J. Sierra
In his 12-year legislative career in Congress, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) has been a champion of the environment and the protection of public health from the daily bombardment of toxic pollution. As the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, his work on issues such as environmental justice, climate change and the protection of our special places has set a very high standard for the rest of his colleagues on Capitol Hill. As the representative of a border district, he has been a staunch opponent to the construction of the wall along the Mexican border alleging cost effectiveness concerns and the damage to critical habitat areas.
Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has been a leading voice in Congress in support of the DREAM Act and immigration reform with a path to citizenship. He has also strongly opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) —a trade agreement involving 12 Pacific Rim nations and signed by all its members in New Zealand on Feb. 4th— alleging it “will harm our air, land and water, and destroy jobs and depress wages.”
In this interview with the Sierra Club at his Capitol Hill office, Rep. Grijalva talks about the TPP; Latinos, climate change and toxic pollution; the National Park Service’s centennial; Latino’s attendance to national parks; diversity in the environmental movement, and voter suppression, among others.
Sierra Club: We Latinos suffer the consequences of environmental degradation and therefore of the climate crisis in a disproportionate way. Yet we are more in favor of switching to a clean energy economy and decisive government intervention to fight climate change than just about any other community in the country. Where is the disconnect?
Raúl Grijalva: Unfortunately, I think the disconnect is historic. When you cite a permitted use of an emissions plant, nine times out of ten they are going to be in or near a Latino or African-American community. When you decide where a landfill is going to go, it’s always near or adjacent to those communities. When it’s a heavy industrial use, it’s for those communities. You have this pattern going on, and it’s been going on for the same reason a lot of other things have gone on—it has been institutionalized. Those communities have limited political power; therefore, it’s easy to do it there than anywhere else. Unfortunately, the elected leaders even from those communities don’t view is as a priority to push back. They see it as a cost of doing business. They see it as the jobs agenda, and kind of ignore the health and welfare repercussions and the effect on kids, such as lead poisoning, or high levels of asthma in East Los Angeles, or TCE [trichloroethylene] contamination and spiking cancer rates in my own hometown of Tucson. When issues of clean air and clean water come to the fore, our community isn’t always factored in as to how critical it is just for them. And the ravages of climate change are going to hit the poorest of the poor first, and those with means are going to be able to somehow mitigate, and those without are going to take the brunt. That’s true worldwide and it’s true in this country as well. I think it has been institutionalized, it has been a slow response, and for many years, if I may say so, even though it has changed a lot for the last five or six years, for mainstream advocates for the environment this has not been a priority issue. And I say that with all due respect and the acknowledgement that they have made a change. The conservation agenda was a top-burner issue, the preservation of habitat, species, etc. And I think Latinos do see the connection between that effort and their own wellbeing. What we are trying to do in the House Committee on Natural Resources, on which I serve, is to connect the two—the environmental justice agenda and preserving the conservation laws that have served us well.
SC: Yet even after the historic Paris Agreement and almost 200 hundred nations currently fighting the climate crisis, practically the entire Republican delegation here in Congress keeps either denying or ignoring the worst threat to the country’s national security, and, more importantly, the future of humanity as a whole. Why?
RG: I think they are bought. I think it’s a rigged process and it’s corrupt. And I don’t mean corrupt in the indictable sense. I mean corrupt in the way decisions are made. So you have Big Gas, Big Oil and other extraction industries up here for whom fossil fuels have been the base for their profits and business model, who have effectively shut down any objective discussion. And they have been able to lobby and cow the Republican leadership and much of its membership not to even discuss the issue. When we first got the outline of the program for the Natural Resources Committee by my Republican colleagues, they did not mention the words “climate change.” We got it in there, but the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t there to begin with. I think that as long as those industries and interests continue to cling on and try to maximize what they can do with fossil fuels, you will have the reciprocal lack of attention over here. And more importantly, you will see the contributions toward those campaigns skewed that way. I am not going to get any of it. A lot of people on my side of the isle won’t get any of it. But it’s skewed that way with super PACs. The Koch brothers make their living off that energy, and they are going to spend almost a billion dollars in this 2016 campaign. That’s the corrupting influence and that’s how these votes are bought.
