How Democrats Can Run on Climate—and Win—in 2022 and Beyond
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Saturday, Aug. 20 2:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Saturday, Aug. 20 3:00 PM (Eastern)
Room: 317/318
The 2020 election demonstrated clearly that the climate and environmental justice crises are crucial to voters’ choices at the ballot box and to voter turnout. The climate crisis’ harms to American communities have escalated rapidly since then, and an increasing number of voters—50% of all voters, 75% of Democrats—identify climate change as a “critical threat.” It is apparent that climate and environmental justice will be crucial, intersectional issues in 2022 and beyond. Less apparent but still true is that they are win-win issues for Democrats in every part of the country. Join us as we discuss how Democrats can run on climate and win in 2022 and beyond.
Moderator
Michelle Deatrick
Michelle Regalado Deatrick is the Chair and Founder of the Democratic National Committee’s first-ever Environment and Climate Crisis Council, She writes, advocates and organizes for people, just policy, and planet, and has a lifelong commitment to public service and community.
Michelle serves on the National Advisory Boards of Climate Power and OnePointFive Climate. She served recently as Vice Chair of her County Commission, in a 3-term rural red seat that she flipped to blue, running on environmental and infrastructure issues. As a county commissioner, Michelle founded her County’s first Environmental Council, spearheaded measures committing the County to ambitious decarbonization targets, and signed it on as the first county east of the Rockies to join the County Climate Reality Coalition.
Michelle’s lifetime commitment to public service and community includes advocacy for workers’ rights and labor: as a proud member of UAW 2230, an NWU delegate to her regional labor federation and the national NWU, and a former Michigan One Fair Wage spokesperson.
She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in East Africa. A policy analyst and an internationally honored poet of environmental and social justice, Michelle lives on her family’s 80 acre farm and rewilded prairie in southeast Michigan.
Panelists
Danielle Deiseroth
Danielle Deiseroth is the Lead Climate Strategist at Data for Progress, where she leads the organization’s polling and public opinion research on issues related to climate change and the environment. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, Danielle first became interested in climate change as a high schooler studying legacy pollution from abandoned mines in Western Pennsylvania.
Summer Lee
Summer Lee is an organizer, attorney, a Pennsylvania State Representative, and the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District. Throughout her time in the state legislature, she’s fought for meaningful progress on union jobs and workers’ rights, environmental justice, affordable housing, health care, immigration justice and more. She led an initiative that stopped a corporate fracking proposal and drove the passage of police accountability measures in Harrisburg. She also is co-founder and chair of UNITE, a grassroots group dedicated to building progressive power up and down ballot across Allegheny County and the surrounding areas, electing mayors, county council, judges, and more. If elected to Congress, Summer will be the first Black woman representing the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Other sessions: Why We're Winning: How Black-Led Progressive Organizations are Changing the Face of Western PA Politics, All Eyes on PA: How Progressives are Building Power to Win in the Keystone State
John Paul Mejia
John Paul Mejia the chief national spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a youth movement working to stop the climate crisis and create a just society in the process. His commitment to climate activism began during his sophomore year of high school, when Hurricane Irma threatened his hometown, Miami. In the aftermath of the storm, he saw how his community was treated as disposable and was propelled into action.