Chicago activists launch campaign demanding Governor JB Pritzker ‘Make polluters pay!’
Chicago, IL – “The Make Polluters Pay campaign gives the state and Pritzker the chance to show that they stand with the people and not with big oil and gas. These polluters should pay for the damage they have done to our community,“ said Gianna Escareno to a crowd of over 40 people who rallied in front of the University of Chicago’s David Rubenstein Forum on June 20, where the Aspen Ideas Climate Conference was happening.
The action was targeted at Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who spoke at the conference, to call on Illinois lawmakers to support legislation that makes polluters pay for damage done to local communities
This action was called by the Sunrise Chicago chapter in coordination with the National Sunrise Movement’s Make Polluters Pay campaign to hold big oil billionaires accountable for the ongoing climate crisis, pay for climate disasters, transition to clean energy, and transition to green jobs.
“New York and Vermont have passed climate superfund laws to make polluters pay. Illinois can and must do the same.” said Oscar Sánchez of Southeast Environmental Task Force.
Working and oppressed people continue to be the people feeling the burden of the climate crisis. Earlier this year saw the Los Angeles area be engulfed by record-breaking wildfires, and as of the writing of this article, and we are seeing devastating floods in Texas disappearing, displacing and killing people. In Chicago, Black and Chicano/Latino neighborhoods are used as areas for non-accountable industrial pollution.
“I’m a student from Little Village, and I got to experience the environmental racism of the oligarchs in this country. In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, we saw the death of many of our elderly from asthma because of improper care and air quality of our communities,” said Gio Araujo of the New Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Araujo continued, “JB Pritzker is bending down to the Trump agenda of destroying the planet for profit and actively destroying the livelihoods of working and oppressed people in this country.”
“This shouldn't have to be our reality. That polluters are polluting Black and Latino working class communities across Chicago, and working-class and oppressed communities across the country and the world. We shouldn’t have to be protesting to simply tell them that we are human beings too,” stated Escareno.