organizer in the Senate. That's not going to change when I walk in on that floor. That's what I am and that's what I do when I'm working on all these issues. And, you know, of course, when you are a community organizer, you tend to move a lot more urgency than many colleagues. And so I'm really incredibly, you know, grateful to be able to take all of that. And it's been, you know, it's been an honor sometimes, you know, just trying to like not imagine that I'm like a Congress member, but like I'm that organizer still from Southwest Detroit actually is much more fun and inspiring when I'm on that floor. And I feel like I convinced my colleagues more when I speak in that language if that makes any sense. And so it is very much what continues to bring value to myself when I do this work. I appreciate that. I came to government as a technocrat. Way too much school. Didn't graduate until I was like 30 years old from grad school. And I was like all the way through. I didn't have a pause. And I came to the work that you all do backwards, asking how do you actually get practical solutions to technical questions. So the question I want to ask here is there is this almost this continuum between grassroots community organizing and activism, the kind of work that is done in government, be it at the executive side or the legislative side, and then the science and the technical work that goes into trying to educate them. And if they work together, right, there's this beautiful flywheel that happens. The challenge often is that they don't really work together. We're speaking different languages. Conversations are being missed. There's a lot of research that's done over here that really help answer a lot of questions. There might be of academic interest and I mean that in the most technical sense, but not necessarily a practical interest or narrative interest. So I guess I'd ask, what do you wish scientists understood about the legislative process? And what is it that you've learned about the science that gets done that you can sort of pull into the legislative process? What is the crosstalk? Why do we sometimes miss each other? I mean, there's so many layers to that. No, it's outside money. I was in a class today, second, third grade class, and trying to, they don't know who I am. I'm explaining, they're like Congresswoman and the kids are like, and I tell them the three branches of government and I'm on the legislative branch. When I tell them I know President Biden, they're like, you do. But I was telling them, honestly, I was telling them about how one of the first bills I ever worked on in the Michigan house was the smoking ban and they were like, and I was like, you know how you go to a restaurant and your family asks, they all ask how many people in your party and they're like, yeah, they're nodding their heads. I said, well, when I was your age, they used to ask, do you want the smoking or non-smoking section? And they're like, and I was like, they used to smoke and I'm like in schools. And one girl, I said airplane, she goes, no, that's crazy. And I was like, yes, in hospital. And why I say that, doc, is because like, you know, I told them, even though doctors and scientists were telling us this, there were studies, there were studies way before we passed the smoking ban in the Michigan legislature. I mean, there were so many folks that came and testified and talked about the harms of second-hand. I mean, we've had so many people testify, study the heck out of my community. I don't know how many U of M students have been to Delray and studied Delray neighborhood so many times. But it gets shelved to the point where a lot of my colleagues are not listening and moving. I mean, they'll be second and third graders are like, wow, what? Yeah, of course, that makes you sick. And so of course, you all know that, but then you have the arm that is so complicated as the money that comes into that, where those that profit off of the pollution, the public health disparities and all those folks continue to profit and they have more access to my colleagues who will not understand unless they live in frontline communities and environmental justice communities, they will not know or fully understand what it means to not be able to go outside because the smell is so bad that you could have an asthma attack or the respiratory issues. And so one thing is true and your studies and the things that come out of that arm does give credibility what I'm saying. I feel less like, I'm not making this up, this actually is true. We have high rates of infant mortality and they have gotten it to the fact that maybe we haven't met the cleric standards in so long. So all of that to say is at least their folks, myself and others in frontline communities that depend on this because sometimes they're not believed. One of my seniors told me, I just, I feel like they don't believe me Rashida. And it is true, but when you all do the work that you do, one thing that's more probably it might be not the legislatures as much, but the people in our community, they can use it to organize. And I'm a true believer that we have transformative change that doesn't happen because of who's president of the United States or who's in Congress. I mean Civil Rights Act, it wasn't like, oh, this was a great idea. It was because of boycotts and protests and marches outside of those places of power that moved towards that. Same thing with organizing unions in the workplace, Dr. Alsaid. And so for me, I hope that you all are also thinking how do you bring those frontline communities and the work that you're doing on that end because they're going to be able to use that to organize more people because it's hard when I tell my colleagues there's not one congressional district, not one, that doesn't have lead in their water. And this is not just Flint in Pontiac and Hamtramac or Garden City or Wayne in my district. It's every single community, every corner of our country is now suffering because we've allowed it to continue. So I guess I'll echo a lot of what Congresswoman Sleep said and also just add a couple things. Also, by the way, there's like four chairs in the front as those people stand in back there, including Representative Morgan, if folks want to fill in. But I think so one of the things that I think is important is so I love this idea of citizen science. And so, you know, across Detroit and other places too, there's all of these folks who are actually using their own air monitors to gather data and be able to make their own case for environmental justice. What do they call it, Stephanie? Well, the purple air? No, the one they call the air bucket brigade. You remember they would and grabbed it and they would. Oh, yeah, it's okay. Anyway, it was really cool. I just love, you know, when folks are actually like, let's just take science into our own hands, whether it's, you know, using your own air monitors or I remember there was a guy in Riverview who was really concerned about what was going on when they were demolishing the McLeod steel plant down river. It's like, oh, well, let me get you some air monitors. Like, really? So yeah, just like, yes, we're going to get you these air monitors so that you can collect this data and then be able to use it and advocate for what you need. So I love that. So I think like as much as we can actually connect people who are doing the science with folks on the ground. And there's so many examples of that. But I feel like that's really something we need to do more of. And then I also think that one of the things that we need to do better at is there's so much good data out there and so much there's all these amazing reports. But a lot of times legislators have never read them or they because we never got them and there's just so much critical data and critical reports that the Ford school, for example, is putting out there that could be really, really useful. So especially if you have a lawmaker who's advocating on an issue, if you can get that person the data and they can use that right and combine it with the firsthand accounts, the stories from folks who are experiencing whatever the problem is and be able to really make their argument even stronger. So one of the things that I remember from 2020 was after the Michigan Supreme Court basically invalidated all of the executive orders, we needed to get a water shut off moratorium put back into place. And the only way that was going to happen was through the legislature. And everyone thought there's no way you're going to get a Republican legislature to pass a water shut off moratorium. But we did. And part of the reason why was because we had the data, we had all of the like this giant spreadsheet because we use the federal money through the Department of Health and Human Services to get water providers, you know, money to help pay down our re-erages. And so we literally had, this is how many households in your tiny village in the UP or, you know, your suburban township in West Michigan, these are the people who are behind on their water bills. And so that way we were able to show, because sometimes people think it's a Detroit issue. And of course it is, but it's also a statewide problem, right? And so being able to use that data and then pair it with, again, the first-hand accounts of what people are going to. Yeah, they couldn't even access the federal dollars unless they supported. They literally, some actually wanted