by Nick Pope
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is giving up to $3 million to an activist group that advocates for cutting police budgets and closing prisons to ensure “climate justice” for inmates and “reentry communities.”
The Ella Baker Human Rights Center (Baker Center) and Insight Garden Program have been chosen to receive between $1 million and $3 million to implement the Environmental and Climate Justice in Prisons and Reintegration Communities program. The Baker Center has previously endorsed or advocated for left-wing activist positions such as deprivation of funds this Policeefficiently December
The Baker Center receives funding from the EPA’s approximately $2 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change grant program, funded by Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s flagship climate bill, according to the EPA. The Baker Center is a partner organization of the Insight Garden program, which was the lead applicant.
It has always been like this and it will always be like this #DefundThePolice https://t.co/VwwqIEJqcj
— Ella Baker Center (@ellabakercenter) May 1, 2024
“Through this project, up to 1,350 people from California prisons and reintegration communities will learn more about the unique climate and environmental justice challenges these communities face — such as the impact of dangerous heat waves on populations housed in aging facilities without adequate cooling or ventilation — and identify potential solutions,” according to the EPA. “The project will also establish a statewide Environmental Advisory Council to educate decision-makers about these challenges and develop policy recommendations to improve conditions.”
Baker’s Center Support defunding the police and called “total divestment from the police” in November 2021 after Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal. The organization also called for California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to close five prisons in the state.
The group also praised the passage of California’s Proposition 47 in 2014, which effectively decriminalized shoplifting, making the theft of property valued at less than $950 a misdemeanor rather than a felony, According to to the California Supreme Court. Proposition 47 preceded a significant raise in retail thefts in the state, According to to the California Public Policy Institute, and the state saw retailers and businesses ride away from cities like San Francisco, partly due to an raise in theft and crime.
Baker’s Center “[works] “Towards a Queer, Black, Feminist Liberation” and “[strives] not replicate the culture of white supremacy — such as fear of open conflict, perfectionism, power-hoarding, microaggressions, and individualism — and directly confront anti-Black hostility personally, organizationally, and in our communities,” According to to the “Our Values” section on your website.
The organization also runs the “Civic Leaders Center” and the “Voters Center”, According to to your website.Voter Center“provides a link to the California voter registration website, as well as information about which incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people are eligible to vote in California.
“The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the latest funding announced last week, is receiving between one and three million dollars,” West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito said Wednesday. a press conference addressing the EPA award-winning activists. “They are actively advocating for defunding the police, decriminalizing shoplifting, and abolishing our prisons… I mean, it’s taxpayer money, and what do they have to do with telling people how to live and do better and how to clean up their environment?”
The Baker Center joins a growing list of left-wing activist groups receiving taxpayer money from the EPA. Other groups include Climate Justice Alliancewhich will receive $50 million to operate as a grant-making entity, and New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice and New York Immigration Coalitionwhich are partner organizations in the coalition that was awarded $50 million in the same EPA grant program.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Baker Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Nick Pope is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
