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The social justice protests sweeping the country have pushed mainstream environmental groups into a corner, with many struggling to show solidarity without appearing hypocritical.

Most of the largest groups are overwhelmingly white, and their conservation focus has historically ignored the disproportionate impact of pollution on communities of color. Some also have racist and anti-immigrant pasts.

Yesterday, more than 200 groups released a letter "in solidarity" following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all unarmed African Americans.

"This moment has laid bare the long and shameful history of institutional and systemic racism against Black and Brown people in this country," they wrote. "We demand action."

But statements like those have met with criticism from some in the environmental justice movement.

Robert Bullard. Dave Brenner/Flickr

"Anyone can come out with a statement," said Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University. "Racial justice starts at home. Look at your own organization."

Bullard is often referred to as the father of the environmental justice movement; he's been working on these issues for more than three decades and has written more than a dozen books on the topic.

Racism permeates every institution in America, he said, including the environmental movement.

"Racism is stamped in the country's DNA," Bullard said. "The best way to show it is to look at the green groups' agenda and who is on their boards and their staffs and the percent of green dollars that they suck up like a vacuum cleaner sucking up all the dollars in a room. Very few dollars are left for people of color and groups working on environmental justice and against racism."

Data supports Bullard's argument, though mainstream environmental groups have made efforts to diversify their staffs.

In 2014, the diversity initiative Green 2.0 commissioned a broad analysis of the environmental movement, including the major nonprofits, foundations and government agencies. The results were stark.

It found that while people of color represented 36% of the organizations' makeup at the time, they didn't constitute more than 16% in any category. Among nonprofit groups, 12.4% were people of color, while government agencies reached 15.5% and foundations came in at 12%.

Whitney Tome. Whitney Tome.

Green 2.0 called the movement "an overwhelmingly white Green Insiders' Club."

The group has continued its work, issuing transparency report cards every year. Executive Director Whitney Tome said there has been progress, but it's slow.

"I've seen a marked change [in] building out their own staff and their own capacity in this area in a way that's been good," she said. "Not everyone has done it, but a good number of them have."

The most recent report card found that, on average, the organizations added 11 people of color to their staffs between 2017 and 2019 including two in senior roles. And diversity also increased on boards.

"I am seeing opportunity and people who are stepping in and taking action," she said.

The report card, however, is blunt about the overall picture.

"Though the 2019 numbers are encouraging," it stated, "Green 2.0 cautions against declaring victory."

National Wildlife Federation Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate and Community Revitalization Mustafa Santiago Ali during an interview at the NWF offices in February. Francis Chung/E&E News

Outside of the outwardly racist history of the American conservation movement, green groups have long kept environmentalism siloed away from other interrelated policy issues.

Even as the environmental justice movement began to bubble up in localized organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, national groups ignored environmental plights faced by communities of color and kept their focus on conservation, said Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president for environmental justice, climate and community revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation.

It led to backlash from the environmental justice community.

In March 1990, an environmental justice coalition sent a scathing letter to what was then called the "Group of 10" major environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Wilderness Society, National Parks Conservation Association and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Although they "often claim to represent our interests," the environmental justice coalition wrote, "in observing your activities it has become clear to us that your organizations play an equal role in the disruption of our communities."

The letter was focused on the Southwest, where mining companies had devastating environmental impacts and the military had used large swaths of land for weapons development and testing. In particular, the groups scolded the Group of 10 for supporting national monument designations on lands that were culturally significant to Native Americans.

And they criticized the lack of people of color within the organizations, calling on them to leave the area until "you have hired leaders from those communities to the extent that they make up between 35-40 percent of your entire staff."

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Tome said those efforts were a motivating force for launching Green 2.0 in 2014. After the letter, there was some focus on the issue, but not for long.

"It sort of fell off," she said.

But there has been a renewed focus, Ali said.

"When Trayvon Martin and others lost their life, there was silence, but the culture's shifting, and now organizations are sort of moving with the mainstream in the sense of speaking out and moving towards solidarity," said Ali, a former longtime staffer in EPA's environmental justice office.