to take the rearage money and pay the back bill and not actually keep them shut off. So just, you have to, yeah. But when somebody comes to me, a constituent with the stuff that many of you bring, you know, the studies and it's so much more powerful. Let them code to them, not just you alone, if that makes any sense. One of the big challenges with environmental justice disasters is that we hear about them when they're disasters, right? Whether it's East Palestine, which is a story that goes back to railroad deregulation for decades, or it's Flint as we talked about, or it's water shutoffs in Detroit, or it's COVID-19 as a pandemic. And the fact that we hear about them as disasters implies that between the legislative work that is done on oversight and legislation and the executive work that's done in enforcement, we generally don't pay attention to issues that could bubble up. And it is a fundamental flaw of government in so far as we keep finding ourselves in the same spot. And one of the interesting things that sort of came up is that whether it is EGLE or it's EPA, you think about East Palestine, there is a remit to actually regulate some of these things. And unfortunately so much of the rulemaking ends up in automatic okays of processes that probably shouldn't be okay. What does it take for us to tell the story of all the work that has to go in to keep those disasters from happening? Because it's kind of self-defeating, right? Part of the challenge we have this issue in public health more generally. But when nothing bad happens, then we stop funding the things that keep bad things from happening, right? And then bad things happen, right? And then we wonder why there wasn't funding to keep them from happening. And so it's just this cycle over and over and over again. What is it that we need to do from an activist, scientific, legislative, and executive function, right, this ecosystem? What needs to be done to keep us funding and investing in the things that keep bad stuff from happening in the first place? And then what do we do keep our attention on it, right? This is a thing I think about all the time. Because I'm sitting here trying to justify a public health budget, people are like, why are we going to do that? We haven't had that problem in years. I'm like, yes. So we don't have that problem in years. How do we think about that problem? How should we wrap our minds around that problem? So I can think of two examples that just popped into my brain as you were talking. So one, both of us dealt with this in 2019. So this theme, this was pre pandemic. So it feels like 10 years ago. But in November 2019, there was this former revere copper dock site that collapsed. And no one knew about it until the owner of the Windsor Detroit truck ferry sent drone shots of what was going on to me and to Eagle and the Windsor star. And then we realized, okay, this is a problem. There's a major dock that collapsed into the river. And through the response to that, we learned a lot of things that we should have known before. So this is a site that was a former site of the Manhattan project. At one point, there was uranium rods that were stored on site. And so there was a folks that were just like freaking out. Rightly so. Thankfully, there was a lot of testing that got done and there was no uranium. But there were contamination. There was contamination that did go into the river. And then it just raised all of these questions about the fact that there wasn't any notification. This was I think it was the day after Thanksgiving or something like that. Or it was the day before. It was it was around Thanksgiving in 2019. And there was no notification to Eagle because there was this sort of this gap in the law that we identified. Even when there's regulations requiring notification, it sometimes doesn't happen and they get a slap on the wrist. But go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, and so one of the things that is even crazier about what happened was that the or the occupants of this property apparently didn't really know what potential contamination there might be. And so in our this is Mike, this is getting a little bit into the weeds now, but in our law, there's a school policy. We do wait for school. There's, you know, all these requirements for if it's this type of contamination, you have to contact this agency within this time period. And if it's this contamination, you have to contact this agency within this time period. But if you don't know what kind of contamination it is, there's kind of like not really a requirement. So so anyway, we developed some bills around to fill in that gap around notification of to Eagle within 24 hours. And then we also realized, we need a statewide database of what types of contaminated properties there are along our major waterways in the state of Michigan, you know, we're the Great Lake State, we've got all of these former industrial sites, no one we basically we have to rely on, you know, Eagle digging up old files and then newspapers trying to figure out whatever they had to be able to find out well, what kind of contamination is on this site, right. And so that's something that the public should have access to. We need to be able to identify risk levels based on, you know, what type of contamination, how long ago was the most recent inspection, we don't have a dock inspection requirement in the state of Michigan. And so we just, there's all of these things that we're missing in our laws. But also our regulators, you know, should have been more on top of it as well. So I think that that just in terms and then now we've kind of forgotten about this because COVID's happened. And then now it's years later. Yet we still haven't passed our bills to get this done. So I think just what you were saying about how we quickly move on to the next crisis, we've forgotten about that. And then even before then, we had worked on a bunch of bills related to asbestos. So you may remember that there was this during the time, well, still happening there with the city of Detroit was doing a lot of demolitions. They had to pay some money back. What did you say? Not later, I'll tell you. Okay. Well, I think it was over contracts or something, but you're right, they were using. They were using these contractors that actually had prior criminal convictions for violating environmental laws. And they were using dirty like they were putting filling the holes and yes, like with like stuff that had asbestos in them contaminated soil. So we want to get into specifics. I'd be happy to do that with you. I'd be happy to do it with you. What's your name? I don't know. I asked your name for a reason. What's your name? You know me, you blocked me on Twitter. So do not block on Twitter. We're going to move on. I'm happy to talk to you after the fact, but we're going to move on. This is why people block you on Twitter, but I would love to if it's okay, I'll just finish what I was saying. Please. Thank you. So we had all of these asbestos violations over the course of a couple years in the city of Detroit and they were preventable, right? Like we could the there is more regulation that could have been done. Anyway, we've kind of forgotten about this, but we still have bills that are out there that I would hope that I'm hoping we can get done this year. But again, there's so many crises when it comes to environmental justice that unless we take action right away, then the public sort of forgets about them. And then we move on to the next thing. And so I think it's really important that folks who care about these things are that experience the harm, although in the case of asbestos, you know, mesothelioma was not going to show up until sometimes decades later. So it's very concerning that we're not going to know the full ramifications of what happened until, you know, decades from now. Yeah, actually, so the next question I wanted to ask is actually very apropos. It's what should activists know about the about the legislative and governmental process. So one of the things I think is really important to understand is that in so many circumstances, you get up and you say, we're going to take on X problem. And you do you take on X problem. And then you realize that the process by which you take on X problem is so much more complex than you initially thought it was. And it is important for activists and advocates. I have no doubt that the gentleman who is just here has the best intentions. And, you know, it's somebody we probably agree with on 95% of things. The challenge, though, is actually getting the work done. And one of the things that I find very frustrating about this moment in activism, is that it is very words are cheap, right, particularly cheap now. And so you can, you can publish whatever you want to publish in the form of a tweet 240, 280 characters, right, and say this ought to be done. But then the question becomes, okay, so like, what is the work of actually getting that thing done? How do you actually put your nose the grindstone to achieve that outcome? And the hard part is that usually you end up having to work through the government that exists in the space. And you may very well be the government that exists in the space. And you may say, we're going to address 95 to 99% of cases. And there's still going to be those 1% of cases that still pop up. So, you know, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, what