Environmental justice networks representing millions demand the EPA stop its rollbacks of vital protections, hold polluters accountable, and stay true to its mission with renewed vision, embedding environmental justice at its core to protect current and future generations
December 2, 2025
Contact: Ashley Sullivan, ashley.sullivan@weact.org, (917) 837-1183 (WE ACT/EJLF)
NATIONWIDE – Today, on the 55th anniversary of the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, a coalition of environmental justice groups representing millions of people living in frontline and fenceline communities across the U.S. call out the Trump administration’s efforts through the Agency to abandon its mission over the last year, and push for a comprehensive repositioning to center environmental justice for all. The Trump administration’s EPA has moved forward with the most unprecedented actions in the Agency’s history, including rollbacks to clean air, water, and worker protections, cutting staff, defunding programs, rescinding critical grants, and prioritizing polluters – all at the expense of environmental justice communities. In response, a coalition of environmental justice networks are pushing back to hold the line for life-saving protections and to empower people to hold the EPA accountable for a better and renewed vision that truly protects the health of everyone. The coalition, which includes the Moving Forward Network (MFN), Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), Equitable & Just National Climate Platform (EJNCP), Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA), and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF)
To learn more, please use and share our Environmental Justice EPA Anniversary Toolkit here.
See quotes from key leaders on this issue below. To speak directly with these individuals and community members, please reach out directly to ashley.sullivan@weact.org, (917) 837-1183.
QUOTES
“The EPA was born from the power of our voices demanding for our fundamental rights to clean air, water, and land to be protected. Over half a century later, we cannot let the EPA dismantle critical protections that will allow polluters to once again poison our water, fill our lungs with smog, and disproportionately harm environmental justice communities. The future is ours to shape! We will keep fighting for an EPA and government that protects our rights, our health, and our future where all people breathe clean air, drink clean water, and have the opportunity to thrive.” – Anastasia Gordon, Director of Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice
“Our communities built the movement that created the EPA 55 years ago. We refuse to go back to the days of burning rivers and deadly smog. The Trump administration is twisting the EPA’s mission on its head, and sacrificing our health and the livelihoods of our families for the sake of billionaires’ profits. We won’t stand by while the few protections we have left are dismantled. We demand clean air, safe water, and a healthy future for every family, no matter their ZIP code.” – Mar Zepeda, Legislative Director, Climate Justice Alliance
“Fifty-five years ago, people-power led by communities on the frontlines of pollution and injustice pushed our government to create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA. That power still lives in environmental justice communities today. The EPA is meant to protect us from corporate polluters. Now is the moment to demand a new path, one where the EPA and our government truly embed environmental justice, honor community leadership, and deliver full health protections our communities have fought for across generations.”– Paulina López, Duwamish River Community Coalition, Seattle, Member of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum
“Intense public concern over pollution and advances in science led to the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 55 years ago. Today, clean air, clean water, safe food and thriving communities remain enduring demands of the American people. The Trump Administration’s rollback of critical environmental regulations, elimination of environmental justice grants, and attacks on science fundamentally betray EPA’s mission and stand on the wrong side of history. Join the conversation about creating a roadmap for an EPA and federal government that truly protects public health and the environment, addresses the climate crisis, and embeds justice and equity throughout its programs.” –Charles Lee, Principle Author of the foundational report Toxic Wastes and Race, former Senior Policy Adviser at the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the EPA, Visiting Scholar at Howard University School of Law
“When the first Earthday gathering happened, thousands of people turned up in Central Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to demand that we, as a nation, pay more attention to addressing environmental threats and harms. Just a few miles north in the historic Harlem neighborhood a huge Black and brown community was struggling with air pollution triggered asthma rates, lead poisoning from old housing stock, a lack of green space, and many other environmental threats. But for the most part my neighbors and I had no idea the historic Earthday gathering was taking place in Central Park, and we were not invited. One especially significant outgrowth of the first Earthday celebration was the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I didn’t know it at the time, but the standing-up of the U.S. EPA and the formation of West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) some seventeen years later, would become intertwined as we worked to fight against a host of environmental harms enveloping our community. Most especially air pollution owing to the fact that we had the highest levels of PM 2.5 exposure of any community in the United States. Along with alarmingly high incidences of asthma and rates of premature death from asthma and other respiratory diseases. In collaboration with Harlem Hospital, the Columbia University Children’s Environmental Health Center, and the NY Urban program of NRDC we worked for thirty years to urge EPA to lower the level of the PM 2.5 standard which triggered local, state and federal action to improve air quality, particularly in overburdened communities like ours. Last year the Biden-Harris administration finally lowered the PM 2.5 standard from 12 to 9 micrograms. But a few days ago the current administration decided to abandon that revised standard and revert back to the higher level of allowable exposure. We know that many more people will die as a result of exposure to this hazardous air pollutant. Rest assured that we will not relent in our advocacy to restore EPA to its former glory, and to see them once again vigorously enforce environmental regulations to protect vulnerable communities like ours.” – Vernice Miller-Travis, Co-Founder and Board Member of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Executive Vice President at Metropolitan Group