A number of major green groups, including the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters, teamed up with local environmental justice organizations last year to produce a collaborative climate policy platform centered on civil rights and economic equality.

"I would say that for the first time in the 30 years that I've been working on environmental justice, I've seen the green groups make a turn, and for me, it started with the Equitable & Just Climate Platform," said Beverly Wright, executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

The Sierra Club has also made tangible efforts to increase diversity and reach out to communities of color under Executive Director Michael Brune's leadership, Ali said.

The group was once a home for vehement anti-immigration voices who saw population control as a way to protect the environment. John Tanton, who once held leadership posts with the Sierra Club, went on to found the Federation for American Immigration Reform and had white nationalist beliefs, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

More recently, Leslie Fields, a longtime environmental justice and civil rights activist, was elevated to a senior position, and the Sierra Club started offering statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter protests more than five years ago.

Tome agreed, noting that the Sierra Club has taken important steps including on its board and in training its staff on equity issues.

But the environmental movement still has a long way to go. Statements of solidarity are great, Ali said, "but if you're not willing to change the systemic structures, both inside of your own organizations and to understand and work to change it across our country and in our government, then it's window dressing."

Beyond simply hiring staffers to work on environmental justice, Wright said, greens can back up their statements by helping local environmental justice groups obtain the funding they have long struggled to get from large philanthropic organizations.

"They can put their money where their mouth is and give the real on-the-ground support," Wright said.

Major environmental groups have taken steps in recent days to show solidarity with protesters and minority communities, but they've done so in different ways.

The League of Conservation Voters was out front with the difficult history that the environmental movement of which it has been a major part has had with racial justice and including voices of people who are not white.

"We have not been a fully-fledged ally for racial justice and equity. We have not always spoken up or we have taken too long to do so. We must and will do better," LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a lengthy statement yesterday.

Felice Stadler, vice president for political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, similarly pledged that her group sees this moment as a call for more action.

"What these most recent tragic events have underscored is that we can't just issue statements and think that's sufficient," she said in a statement. "We have to do better. We know that."

Other organizations have differed in the extent and ways they sought to incorporate environmental concerns even environmental justice issues unique to black and other oppressed communities into their responses to the killings and protests.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, for one, put out an unsigned statement standing firmly with protesters.

"We stand up against hatred and injustice. We stand up for human dignity and respect. We stand in solidarity with Black families and communities calling for justice," it said.

Mitchell Bernard, the group's executive director, expanded on that in a blog post of his own, weaving in the environmental work the group does.

"We will continue to vindicate the people's rights under the law, to partner with frontline individuals and groups to demand environmental justice," he wrote.

Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash (center) is seen pictured protesting on Capitol Hill last year. @sunrisemvmt/Twitter

Groups like the Sunrise Movement and Zero Hour offer an example of what a "21st century" environmental organization looks like, Ali said.

Those organizations, and other supporters of the Green New Deal, generally emphasize climate policy that includes a just transition and addresses the needs of environmental justice communities.

Sunrise held a webinar last night advising members on how to participate in the Floyd protests and how to tie climate and civil rights advocacy together.

Among its advice was not to co-opt smaller protests by wearing the matching Sunrise Movement shirts that members often wear to climate events.

Executive Director Varshini Prakash said at the outset of the webinar that it was the largest call in the group's history, with roughly 1,800 participants.

"Our vision for a more equitable world is super in line with everything that is happening right now in this country," Prakash said.

While environmental organizations have been slowly incorporating justice concerns into their work, only very recently has the movement started to treat the two issues as one and the same, said Natalie Mebane, associate director for U.S. policy at 350.org.

"You're starting to see the evolution of the environmental movement as something that we cannot differentiate and compartmentalize," she said. "These climate justice organizations are encompassing and hopefully becoming justice organizations. It's been a long time coming."

Bullard, the longtime environmental justice advocate, said the shift must also come at the resource level. More often than not, he said, environmental justice groups and those on the front lines can't afford to get involved in important policy debates.

"Right now, many of the environmental organizations are resourced to make the meetings in Washington and sit at the table and do the networking," he said.