should activists know about government, right? Because we have a lot of self-styled activists these days. What should they know about the work of actually governing, the work of actually legislating, the work of actually enforcing on some of these challenges? I mean, you know, enforcement is really critical here because even if Stephanie Chang's bills pass, how are they going to enforce? By the way, there are laws right now. They're not perfect, but those are not even enforced. So it isn't critically important to understand like many of these companies, again, that profit off of these broken systems or the lack of capacity for oversight and not paying attention, you know, all these things is resulting in, you know, these companies basically budgeting for this is going to be just the cost of doing business. The Department of Justice has been in my district, y'all. They have filed, you know, violations against them. On behalf of the EPA, a number of them entered in consent decrees. Some of those consent decrees haven't even been followed through and they're on their second consent decree, the third consent decree. And again, it results in just not enough for them to be fearful that if I don't follow my air permit, if I do this, you know, oh, this is just going to cost this amount of money, right? It's not going to be feasible. So even if we pass these bills, if enforcement is not meaningful, real, and yes, people don't like when I say shut it down, but like there should be a threat of whether or not you're going to follow the law. I'll tell you, my residents, they get all kinds of violations. Some of them get their homes taken away for, you know, all kinds of look. So I think it seems that we are always shy or always hesitant to do enforcement in such a very strong way when it comes to multi-billion-dollar, you know, industries. But it's critically important. I used to get excited as a state house member when I heard the Department of Justice is in there, you know, going up against U.S. Steel, which as a kid, I would take pictures of the smoke coming out. And I'm like, oh, my God. And then I find out that's like their fourth one. And the consent decree says they have to do this or do that. And oh, my God, if I see one more that says plant trees, I love trees. Don't get me wrong. But it's just not enough. It's not enough because my residents already breathed it in. Their literally quality of life has impacted. I don't know if you feel, you know, realize how dehumanizing it is. It is so incredibly dehumanizing to be, you know, folks to tell them, well, just get out. They have nowhere to go. They can't afford to go anywhere. And so it is so important that when we talk about this and understanding the legislative process is I sometimes think, is it really only about new laws? Or is it about also enforcement? What is, is it going to be clawbacks? Is it going to be all these things? Because some of these polluters actually get subsidies from the federal and state government. So it's almost like as a one resident would say in the sacrifice zone of 48217, oh, this is permission to pollute. We're basically legalizing it saying it's okay. This is the way to do it. You know, we're going to, we're going to smack your hand. DTE, you're going to have to pay $90,000. DTE, $90,000 ain't shit. Okay. So it is something that again, we need to be thinking about as, as many of state house and state senate members are here, think about those things. That is what's going to make it meaningful because you can do all these things in no occasion. But if they're not following through, I promise you they're just going to wipe it out, hire some attorneys, get rid of it, and move on and continue to violate the processes and things and impact our public health. So, you know, in my work, I sit on the enforcement side of things. And, you know, it's interesting when, when we audited the demolitions program, what we looked at wasn't asbestos and contractors. What we looked at was fugitive dust and lead after the demolitions. And I did that, you know, sort of, I went rogue on that analysis. We showed what we showed. And ultimately ended up leaving the, the city administration. And the truth is, is that they actually did fix the problem, right? They really did rethink a lot of their contracting. They really did make sure contractors were... It wasn't just our city. It was happening across the country. Everywhere. But our responsibility, like my responsibility was our city, right? The interesting thing is, you know, on the back end, you do get to the point where then there are other challenges. And one of the hard parts, and I kind of want to flip this, is we've been talking quite a bit implicitly about oversight and regulation and enforcement. But the other thing that we don't do very well in public service in the United States in general is to build. So, you know, we've got this amazing gift of ARPA dollars, right? And our county took 300, we got 339 million dollars to build stuff, right? To actually do some really great things. And the hard part is so much of the way that we've built government is so oversight focused, right? On the notion that the assumption is that every government dollar is subject to fraud and abuse. So we need to make sure that there is no fraud and abuse. We build all kinds of infrastructure against protecting against fraud and abuse. And that's an important thing to do. But it also makes it very, very difficult to actually use money, right? To actually spend money to build stuff. And so our government isn't very good at building things. And so much of what we think about now ought to be building. You think about where we're headed with, you know, the automotive transfer. And whether or not you think automotive ought to be our future, right? The idea that we're moving to a cleaner version, and I don't want to say clean, but a cleaner version of automotive transport is a good thing. But in order to be able to do that, you have to build a lot of stuff, which means government has to be able to both grant and has to be able to build de novo. And so I wanted to ask you how you think about that tradeoff between regulation and spending, right? What is it that we ought to be doing to invest more? I got my ideas. I think one of the challenges is that, you know, folks who oppose a lot of these goals will always point at fraud and abuse and will always go there because they know it makes it harder for government to build stuff, right? But I'd love to hear about how you're thinking about it. What does it take for government to actually be able to build, right, beyond the enforcement mechanism to actually build, to do the spending part of what government ought to do? So I think a couple of things. One, we, as a state, I'm hoping that we are going to move towards a system in which we're, where we, so, okay, so we're right now, the state of Michigan has been investing a lot of money in EV, you know, manufacturing, which is, you know, a big part of our future. And there are those of us who feel really strongly that we need to make sure that for future projects, we absolutely need to, Klopp-Exford mentioned earlier, make sure that for folks who, for companies that are, that are doing this work, if they are in violation of environmental laws, that we are clawing back money because we, I asked if we have done that. And apparently there are provisions that are very permissive, but they don't require our state to actually claw back that money. And that's something we absolutely need to be doing. And, you know, both the Congresswoman and I rep, well, used to represent a facility on the east side of Detroit that has had six violations over the course of, you know, a year and a half that did receive state taxpayer dollars, which was a program that I voted no on when I was in the House. But I, but there was no provisions in place to claw back that money. And I'm hopeful that we are learning from those mistakes. And, you know, in our current roles in the legislature, I know a number of us are going to be pushing really hard to make sure that whatever we are doing going forward, we incorporate that type of accountability. And, you know, I think one of the other things that hopefully the Congresswoman will talk more about is around community benefits and really making sure that whatever taxpayer dollars we're spending, especially on, you know, big projects in communities that are really vulnerable, that we absolutely, you know, there's models at the city level, but at the state level, we also should get innovative and make sure that we're building in that type of language to protect the communities that are right around there. But I also just think that in general, not even just around how we're incentivizing different projects, just in general, I think that we need to be bigger and bolder period on a lot of our laws because we know that our agencies, although they might have authority to go farther than they currently do, they're often unwilling to go there unless it's written into the law. And so, you know, I love our Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, but they're not necessarily going to go out there and go further than they're told to by the law, which, you know, I wish that they would do sometimes a little bit more. And there's lots of examples of that. But at the same time, I also kind of understand we need to push them to do more as lawmakers, but also I think