This year marks the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the end of slavery when word of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached Galveston, Texas.
This historic day perhaps takes on even more significance as our nation continues to protest the recent murders of Black people at the hands of police and vigilantes.
For more more on today’s rally in Charleston, go here.
To participate virtually, please BlkFreedom’s national event today when six Black museums join forces to commemorate Juneteenth.
Renee Alves is our new Communications and Operations Coordinator!
A California native, Renee holds a B.A. in Sociology and minors in Civic Engagement and Public Affairs from UCLA. Before joining our team, Renee worked for the ACLU of Southern California’s Jails Project and served in the Peace Corps as a Children, Youth, and Family Volunteer in the Philippines.
Down the road, she plans to obtain either a Master of Social Work or Master of Public Administration (or both!), after which she hopes to work in criminal justice and incarceration reform. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer, eating copious amounts of ice cream, and asking people if she can pet their dogs.
Renee will be your future Budget Beat editor so stay tuned! Email Renee.
We are working on a project called Reimagine Appalachia to help ensure that our region is at the table instead of on the menu when it comes to creating good paying clean energy jobs and a stronger economy as we address climate change.
Please join us on Monday, June 22 at 1:00 p.m. to give us your input on our campaign and draft framework that aims to create a new deal that works for all of us. The United States will rebuild and retool-it is already starting to happen-and it is vital that the people of Appalachia have a say in how that happens. It’s time. Let’s get started on writing a New Deal to build the Appalachia we want. Please RSVP and share with other organizations who may be interested!
Current draft of the framework can be found here.
Thank you and we hope to see you there!
This week the WVCBP joined other groups in signing a letter to governors from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to advise against promoting development of a regional petrochemical facility, commonly known as a cracker plant.
Due to market conditions, further weakened by the global pandemic, a project of this magnitude would not bring the promised jobs and economic growth touted by industry.
Read the letter and an article in this week’s Columbus Dispatch here and The Youngstown Business Journal here.
For background and more information, read this report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
WVCBP Executive Director Ted Boettner also appeared on WV Metro News on Monday. Listen here.
This week the Food for All Coalition delivered a letter to Governor Jim Justice urging him to use federal CARES Act dollars to support transportation in all counties to provide summer meals to West Virginia school children.
The letter states, in part, that West Virginia received $1.25 billion as part of the CARES Act passed in March. A mere fraction of these federal dollars could be utilized to bolster the summer nutrition programs of each county to include bus route meal delivery to children throughout the state.
The full letter can be read in this Bluefield Daily Telegraph article.
COVID-19 has forced the nation into an unprecedented emergency. The current emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer-term crisis – that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that has long ignored the needs of 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from being poor.
In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America and sought to build a broad movement that could unite poor and dispossessed communities across the country. Today, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up this work. People across the nation have joined under the banner of the Campaign to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, climate change and ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
They are coming together to demand that the 140 million poor and low-income people in our nation – from every race, creed, gender, sexuality and place – are no longer ignored, dismissed or pushed to the margins of our political and social agenda.
Add your voice by attending the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington Digital Justice Gathering, on June 20, 2020.
The Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington will be an historic, generationally transformative digital event using the internet and the airwaves to drive the vision and agenda of our communities into the heart of the national narrative.
History teaches us that it is exactly in moments like these that a movement of the many is necessary to force the nation into action. In the midst of pandemic, economic collapse, climate change, and more, the key to real and lasting change lies within our communities – within our ability to come together in new and bold ways.
Register here.
Are you tired of struggling or watching friends and family struggle to get life-saving health care? Do you think health care is a human right? Do you agree that West Virginians deserve better?
We do! We need your help.
Tune in for a Virtual Town Hall on Thursday, June 25, at 7:00PM and Monday, June 29, 2020, at 6:00PM, to share your ideas and join the Health Care for All WV movement. We will be living streaming directly on social media.
Learn about the Health Care for All campaign and our three big victories so far this year.
For more information on the impact of the pandemic on West Virginia’s economy, safety net, unemployment resources, and more, please visit our special website page.
