Dear John,
As anyone who’s been following CJA recently knows, we were in a struggle to secure a $60 million dollar pass-thru grant from the EPA. We applied for the grant after considering how the program would contribute to our mission to actualize a Just Transition. After conversations that included the communities that make up our membership and key partners, we decided it was worthwhile, and could support our work in building resilient communities.
We applied to be a national grant maker, essentially meaning that we'd support all the other regional grantmakers, and fill any gaps so communities had another opportunity to receive funding. The program was designed to guarantee tens of millions of dollars would go to people doing things like air monitoring and toxic clean-ups, disaster resilience and weatherization. Things that feel even more poignant as Los Angeles continues to reel from wildfires, the majority of people in the country have faced damaging cold over the last month, and people in Appalachia continue their efforts to rebuild after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Ironically, we’ve faced a coordinated attack from the Trump Administration which has painted us as radical leftists stealing tax-payer dollars to destabilize the very fabric of our society. In reality, our grant program was designed to return tax-payer dollars to working-class communities to mitigate the impact of climate change and forge healthier and greener solutions to it. It might also come as a surprise to find out that the work we do is all about righting the wrongs from the failures of the federal government (and state and local governments) to protect people. Despite our feelings about the government we made an assessment and decided it was a worthwhile endeavor to
reclaim our tax dollars to support people.
This was simply money to help people who are working to make things better. Which is ultimately what CJA is: People building solutions to the problems they face. People working together. People standing up to bad things that don't need to be happening. People dreaming together about a future where people can live well without living at the expense of others.
As we've seen over the past year, unfortunately, these things are seen as a threat. Not just to the new administration, but the previous one as well. CJA's ancestry is made up of people who have worked to make things better for themselves, their families, and those around them for centuries.
In January, after much advocacy and education from many of you (thank you for raising your voice in support of sensible climate action!), we made the difficult decision to sunset the UNITE-EJ project after not receiving the promised funds (sorry Zeldin, you can’t cancel money we decided not to take in the first place). This meant real people, losing real jobs, and tens of millions of dollars not making it to projects that make things a little better for all of us. The program would have supported things like air and water quality monitoring, resiliency hubs, and heating and cooling centers for communities in urban and rural areas, spanning both red and blue
states.
We don't know what the next four years will look like, or at this rate even the next month. But we can tell you one thing is certain: this alliance and the amazing people all across the country who make it up are going to continue working to be good neighbors and ancestors by making our communities safe, healthy, clean, and affordable. | 