folks in the community also can play a role in pushing departments to do, to be bolder, to go a little bit further than the law requires. So I think all of those things are super important. And I think especially on the enforcement side, you know, we've seen when public pressure has worked. I remember I think the 2016, you know, there's been examples, whether it's Marathon or other things that we've been able to force change, in part mostly, you know, due to the organizing in the community. But I think that we need to just keep that going. And also, I think it's our job as elected officials also to make sure that we're sharing information and getting folks engaged when these types of issues are going on. Yeah, I mean, I think oversight is important, okay. But as much as the government can be as transparent as possible, what I mean by that is some of the things that you've already seen, there was a hearing if it was transparency and the request proposals out there and everything, because there is sometimes this perception that it's all public, it is public money. But there are so many private entities and private contracting out, that's where the abuse comes in. And we've seen it over and over again across the country. And so it is important as much as possible to include transparency, because like for instance, Detroit got over $800 million, right? And ARPA, a lot more than the county did. There is still a lack of transparency. Where is that money going? What is it being invested in? My residents don't want the sexy name of like, housing, whatever, you know, they give them a big name and they'll have a press conference on it. But for them, it's like, where is it getting implemented? Which neighborhood is it going in? What is it going to produce? They actually would want to know, is this like 10 houses? And what's the record? You know, so for me, it has to be balanced. But I promise if that's embedded, I really truly, this is my theory, if it's embedded into the process, then you won't have to invest so much, you know, some people are behind on this oversight. And they get in trouble because there isn't that checks and balances of these private entities that are coming in because we're out there. You know, I give unemployment, our employment agency in the state of Michigan is really suffered because before they pushed out and privatized and we ended up, I mean, you saw that, right? But I mean, even then, I don't think we have the checks, because your question to me sounded more about I want to be able to go do all these things, but I feel like I'm being held back because I got to do all this oversight and transparency, which I think is critically important. Government's supposed to be about people. They need to know what's going on. Instead, we I feel like folks are like, just trust it, get it going. But, but especially when there's that much of a heavy end and privatizing and contracting out, it could be a balance. But if it's so much the point we're going to be in a situation where they're putting, you know, dirt in the ground in a community by a park in a school that is going to hurt the community, it's hurting the community. So implicit in your response, which I appreciate it and I agree with you, is that actually we have so given up in government on building as government that everything is implied contracting. You know what I'm saying? Like we've privatized so much of what government actually does that it's implicit that you're talking about contracts going out to private companies. It used to be a time, right, where government actually built stuff, like actually government, right, not not government contracting to subcontractors to build stuff. I'm talking about government actually building stuff. And the point that you're making, right, you're absolutely right. I'm not saying oversight is not good. I think it's really important. But it's particularly important when you end up having private interests benefiting from public money. But that's in part, assuming that government will never get back to a world where government itself builds, you know what I'm saying? And that's the thing that I hope that someday we can get back to. I think we would have gotten closer to it if we passed Bill Beck better, but we can... I think we all agree on that one. Maybe not our friend. I want to move to ask a question. We've talked a little bit about some of these big picture questions. What are the issues that you're paying attention to right now, whether it's at the state or the federal level, that you're particularly worried about that you're hoping to work on action for? So we kind of mentioned water affordability earlier. 2023 is going to be the year that we get something done at the state level around water affordability. It has been a really long time. But I am hopeful that we can get this done. So for folks that are maybe less familiar, this is a giant issue. It has been a crisis for a long time. But I think that COVID actually really highlighted even more. People got it more like, oh yes, you actually need running water to wash your hands with soap and water during a pandemic. And people don't have access to drinking water because they can't afford their water bills. And I also think that there's been reported after a report, including from U of M and MSU and others that have shown that increasingly water rates are going to become more unaffordable for Michigan families. And so I think that we're at the moment right now where there's just more awareness about the situation than ever before. And there's been an evolution in terms of what folks are willing to do. And so whether it's, there's lots of critiques of different programs that are out there. But there's programs that are out there right now to get at water rates that are based on household income. So I think that there are a lot of things that we can do. So right now my team has been starting convenings of sort of a really large work group of environmental advocates, water advocates, the water providers themselves, Michigan Municipal League, and then the Department of Health and Human Services and EGLE and probably forgetting there's a number of folks involved where I'm hoping that we can take all of the different proposals that are out there and come to some consensus and get something done by the end of the year. We really honestly just, we have to. This is going to get worse unless we take action soon. So I'm hoping that we can build some infrastructure at the state level that basically ensures that we have a water affordability program at the state level unless a local water utility has something on their own as long as it meets certain standards. And then of course providing funding for all of these things. And all of that related to this issue of water infrastructure, which is like a whole other hour of conversation, but there's a lot that we need to do. But water affordability is really high on the list for me. That is a round of applause in my book. So thank you. So I'm hoping when the water becomes affordable, it's water that's clean. We know our folks are paying for, I think the rate of water increased by 400% across the country. And it's also dirty water. And no, really. And so, you know, I'm school of thought. Children can't thrive. They can't learn if they're taking in these kinds of poisons that's impacting their brain development so much more. I think we're going to learn more and learn more about plastics, PFAS. It's not just lead anymore. It's not just lead anymore. It's, you know, I've read up to 12 contaminants in some cases. So it's really important. So I started the bipartisan get the let out caucus. This is, you know, again, pushing my colleagues that we got to get to $60 billion that is needed right now of what is identified as needing complete replacement. You know, the federal government was in the business of allowing partial replacement of lines. And we're saying no more. Gotti actually non-Republican support me on a carve out like amendment to carve out like complete full replacement. So I know there's interest and there's a pathway here. And I think, again, you can go anywhere in the state of Michigan or anywhere really. And people say this is important. We should do something about it. And this is something that they want to see their government investing in, be much more aggressive and moving with the urgency. The other really important thing is there, you know, there's a really important bill because we talked about enforcement a lot. It's called environmental justice for all environmental justice for all. Raul Garava, who really led this effort before I got into Congress. And, you know, I came in there like, I got to do something about air permitting, communal of impact analysis, looking at all the, all the, all the pollutants collectively around where, you know, if there's one plant X is applying for this and they're outputting this, but what about, you know, X, Y, you know, about the other ones around there? And collectively, what does that mean? And again, having, you know, much more, I think, you know, public health focus of what it means to, to get a grant that air permit in that community. And the communal impact analysis bill is in there. But what I love about environmental justice for all is enforcement is in there. There's liability, private action, I mean, things that would actually make them do what they're supposed to do, double checking