Biden's EPA Cuts Big Check to Help Disburse Police Activists to Seek 'Climate Justice' for Convicts

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is sending up to $3 million to an activist group advocating cutting police budgets and closing prisons to seek “climate justice” for convicts and “communities of re-entry”.

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (Baker Center) and the Insight Garden Program were selected to receive $1 million to $3 million to pursue “environmental and climate justice in prison and reentry communities.” The Baker Center has previously supported or defended positions of left-wing activists such as defunding the policeindeed decemberiminalist theft, closure prisons, and much more.

Funding for the Baker Center comes from an approximately $2 billion EPA “Community Change for Environmental and Climate Justice” grant program, endowed by the Inflation reduction law (IRA), President Joe Biden's signature climate bill, according to the EPA. The Baker Center is the partner organization for the Insight Garden program, which was the lead applicant.

Always has been and always will be #DefundThePolice https://t.co/VwwqIEJqcj

— Ella Baker Center (@ellabakercenter) May 1, 2024

“This project will engage up to 1,350 people in California prisons and re-entry communities to learn more about the unique environmental and climate justice challenges facing these communities, such as the impact of dangerous heat waves in populations housed in aging facilities without adequate cooling or ventilation,” according to the EPA. “The project will also establish a statewide Environmental Advisory Board to educate policymakers about these challenges and develop recommendations policies to improve conditions”.

The Baker Center supports defund the police and he called for “complete divestment of the police” in November 2021 after the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. As recently as May, so did the organization he called for California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to close five state prisons.

The group too praised the passage of California's Proposition 47, which was passed in 2014 and effectively decriminalized shoplifting by making the theft of goods valued under $950 a misdemeanor instead of a felony. seconds in the Superior Court of California. Proposition 47 preceded a major uptick in retail theft in the state, seconds at the Public Policy Institute of California, and the state has seen retailers and businesses leave of cities like San Francisco thanks in part to increased theft and crime.

The Baker Center”[works] towards a black queer feminist liberation” and “[strives] to not replicate the culture of white supremacy, such as fear of open conflict, perfectionism, hoarding of power, microaggression, and individualism, and to confront blackness directly personally, organizationally, and in our communities” . seconds in the “Our Values” section of their website.

The organization also operates a “Civic Leader's Hub” and a “Voter Hub”. seconds on your website. the “Voter center” includes a link to a California state voter registration website, as well as information about which incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people can vote in California.

“The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the most recent funding announced last week, is receiving between $1 million and $3 million,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, said Wednesday. press conference addressing award-winning EPA activists. “And they actively advocate defunding the police, decriminalizing robbery and abolishing our prisons… I mean, that's taxpayer money, and what does that have to do with telling people how to live and cope better and clean up your surroundings?”

The Baker Center joins a growing list of left-wing activist groups that receive taxpayer cash from the EPA. Other groups include the Alliance for Climate Justicewho is getting $50 million to be a streaming donor, as well as the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice and New York Immigration Coalitionwhich are partner organizations in a coalition that was awarded $50 million through the same EPA pass-through grant program.

The EPA and the Baker Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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