SC: Trans-Canada won’t give up after President Obama rejected the permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline. They have invoked Chapter 11 of NAFTA and sued the U.S. government for what they think is their rightful pursuit of profits. This litigation will be resolved outside U.S. legal jurisdiction and behind closed doors. They are not learning, are they?
RG: No, and that shows their arrogance. I hate to invoke that whole issue of sovereignty here, but this is a sovereign decision by our government and our government backed by the majority of the American people to say no. So by using the mechanism of NAFTA, which many people have warned about—even regarding the TPP [Trans Pacific Trade Agreement]—we are losing control of the decision-making process that is important to your people and to your environment. And here we are being sued. I think it’s the height of arrogance, and I wish the Canadian government and its new prime minister would chime in a little more and emphasize to TransCanada that the decision has been made and it's time to move on. And the fact that the pipeline would be transporting the dirtiest of oils makes it particularly arrogant because communities along the line were against it, tribal nations both in Canada and here in the U.S. were against it, the bulk of scientific minds in this country didn’t see it as beneficial and it would not have contributed anything for energy independence. It was all for export for this company. It didn’t seem as if it was going to appear at the pumps.
SC: Yet the TPP would be NAFTA on steroids. The equivalent of NAFTA’s Chapter 11 in the TPP gives corporations a lot of power over the sovereignty of the signing nations. What is your position on the agreement?
RG: Oh, I am opposed to it. I am opposed to the fast track for those reasons and others. I asked our negotiator during a meeting: The president is four-square, 100 percent behind the Paris Accord and is going to do whatever he can administratively to meet the goals of the Clean Power Plan and other objectives. But isn’t it a contradiction where the stated position of the administration regarding coal-fired plants, reducing our fossil fuels dependency is in conflict with what we are doing with the TPP? There is a contradiction because we are losing that ability to make those decisions. That’s the problem with having a trade agreement that still places the profit motive ahead of any other motives. Should making money be part of any trade agreement? Absolutely. Everybody wants to make money. But there are other factors—human, environmental, etc.—that need to be put up front as well.
SC: The National Park Service celebrates its centennial this year. Yet the assault on our special places continues on many fronts, including corporations trying to trademark—steal, really—many of Yosemite’s most iconic names. You are a champion of the preservation and promotion of our special places. What can you do to stop this onslaught?
RG: I think the Secretary of the Interior’s role will be critical in these months that are left in this administration to indicate that any efforts on that part will be met with both legal and administrative resistance, to the utmost. One thing is to give to the trust to celebrate the centennial, and another is to be demanding naming rights. We worry that people are going to want to be associated with the big, iconic places—Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, etc.—and that we have a lot of other public lands in need of infrastructure repair and staff support. This is one of the dangers. If these places are seen as a brand name, then we begin to lose some of the independence and the special nature of that site. That’s the last thing I want to see in that respect. I don’t think we will see anything legislatively that is going to be done. But I do think any legal efforts that a company might take, or any efforts to sell the branding rights to a company for a contribution, should be resisted both legally and administratively. It would diminish and demean what we mean by special places.
SC: There is a proposal to designate much of the Grand Canyon watershed on federal land outside of the national park as a national monument. What is the status of this effort?
RG: This is my legislation. It’s call the Grand Canyon Monument Act, where we are adding the canyon’s watershed, which is 1.2 million acres, to what has already been set aside by former Secretary [Ken] Salazar in terms of no uranium mining in that area. We want to create a permanent protection buffer for the watershed and the river itself and prevent toxic and dangerous uranium mining along the rim of the canyon. We’ve got a great deal of support from the tribes affiliated with the Grand Canyon. I doubt this legislation will ever get a fair hearing in this House of Representatives, but we have created a template of stakeholders to push for that designation. All the tribes—Hopi, Sunni, Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Apache—have religious, cultural and sacred site identification with the Canyon. They have become the drivers behind this designation and we are very gratified that they have. We have done a poll and the support for the designation is overwhelming in Arizona and nationally.