everything. People don't realize like they were required, for instance, you know, one of the big threes, it's still on this on the East side was required to put some mitigation in, you know, they, they actually put it in incorrectly. And we didn't know for seven, eight months. And they still, I don't think they fixed it yet. And we're sitting, I don't think they're working out, but I don't, they haven't fixed it, right? We're sitting here and they're supposed to do this. I'm sorry, but if it was some little recall on the car, they would move quicker. And it's just nothing. So, you know, environmental justice for all gets to the core, because I think Raul did was very good. He went around the country, came to Michigan a number of times, listened to the residents who said, enforcement, enforcement, enforcement, we've tried the consent decrees, it's not working. We tried the public hearings, it's not working. We tried the fines don't work. I mean, so what can we do? And so this is something really important. So these are two things that I think, you know, would be really great to move very closely on. And again, I think there's enough support outside of Congress to have organizers and people pushing from outside in to get them to pay attention to it. Now we're going to move to questions. I want to ask one last thing before we get to questions. The environment in which we talked about environmental justice, the environment that disproportionately bears down on black and brown folks, low income folks in our country, isn't just the air in the water? And that's sort of table stakes. It's also walkability. It's also access to basic commerce. It's also a communal stability and housing. How do we need to rethink the way we talk about environmental justice to include all of that, not just the physical environment, but the social and the legal and the policy and the commercial environment as well? Yeah, so really good question. I mean, I think that for a number of us, it's about talking about really just what is the human impact and also linking things to public health and really making the case for, you know, people might not understand sort of like the broader bigger environmental thing. But if you break it down and say, this is how it's going to impact you. I mean, on the east side, when people's basements got flooded and then they had raw sewage in their basement and then they had like to take all their belongings out on the curb and have it sit there for a while. I mean, then people were like, let's have a conversation about climate change, right? And so, and then now I feel like one of the big areas where there's a lot of interest that I'm hoping that we can continue to weave this together is the connection between housing and weatherizing our homes and like just basic home repairs, right? For some of our older homes where they don't qualify yet for weatherization programs because they have like a roof that's falling apart or they have lead in their house, you know, and they have to deal with that stuff before they can even deal with any of the energy efficiency. But it's being able to talk to people about this is about climate change, but it's also about lowering your utility bill. It's about fixing your roof and making sure that you have a healthy safe home to live in. So I think like really boiling it down to the basics for people is super important because that's why, you know, and more and more I feel like there's unfortunately because climate change is very much happening. There's more and more examples, whether it's, you know, the folks that were without power for a week or the flooding in their basement or, you know, just all of these different things, more and more people get it and I think more and more people are outraged. And so we've got to make all of those connections, though, between all of those different issues so that we're not working in silos. I mean, I think you guys know where I stand on Build Back Better and kind of what went down and I don't want to go too much detail on it, but just know the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill was part of Build Back Better. It was one package and it was separated out. It's like they wanted to put, you know, electric vehicle like charging stations, but then they didn't want to do the rebates to actually get them off the line and to people's drive with affordability of it, right? So that regular folks can have access to it. The number of the climate progressive policies were in Build Back Better. The housing, I mean, as my good colleague from California, Maxine Waters always says, housing is infrastructure. Why isn't housing part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill? And so it was really a false narrative out there that somehow, you know, saying, okay, we deserve safe roads and bridges, but we don't deserve clean air or clean water because there was extra, actually, dollars in Build Back Better that would have got our state, I think, a lot, I mean, we would have made a huge debt in our state in regards to getting lead out of water. And so, you know, it is important to understand and folks like myself who, you know, are tired of the trinkets of just a little bit, a little bit. I mean, every time we do that, it sets us back because when they made that one action, then they, we haven't heard about Build Back Better since. You know, people are like, we're going to work on it later. When? Spent months on it, months. And everywhere I went, it was the first time I ever seen, I told us the present, this is the first time I've ever seen folks working on childcare in the same room with folks working on climate in the same room working on housing, same room they were, I've never seen anything like it. It was remarkable to see and I was excited. And then at the last end, we allowed, you know, a handful of folks that, you know, have been bought and paid for in their sellouts. I'll call them that. And they pretty much sold us out and put that all aside. And those were the important things I think would have, you know, brought those things together. All right. So we have some questions from folks in the audience. And I believe Molly is going to read them out for us. Yep. Thank you both so much. So I've got some questions here from the room and also from online. Given the conversation you were just having, we've had a few questions about sort of city and municipal level policies. I'm going to try and boil them down a little bit. So local policies like housing, as you were just talking about zoning and land use and transportation, and especially public transportation, are critical for reducing emissions, minimizing destruction of natural areas, and also for remedying our long history of racist housing policy. But it can be difficult to make these changes on a city by city level. So what are leaders able to do on the state or the federal level to encourage these kinds of zoning and land use changes and transportation plan changes that can address environmental justice and also racial justice issues? I mean, you know, for me at the federal government, the money really has the leverage to get, I mean, if you think about how we were able to push some of the civil rights measures, as we said, you want this, that's fine, but you got to desegregate, you know what I mean? So the leverage that we can have with the funding is really important. And you know, you hear my colleagues, we have really good thoughtful public, you know, committee hearings about this. We're going to push this forward. But you know, what are some of the requirements that we should maybe have in there? Just just again, incentivizing moving so you get a little bit more if you're going to move towards this, you know, policy, or if you're going to focus on frontline communities, then you should get a bump up or whatever it is. But again, pushing again, this idea I think President Biden is constantly pushing it around equity. But we can legislate equity by using, again, the funding that comes in, the majority of things that are being done in many municipalities is brought in by the federal, even though it goes through the state, it is much of its federal, especially on housing and around development and things like that. But it is important. I mean, it isn't perfect. I'll tell you, you know, there's cases like the Opportunity Zone, which I'm not going to go into, that was supposed to help poor communities and so census tracks. And of course, that gets hijacked by the billionaires. And of course, nobody does anything. I'm like, go get our money back. But that's the way you can do it. But we got to enforce it and make sure nobody comes in and tries to take it. Just echoing the sentiment about the money, right, the follow the money. You know, whether it's transit or anything else, I feel like we've got to do better in terms of tracking it and then also making sure it's going to where it should go and then building in requirements, directing the money to where it needs to go and, you know, really prioritizing EJ communities. I mean, one other thing that I think the person asked about land use, you know, I think that we're starting to see more and more cities starting to think about this question around land use and how it connects to like climate resilience and all these things. One of the things that I would love to see is some type of state policy around incentivizing local communities or giving grants to communities to come