“Dr. Clarice E. Gaylord, the first Director and Founder of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice along with a cadre of early environmental justice grassroot community leaders and a multi-discipline force of dedicated individuals from academia, business, local government and nonprofit organizations laid the groundwork for such a Roadmap. Prime examples were created both Agency specific as well as via interagency partnerships to promote national community driven projects. Two of these examples I managed and are most proud of is the 2003 EJ Collaborative Problem Solving (EJCPS) Grant Program (led by Dr. Gaylord) and the 2005 Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Program (led by Rob Brenner formerly of the Office of Air and Radiation). Most importantly, was the development of Agency wide management of these two programs. There was both a national management as well as a regional management. EPA headquarters and regions managed the EJCPS program and for the CARE program there was added specific federal interagency agencies to assist in management. Building upon the foundation of these two very successful programs, with adequate time and resources could begin tackling the complex social and economic problems in local communities across the nation.” – Dr. Marva King Lorthridge, former Senior Policy Advisor with the Environmental Justice Office of the EPA
“People-power built the EPA 55 years ago, and people-power must save it now. As corporate polluters work to gut safeguards and steer the agency away from its mission, we cannot lose sight of what’s at stake. The Environmental Protection Network stands with communities across the country in demanding an EPA that truly serves the public — one that centers communities, equity and justice in every decision.” – Michelle Roos, Executive Director, Environmental Protection Network
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The Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF) is a national coalition of nearly 40 organizations in 22 states who work to ensure that a diverse grassroots perspective is reflected in federal, state, and local programming and policy decisions. Organizations are based in red, blue, and swing states, including those in Appalachia, the Deep South, Northwest, Midwest, Northeast and Southwest regions. EJLF members represent Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income communities in large cities to rural areas. These groups are actively working together to advance key climate justice and environmental policy to ensure the protection and advancement of communities of color and low-income communities throughout the U.S. The EJLF is hosted by WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Learn more ejforum.org and @ejforum.
Moving Forward Network (MFN) The Moving Forward Network (MFN) is a national network of over 50 member organizations that centers grassroots, frontline-community knowledge, expertise, and engagement from communities across the US that bear the negative impacts of the global freight transportation system. MFN builds partnerships between these community leaders, academia, labor, big green organizations, and others to protect communities from the impacts of freight. Its diverse membership facilitates an integrated and geographically dispersed advocacy strategy that incorporates organizing, communications, research, legal and technical assistance, leadership development and movement building. This strategy respects multiple forms of expertise and builds collective power. The Moving Forward Network is a project of Windward Fund
Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) formed in 2013 to create a new center of gravity in the climate movement by uniting frontline communities and organizations into a formidable force. Our translocal organizing strategy and mobilizing capacity is building a Just Transition away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies. We believe that the process of transition must place race, gender and class at the center of the solutions equation in order to make it a truly Just Transition.
Equitable & Just National Climate Platform (EJNCP) is a coalition of EJ groups and national environmental organizations from across the country united around a shared commitment to ending the environmental racism that has left economically disadvantaged communities, Indigenous communities, Black communities, and communities of color exposed to disproportionate levels of toxic pollution and bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Our coalition has stood strong for over five years around our shared vision for a just climate future — and our platform has grown to include over 300 co-signer organizations from all over the country.
Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform is a national network of grassroots Environmental and Economic Justice organizations and advocates in communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from legacy contamination, ongoing exposure to polluting facilities and health-harming chemicals in household products. EJHA supports a just transition towards safer chemicals and a pollution-free economy that leaves no community or worker behind. The EJHA network model features leadership of, by, and for Environmental Justice groups with support from additional allied groups and individual experts.