"That leaves the people who are on the ground, who are more impacted, that are on the front line of environmental pollution and climate change. Those folks can't get to the table because of lack of resources," he said.

"We have to move beyond just talking about this."

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GEORGE FLOYD PROTESTS: 'Overwhelmingly white' green groups forced to confront past - E&E News

On this weeks podcast, Yang, a deputy national editor of The Times, talks about the current state of the conversation and what her research revealed to her about how the countrys views have changed over time.

I was amazed to think about and learn just how recent this conception of a nation of immigrants is, actually. I learned its from the 1950s, Yang says. That idea is fairly modern. Before that, you could argue that the root of the American spirit, people thought about as coming from the Wild West. That was the nationalist mythology. This notion of immigrants is something of a invention is too far afield, I think, but that was the result of historians doing work and doing political work.

Judith Newman visits the podcast this week to discuss her latest Help Desk column, which features books about simplifying life, and says the purpose of those books has changed over time.

What has changed may not be so much the day to day but our relationship to the day to day, Newman says. We want to be successful, ambitious people, we want to get a lot done, whether its in the home or in the office, but we dont want to have heart attacks while doing it. We want to have a kind of focus and a calm. Whether these books can deliver that is of course a big question mark, but I think thats the purpose of a lot of them.

Also on this weeks episode, Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Dwight Garner and Jennifer Szalai talk about their recent reviews. Pamela Paul is the host.

Here are the books discussed by The Timess critics this week:

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Reviews podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

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Immigration Reform, Past and Present - The New York Times

Nevadas 2nd Congressional District encompasses the northern part of the silver state including Carson City and the counties Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Eureka, Humbolt, Lander, Pershing, Storey and Washoe, as well as a part of Lyon County.

The district has never sent a Democrat to Washington. However, there are currently seven Democrats vying for the job, opposing Republican incumbent Mark Amodei.

The candidates are as follows:

Patricia Ackerman has lived in Minden for 18 years. She was raised in Pennsylvania by post-war immigrants who came to America after fleeing the Nazis. Her platforms include income inequality, ending Citizens Untied, rural access to healthcare and medicare for all, lowering prescription drug prices, climate change and clean energy, and more.

To learn all about Ackermans platforms, click here.

Ed Cohen was born inCleveland, Ohio. He attended Ohio University for his undergraduate degree and the University of Southern California for his graduate degree. He began working as a marketing and communications director for a nonprofit in the justice field in 2016. From 1988 to 2016, he worked as a magazine writer and editor and communication manager and director for college and universities. From 1981 to 1987 he worked as a journalist. His policies include removing President Trump from office, immigration reform, a womans right to choose, public service campaigns to end gun violence, fighting climate change, and more.

To learn all about Cohens platforms, click here.

Reynaldo Hernandez was born in California in 1966 and his parents moved the family to Reno in 1970. He has worked in the grocery industry for 36 years.

Hernandez does not have a campaign website or social media. However, he submitted an opinion piece to the Reno Gazette Journal on May 14, which you can read here.

Clint Koble was born in Harvey, North Dakota. He received a bachelor's degree in political science and one in history from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, in 1974. Koble's professional experience includes working as a general manager and executive director. He is a certified speaker and has been associated with the Washoe County Democratic Party, the Nevada State Democratic Party, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the Alliance for Retired Americans, Planned Parenthood, and the Nevada Conservation League. His platform includes protecting public lands, water rights, rural access to education and healthcare, Tribal issues, affordable healthcare, common sense gun legislation, and more.

To learn more about Kobles platforms, click here.

Ian Luetkehans lives in Reno and went to Reno High School. He does not have a campaign site or social media.

Steven Schiffman earned a B.A. from the University of Miami, a J.D. from Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in 1983, and an L.L.M. from the London School of Economics in 1984. He works as a rule of law attorney and international journalist. He has worked with the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development program. Schiffman is a former volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps in Micronesia. He is a member of the New York Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, and the American Bar Association. His platforms include climate change, immigration reform, agricultural and farming policy, gun safety, public education, veterans and more.

