Remarks for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Convention (Opening Remarks), As Prepared for Delivery
Michael Regan
Las Vegas, NV
Good morning! It’s my pleasure and honor to kick off day three of the NAACP National Convention.
I’d like to thank the NAACP for inviting me...thank you, Chair Russell, for your leadership...
And thank you to my good friend, President Johnson, who’s been a steadfast partner to this administration and this EPA...
Earlier this year, I joined President Johnson on a trip to Africa. We visited Ghana and Mozambique and spoke to locals about the environmental challenges facing their communities...some challenges not entirely different from those faced by our communities right here in the United States.
It was a deeply impactful, lifechanging experience.
Together we visited the home and final resting place of the great Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois—whose trailblazing work continues to inspire generations of leaders and advocates.
As Du Bois once said, “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
And make no mistake...these words ring as true today as they did 100 years ago...and at EPA we are working every day to fight for equity and justice for all.
As a proud son of North Carolina, I was only a child when the state decided to site a toxic landfill in the backyard of a predominantly Black community.
I remember my parents discussing the heroism of the Black women and men who locked arms and bravely laid down in front of trucks carrying dirt laced with toxic waste.
Folks, they literally laid down their lives to ensure that they could live safely in a community free of toxic pollution.
And those protests, more than 40 years ago, catalyzed the birth of the environmental justice movement...an ongoing struggle to recognize the disproportionate impact that environmental hazards can have on overburdened and underserved communities...
Particularly our communities...Black and brown communities.
And although that was decades ago, we still have a long way to go to achieve true environmental justice for all.
When I became Administrator...I vowed to visit underserved communities...to see these challenges firsthand...and to take what I heard back to Washington—ensuring their needs are addressed by our agency.
I sat with folks in their churches, at their kitchen tables, and on their front porches...listening to people that have been hurting for a long time...
And folks, the conditions I saw were deeply troubling.
I visited Jackson, Mississippi – a capital city in America – and talked to residents who, year after year, have lived with boil water advisories due to decades of neglected water infrastructure...
I met with families in Lowndes County, Alabama – a wellspring for the civil rights movement – and saw up close the environmental injustices that folks have been living with for decades...pipes protruding from the side of their homes, spilling waste into their yards and places where their children play...creating conditions ripe for a resurgence of hookworm in the community...
I’ve been to St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, located in what is known as Cancer Alley...where children – the very same age as my son Matthew – were learning and playing right next door to a massive chemical plant.
I’ll never forget meeting an activist, in his 80s, who’d spent his entire life fighting for environmental justice...
He took me to meet his sister who was in her 70s and battling cancer...
She introduced me to her daughter, who is in her late 50s and also had cancer…who then introduced me to her son, who was in his thirties and had cancer as well...
This is the legacy environmental racism and injustice can leave behind...
Stories like these are all too familiar and can be found in every corner of our country. These persistent inequities don’t just harm the communities who experience them – they harm all of us.
They hold back the people of our nation from their God-given rights of life, liberty, and justice. They hamstring our local economies and limit the potential of our children...
Folks, one thing that has become clearer and clearer to me in this role is that the fight for civil rights and the fight for environmental, economic, health, and racial justice are inseparable.
We simply cannot be for one without the other.
President Biden understands this at his core. And he understands that America needs a strong EPA.
Which is why, through the President’s Investing in America agenda, he has delivered unprecedented investments for the health, equity, and resilience of communities across this country.
Not only did the president vow to restore America’s position as a global leader in the fight against climate change...he promised to do so while also prioritizing the health and safety of our nation’s most vulnerable communities.
President Biden sees everybody for who they are, and who they can be when they’re given the opportunity and resources to soar.
Thanks to his leadership, EPA is taking historic action and matching tens of billions of dollars with solutions developed by the communities that have, for too long, been overlooked and underserved.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to fix many of our nation’s most longstanding and pervasive environmental and public health concerns...and we are committed to getting it right.
Because we know that investing directly in Black communities that lack resources and opportunity is not simply a financial transaction, but an investment in the future of these communities and the folks who live there.
With this once-in-a-generation funding...and a robust regulatory agenda...we’re rebuilding our water infrastructure, and replacing 100% of the lead pipes that poison our water supply and harm our children...
We’re delivering real results for places like Cancer Alley...issuing standards that will slash cancer-causing pollution and reducing elevated cancer risks from chemical plants by 96%...
We’re revitalizing blighted neighborhoods, and helping underserved communities access resources they’ve been shut out of for years...
And we’re ensuring environmental justice is engrained in the very DNA of EPA...
Folks, we’re committed to doing everything we can to right the historic wrongs that have held back so many of our communities.
This is a unique moment in history. Addressing the climate crisis is certainly a massive undertaking, but it’s also an opportunity — unlike ever before — to work together to achieve a healthier, more equitable, and more just world.
Let us continue to fight for a world where all people — regardless of the color of their skin, the community they live in, or the money in their pocket — have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to live a healthy life.
Thank you, and I hope you have a great rest of the convention!