SC: We Latinos have this very special attachment to the land that we call “el terruño.” We consider protecting the land not only a family value, but a religious one as well. Yet, visitation by Latinos to national parks and other protected lands is dismally low. What can be done legislatively to improve this deficit?
RG: Things can be done both legislatively and administratively. We need to integrate Latinos into the staff functions of the national parks. That has to be priority number one. On the legislative side, we need to begin to provide resources to the Park Service so that they can partner with schools, community groups, and civic organizations in Latino communities so you begin to encourage the use of our national parks. When you have a park 15 minutes from an urban center like Tucson that is 30 or 40 percent Latino, but park visitation by Latinos is low, that says a lot. The reasons are partly the cost, but I also think that it’s also about the welcome mat, about how you deal with the culture managing our parks and our special places so that it is culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate. I have talked to the director of the National Park Service about putting together a concerted effort to take the parks to the community. The strength of preserving our public lands has been based on the constituents' use of that land. And as our nation changes demographically, so too must that be reflected in the visitation rates because over the long haul, for the protection and preservation of these special places and the enhancement of these special places, we are going to need a representative cross section of America to be users of these park lands. It behooves us to make that accommodation now, as opposed to waiting. If we kick the issue down the road we could lose a generation of people who could have been our partners, and more importantly, the voters and supporters of these parks.
SC: Even though the Sierra Club is in the midst of the biggest diversity drive in its history, the environmental movement as a whole has a long way to go to become as diverse as our country is. What can the big green organizations do to improve this record?
RG: Be coalition partners in efforts that might not be what big green groups are used to working on, and thinking outside the box in terms of building coalitions with diverse communities over issues such as clean air and water. These organizations need to dedicate staff and resources to the very critical aspects of education, outreach, and training. That is going to be essential down the road. They also need to diversify in terms of the issues that we take on and the faces that represent those issues. These efforts need to be so integrated into the organization that is just not an adjunct to it.
SC: So more emphasis on environmental justice, environmental protection, and the health of our communities, correct?
RG: And your personnel. You identify with those issues and build a relationship based on solidarity and coalition building. Let me give you an example involving Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson. When legislation was passed to build a 1,200-mile wall along the border, all environmental laws were suspended in order to stop immigration. Human rights, immigrant rights, and Latino organizations all opposed it. At the same time, Defenders opposed the lifting of all these environmental laws. As a consequence, they talked and came to the conclusion that each side needed to support the other side’s issue. So these human rights organizations became great advocates for preserving the environment. And Defenders became great advocates for humane treatment of people on the border and comprehensive immigration reform. So all of a sudden they both are allies and that alliance is healthy.
SC: And lastly, Latinos will again be a decisive voting force come November. Yet we continue to see efforts across the country to make harder and harder for us to exercise our constitutional right to vote. What can you and other members of Congress do to at least slow down this tide of voter suppression in our country?
RG: We need to immediately push back against those suppressing efforts. We are concentrating on so-called preclearance states under the Voting Rights Act that are building barriers to the right to vote, such as purges, language requirements, moving precincts so that people who are accustomed to using the same voting place for 20 years all of a sudden find that their voting place is gone. Then they have to go miles and miles to vote. Those are all tactics to suppress the vote. I think it will require discipline on the part of all the organizations fighting suppression. I also think this should be an educational campaign, and that’s what we are going to do in my district, educate the voters. And then, this is all about your own defense. Tu voto es para defender tu familia, a ti mismo, a tu comunidad y los valores que apoyas. [Your vote is about defending your family, yourself, your community and the values you support.] And we also are going to concentrate a great deal on vote by mail, so they don’t have to put up with any of that. In my district, last time we had the biggest turn out, and almost 60 percent of voters voted by mail.