up with climate resilience plans that, you know, tie in all of these different things that we're talking about. I know there's been some, there's been some, some of this happening, but we should be doing a lot more because I don't really think there's that many, last time I checked anyway, last time I asked there were not that many cities or communities in the state of Michigan that have any type of sustainability plan or climate resilience plan and certainly not very many when, you know, taking into consideration land use. So I'm hopeful that we can maybe move in that direction. Great. So how do you find the balance between fighting for the policies that bring justice and equity to frontline communities and the policies that you can feasibly pass and enforce? It's so hard for me. I mean, you know, like I supported the Inflation Reduction Act because I did feel like there was direct community engagement. I feel, you know, one of the ways I balance it is, you know, we have this, we have a number of work groups in my district. We check in with them. Even when national groups call me, I was like, well, I got to call United Community Housing Coalition in my district, which a member of that national network, just to get to understand what's going on on the ground, is I balance it by working with them and making sure they're directly involved and get to that point of a possible yes. But, you know, it is, it has really been very difficult. I'll tell you though, you know, I don't want to wait for another like, we already have so many communities that experience what Flint has. And it's like, well, how much more, you know, how much more do we continue to wait to say we have to, we have to move quick or we can't budge on this. It has to be $60 billion. Like, why are we, you know, I think they only put 20% or 25% in the infrastructure bill, which doesn't go far along. We got very little in Michigan. And so it is really important to stay grounded with the community and move with them. That always helps me get to the point of feeling okay as long as we're working together to get that point. But it is hard. There's some things I'm just not, you know, we just, we, as a community, we look at, we just like, well, we did that last time, you know. And, and as long as we have that to back us up, like we did that, that approach last time. It didn't work. So this is why we're, we're going to be a no here. And we're going to say, look, we tried it in our backyard. It didn't work. We got to push for a more aggressive, you know, policy. So I've served in the minority for eight years. And none of my environmental related bills went anywhere except for my asbestos bills, which made it like half of the way through. So I haven't yet been in a position to be able to, but I'm hopeful that, you know, we're in a new year, we're in a new legislature. We'll have many more opportunities to figure out that balance. So, but we got to, we got to get there first. Let me put an award for local government here. So the nice thing about working locally is that you have a very defined scope, right? It's not the 10 million people who live in Michigan. It's not the 350 million people who live in the United States. It's the 1.8 million people who live in Wayne County. And the border is very clear. And one of the things that I find really gratifying is that if you can get a thing done at a local level, because the politics aren't as fierce because the public interest is not as huge, I mean, the private interest is not as huge, you can always tell the story and the narrative of what was done at the local level. A lot of what I found, you know, when I ran for office was everybody said, you can't do it, right? And I'd be sitting there. I mean, I remember healthcare conversations with folks who didn't know that much about healthcare. I mean, like, it's impossible. I'm like, I kind of know this space pretty well. And it's decidedly possible. I understand that a lot of people don't want it done. That's a different thing than it being possible. But being able to actually do it at a local level and then put it on a pedestal and tell a story changes the conversation about what people say is possible or not possible. And so for all y'all thinking about doing great work, we're hiring in Wayne County, but also there is something really nice about the problems for which you have oversight beginning and ending once you cross a particular road. And it is nice to be able to say, all right, we're going to advance the ball. And then this project will serve as a proof point against all the folks who say it's not possible. So I think that ties nicely to the next question. We've been talking about all the different communities across Michigan facing environmental justice issues. How do you make the problems that are facing your district or your state a priority for the entire chamber as you work for environmental justice? And how do you build connections across communities that are experiencing these injustices that maybe they'd look different from place to place, but are all connected? I mean, I bring Congress to the district. I've had three congressional hearings, I think now where I bring them, I literally bring them to the neighborhood where it smells. And you know, it's interesting. No, I've done it. And it's interesting that like one one instance, it didn't smell that day. And they must know they must have saw the press advisory or something, you know, they do it all the time. No, and then or or one actually, because I what I also did with the couple of the chairs is I always put take them on my toxic tour. And it's always with the residents. And we'll go through and there's like street sweepers. And the resident is like, I've never seen that thing before. It is so important to bring Congress to the district because like a lot of my colleagues, I did one on housing. So I did three, but I also did one hearing on the housing crisis in my district. And when I took two members from Texas were in the car in the in this van. And they were looking around and they were like, this is negligence. This is and these are from communities in Texas where like Al Green has had, you know, hurricanes after hurricanes impacting his community. And they're just looking at this like, Oh my God, this is, you know, and then started working with me with the small dollar mortgage with, you know, looking at like what can we do about Community Investment Act because it's not working like it's intended. Same thing with the environment. I I find that all of a sudden, you know, my colleagues are like, Oh, go talk to Rashida. She'll tell you why community impact analysis is so important. Or she has this whole like issue with, you know, right now with this landfill in her district. And it really to me, it keeps me obviously rooted in what's going on. But bringing them there, I feel like they're not now I have a partner instantly, if never ever did any of my resident any of my colleagues actually go back and say, like, I don't want to do this. And you know, like they want to work with me more and more and bringing Congress to the district has been one of the most impactful tool in way of using my community organizing experience and actually showing them so they can smell it and see it and hear from folks that are like, you know, I've never there's never we don't know where nasal cancer came from. But I have, you know, like my uncle has it, like what's going on, you know, those kinds of things. And when you take them and show them a school in the south end of Dearborn, like behind it is the biggest polluter in like in the state. And they're like, there's it's an elementary school. And I'm like, not one, but two, it is really powerful. At going the tour. So we we also did a tour for, well, now she's the former Eagle director, but to really make sure that she understood sort of what was going on. And I think it's really impactful, right? Because people are very visual. I have to see it and experience it to know. But sorry, to your question, I keep going back to water affordability, but it's really true. You know, when we started connecting people in Detroit, and then also bringing other stories from around the state of how they were impacted by water affordability issues, people started recognizing, oh, this is this actually is a statewide problem. But I mean, hopefully we'll get to a place where we don't constantly have to do that. Just the fact that anyone anywhere is experiencing an injustice should be enough to just take action, right? But unfortunately, yes, we absolutely do need to do that and make sure that our colleagues around the state recognize that, yes, what happens, you know, in Detroit often does happen other places and is something that needs to be addressed. So just one note on this. So I work locally, but I ran statewide. And one of the things that you come to understand is that a lot of the challenge that we face most acutely in communities like Detroit, some of the communities in Wayne County, places like Flint, those are issues as as congressmen to leave raised, there are issues that exist all over the state. And if you give them voice, it's almost like you give people the opportunity to tap into that narrative. And it's a narrative that they've been told is not theirs. And I think I'll be honest with you. I think I think activist communities are part we have we have unfortunately aired on this, we missed on this. We're so focused on on on being specific about who faces the most, that we miss the opportunity to extend that narrative to everybody who's experiencing it and making it a truly collective issue. And so it is important for us to call out racial inequities and disparities, but it's also important in the second voice to say, and folks in rural white communities face these same issues too. And I think when people see themselves bought into these issues, and they're like, actually, that does happen in my community, there I my family does drink water from a well that was poisoned by some corporation that was here decades ago, right? I'm worried about the situation that my kid is facing at their decrepit underfunded public school, that it actually creates a space for folks to say, well, actually, I need to be part of the solution. And I think it's actually really powerful because a lot of times it is those legislators in those out communities who want to tell them that the reason you're not getting the solution is because we're so busy trying to offer the solution to these black folks in these these predominantly black communities. Rather than saying, actually, the reason you're not getting the solution is because your Congress, your your state representative or your congressperson has been a part of blocking the solution for everybody, actually, right? And they're ignoring your pain and their pain, right? As a matter of trying specifically to discriminate against them. So just so you know what's happening. And so I think it's really important for us always to remember that there's a there's a second piece. We call out the the inequity, but also remind folks, these are not challenges that are unique in one community. They exist all over our state if we care to look. So all of you come from organizing and community based work. And while policy for environmental justice is progressing, it's often based in science and technology solutions that are driven by sort of like big tech companies or the tech technological elite. So what like what experience do you have in curating policy or creating policy based on community expertise? So you've talked about citizen science, but other other other ways that maybe don't involve data collection at all, but that involve listening to the direct experiences of community members that can inform these kinds of policies. So this is not just it has to be an environmental justice example or okay. So I'm losing track of my day and what I've mentioned at this talk versus other talks, but one of the so this is not an environmental justice example, but it's just the first one that popped in my brain is in Southwesters right when these Whippets were everywhere and people were like what is going on with these Whippets? Then we I don't know people remember the Whippets, but they're the little silver. Now they're actually different colors, but they're the little nitrous oxide canisters. The legitimate purpose is for dispensing whipped cream, but obviously the illegitimate purpose is to get high, but it's also really dangerous because you can, you know, lose oxygen into your brain and people can get in car accidents and all of the stuff is really bad. It's also a huge litter problem. But anyway, people were like, what are you going to do about the Whippets? And I had no idea what I was going to do about the Whippets until we started getting these meetings together, where people were like, well, let's look at other states. And then we did all this research. And so they actually came up with what they wanted to do. So it was great. I love that because it was Southwest Detroit community leaders who said we got to do something. And then we had all these meetings. And then they are like, well, we got to make sure that minors can't buy these things. So then we, that I found a Republican partner and we got the bills passed. So and then now the issue has evolved. And now we have another set of bills around Whippets that we need to get done. But it's, I love that because it literally, like I didn't know what they were. But and so it was community members who told me this is what they are. This is how it's affecting our community. And here's what we want to do. So and they really drove the whole issue. They came up and testified and they got it done. So that's just one example, not environmental justice related to except for maybe the litter. But they made it happen. So I mean, I think my residents without this, I can come up with a solution. It's solutions that my colleagues don't want. But most of the time, because it's like shut it down or whatever. But in some cases, I am sometimes, I am really like impressed at ways that they're thinking about this. Community of impact analysis did not come from science. It came from residents because they had found out about it. But they started talking about it in a way that wasn't scientific as much as like, this is going to actually look at what the impact is and really humanize what that means instead of the science. The other really interesting thing is, much of my, especially the residents that advocate and have become experts on environmental law and environmental, you know, research and everything, most of that doesn't actually have solutions to the problem. Like much of it will executive summary. This is the problem. But they actually will come up with sometimes really effective solutions around rockability, housing, anything without like it being really, some of it is data journey, but really more about how does it, what it would look like in their community. And so they have that kind of lens and understanding that, well, that worked. And like a couple of my residents went to Georgia and saw this like, you know, how that we have the Joe Lucent Greenway and they saw the green and they're like, yeah, but that's not going to work in our community. And so listening to them understand that that's just not going to work. You're going to have to do them in the alley. Like there's no way you can do that in Detroit. And so it, I find that sometimes allowing people that live in the communities that you're trying to like, we're having them come up with the, with the solutions. And again, it's not scientific or technology based. It's like lived experience based. And it's, it is, it's actually moments. I'm like, aha, like all the time. I'm like, yeah, that that makes sense. Yeah. One just thing that I found really valuable when I was serving in Detroit. Sometimes there are two groups that you always hear with, hear from one is private interests who have money to make or money to lose. You always hear from them. The other is organizations that have been built around a particular interest, right? And usually not financially oriented, but this is an interest area that they're really focused on. And the question I'd always ask as an epidemiologist was what aspect of the data am I not seeing, right? Because this is, this is clear. Clearly I'm getting some sort of bias in my, in my analysis. So we literally like a couple of us would just go knock on random doors and be like, Hey, we're from the health department. Got no business here. We're just asking you what's on your mind. What are the issues that you face? And you get some like really interesting feedback because it hadn't been professionalized, right? There is a way sometimes in which, you know, having sort of worked on the activist five one C three side of things is there's a professionalized activism that happens and it takes on its own language and its own skills. And it's really, really important, right? I'm not, I'm not taking anything away from professionalized activists. I am saying though that sometimes there's a particular interest, right, that feeds through that, right? Where you're going to get certain information served in a particular way, right? That's specific to what you are supposed to be hearing. And if you sort of step back for a second and say, who is this person who doesn't have the time or energy to spend trying to talk to me, right, that I can spend some time trying to, trying to go find and learn from it. You learn a lot of amazing things about how people are solving their own problems that then can be collectivized and generalized out into actual into like big picture solutions. And I think it's being able to sort of see that side of things that's really important. And sometimes government misses because everybody's busy and it's hard to go find the person who's not trying to find you. All right, so this is the last question. I have one more question. Any place that you could get more money for the Wayne County region, that it would come from the hundred billion dollars that we've sent to over a hundred billion to Ukraine to fight a war, which I can't imagine if we're talking about moneyed interest, if we're talking about big, big lobbying groups, that there wouldn't be more of an effort to go after that. Further, the revelations recently over the Nord Stream pipeline explosion from Seymour Hirsch was pointed to the very clear evidence that was the United States that did the bombing. I think it's a very important thing to identify because you, congresswoman, have not voted against the funding of Ukraine. And it puts to the mind the whole notion of the rules being... This is unrelated. It's an important question. Let me finish. I know what it is. And so my question is, if we're going to know the idea of the rules-based order, if we proceed to block pipelines, including in ally Germany, then, Camille, will you continue to go on with this lie? Happy to thank you. We really appreciate the input. And thank you for your care and consideration. We have a process that we've been following. I think your question is a very important one. It's not really the space. It's kind of out of context. There are a lot of important questions. We're not trying to answer all of them here. So we're talking about specifically environmental justice, specifically in this region. Really appreciate your question and I appreciate your care on the issue. We're not actually going to take it because there was a whole process here that we'd really appreciate your respect. So thank you for your question. Really appreciate it. Understood. Not the right venue, not the right time, not the right space. Thank you so much. All right, next question. So this is the... Yeah, here we go. Ready? I'm going to hold the mic up right here. So this last question is in first person. So it's not actually me asking the question. I work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All right. I try to say kindly. So here... Everybody, focus on me. I want to say something here. There's a world in which sometimes people with great intentions miss the mark on the folks to whom they should be aiming those great intentions. I'll be honest with you. I do not think, and I don't think anybody in this room thinks, that this congresswoman... You don't have to do that. Who's leading that to happen? So let's go ahead and ask the question. I'm just going to grab the credit. So this question says, I work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Myself and many of my colleagues work tirelessly to incorporate environmental justice in so much as we can into the work we do every day. Still, many people believe we are quote, powerless, power hungry, beholden, tax wise, cynical, etc. What advice do you have as policymakers for those of us who work in policy to build trust with the public and people we serve? That we have their best interests in art. So this is just me speaking, and I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable, but please don't take money from the industries and the corporate polluters that are hurting your community if you really want to build trust within the community again you're fighting for. It is so important because even though as well intended as you are as policymakers, if you are, and you can have meetings and everything, but when you are taking dollars from, again, the same people that are hurting your residents, it doesn't build that trust. And to be honest, it really takes away from pushing back and saying, you know, I want to work with you on this, but I have to hold you accountable and so forth. It's so critically important because I know that when I take not one dime from Marathon, one dime from, you know, the industry, many actually send it and we send it back. I don't even call them and ask them. I mean, they send it and I send it back with the note saying I have to build trust within my community, and I will not accept these corporate dollars because they rather do that and spend it on lobbyists and stuff and actually enforcing their own air permits. The other really important thing is it's the inside, they call it so right now we're going to have a big town hall in my district in Westland and it's around DTE, our power, our community, holding DTE accountable. And it is literally the outside folks saying what can we do, whatever. It's me using the power to convene, using the power of this office to convene, using the power of the letterhead, all of those things. That's how you build trust. I'm your fellow community organizer, but I'm going to use this title, I'm going to use this office to help elevate your voices, be that bullhorn for you all. And so that's how you do it through action that way and also through action and saying I'm not going to engage with them in this because I feel like those campaign finance and those things are so broken and it plays into the whole system where folks don't trust us. They really don't and they don't want to even believe that we've been let down so much. I was that young girl in Southwestern, literally every time I turn around I see my own city council allowing marathon to expand every single time I see it just continuing on and it was so disheartening and then you hear about the donations that came in before their elections and things and I think to myself is it because we're poor? Is it because we're just like regular folks? You feel so incredibly less than because of that so it's really important that after you're in there and you're a real policy maker that you're helping them. You're pushing from the inside. It is where I've gotten more things done. I would have never been able to get the 1.1 billion dollars to stop water shut off in our country. We have a water fund program because of the outside folks pushing in and so it's really important again to develop that relationship because I find that we get in these positions we get elected and we're like okay it's like no, you continue on engaging them as if you're at a nonprofit community movement organization. If you do that, one, you'll have a lot more fun and two, you're going to really truly be able to make sure you're still speaking in a way that people feel hurt and seen. Yeah, so I guess two things. One, it sounds like this person worked for the EPA and so whether it's you're working for local, state or federal government if even you know so I have a friend who works for the EPA working within the bureaucracy can be tough and I know it's really challenging. I've never worked for the federal government my husband used to and I hear that lots of bureaucracy but remember why you ran, not ran but why remember why you sought that job in the first place and just like I remind Kylie, remember why you ran for office even if you're in the executive branch so people obviously want that job to make a difference in some way and so I feel like there are there are those people who work for these agencies that the community does trust because they spend time there and they listen to people it's just basic human listening skills and being able to build a connection and not just sticking to here's my sheet of paper, here's the things that I need to follow in this process and recognizing that people are human beings when they show up to a public hearing to testify of course there's going to be emotions and of course there's going to be anger and being on the receiving end of that showing compassion and empathy it's kind of just like a basic human thing that sometimes we forget whether you're in the executive branch or the legislative branch or whatever remembering that people are human so doctor I'll say it, whoever this is I don't know who you are at that time it was Michigan DEQ but it was an eagle person that put me in the car and took me around because I didn't understand I was like I don't get it we have 11 inspectors for all of Wayne County this again was a few years when I was in the state house and he showed me like literally again this moment, you wouldn't think it he was a community organizer for that moment and showing me like where the data and he goes everybody's paying attention to them but that's the 800 pound gorilla and I'm like why and they go boom, boom, boom, boom same thing with MDOT once I didn't understand why this purge was being built I didn't get it I was like there's no way that this could be happening he goes nope let me, takes me into this Plaza area and shows me how this billionaire literally cut off a park, a public street everything put me in the car and showed me and I just think like there are folks you're going to run into maybe like Stephanie or myself or others that are just eager to hear from that perspective again not giving us can't go past that line but they are incredibly knowledgeable have the institutional knowledge tell me oh you got to figure out Act 901 I'm like what's Act 901 going through that process with me as an unelected bureaucrat myself look the thing about being in public in this side of public service is you can do a lot you just can't say a lot and so you want to be that person who gets stuff done who nobody is ever going to think right the one behind the scenes who moves a piece of information gets a principle focused on an issue right and sometimes people are going to know that you did it but that wasn't the point of the work right having been on the political side and having been on the the sort of unelected appointed side they're mirrors of each other right often times a politician can say whatever they want to say and they may not have the positionality to always act in a particular space whereas sometimes when you're appointed you actually have a lot of positionality to act but you can't always say what you want to say and so the trick is being able to check your own self sometimes and be like what can I do even if this person thinks I'm the one who's on the wrong side of it I know that I did what I could to move the ball down the field and sometimes you can't right but it's always saying alright how do I set up myself the next time right or set us up to do the right thing the next time with that I know we're six minutes late deeply, deeply appreciate and if we can give a big forward round of applause for our time and time for me to leave