To learn about Schiffmans policies, click here.

Rick Shepherd grew up in Northern Nevada and received his degree from UNR, where he later ended up teaching. He started a company called Synux Technologies in 2002. His platform includes issues such as climate change, universal healthcare, raising wages, and more.

For a full explanation of his platform, click here.

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Seven Democrats run in the primary for Nevada's Second Congressional seat - Carson Now

One of the biggest economic challenges currently facing the American economy might well be an even bigger one after the COVID-19 pandemic: the decline in American entrepreneurship. As John Dearie of the Center for American Entrepreneurship wrote earlier this year:

After remaining remarkably consistent for decades, the number of new businesses launched in the United States peaked in 2006 and then began a precipitous decline a decline accelerated by the Great Recession. From 2002 to 2006, the economy produced an average of 524,000 new employer firms each year. Since 2009, however, the number of new business launched annually has dropped to about 400,000, meaning the United States currently faces a startup deficit of 100,000 new firms every year and a million missing startups since 2009.

Even more alarming, economists Robert Litan and Ian Hathaway have shown that rates of entrepreneurship the fraction of all U.S. businesses that are new have fallen near a four-decade low, and that this decline is occurring in all 50 states, in all but a handful of the 360 metro areas they examined, and across a broad range of industry sectors. The U.S. economy is becoming less entrepreneurial, more concentrated among large incumbent companies, less dynamic.

This issue of startups and economic dynamism is one Ive addressed many times over the years, including in this 2014 podcast with startup expert Ian Hathaway. During that conversation, I asked how policymakers could promote entrepreneurship. Here was his answer:

One in the short term is immigration reform. We know that immigrants are twice as likely to launch new firms, and thats in all sectors, and in high tech its particularly elevated, so we know thats something that will push the entrepreneurship rate up higher.

Longer term, education its one of the factors that in studies of what drives regional variation, entrepreneurship rates, its the thing that keeps showing up. And this is at a time when a lot of states have had to cut back on education because of balanced budget requirements and things of that nature. So these are two things that I would advocate for.

All of that still works today. And let me add that Dearies CEA has quite a few policy ideas to boost entrepreneurship, including reforms for taxes, regulation, and immigration.

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Boosting American entrepreneurship will more important than ever in coming years - American Enterprise Institute

Lyla Wasz-Piper 20 and Kennedi Williams-Libert 20 have received the 2020 Outstanding Clinical Student Team Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association. They were recognized for their unique partnership and exemplary teamwork during their time as student attorneys at the Criminal Justice Institute.

I have never seen a student team work in such a collaboratively succinct, seamless manner to zealously and skillfully provide client-centered representation to indigent and maligned clients said Professor Dehlia Umunna, clinical professor of law and faculty deputy director of CJI.

The award is presented annually to one student or student team from each U.S. law school for outstanding clinical coursework and contributions to the clinical community. Students are nominated by full-time clinical faculty at each law school.

Both Wasz-Piper and Williams-Libert joined CJI in the fall of 2019 to gain experience in the courtroom, to work with mentors who would ultimately make them better advocates, and to directly serve those most in need of representation.

The work they were given could be seen as daunting. They were assigned an assault and battery case with serious allegations of domestic violence. During the course of the semester, Wasz-Piper and Williams-Libert thoroughly investigated the case, interviewed witnesses, wrote and filed pre-trial and trial motions, and prepared their client to testify.

Being in a legal environment where Lyla and I got to work together was so meaningful to my HLS experience because I dont know that I can point to another instance, aside from extra-curriculars, where a classmate and I got to put our talent on the line all in one go, together said Williams-Libert.

Wasz-Piper echoed the sentiment and noted how their ability to connect offered a space for mutual growth.

One of the things I valued the most in our teamwork was that we built a level of trust that allowed us to critique each others work in a way that never made us feel defensive, she said, and that ultimately served the client.

Just weeks out from trial, they were spending 12-hour days in the clinic office and were in constant communication, something that carried over into the courtroom.

Kennedi and I spent so much time together that we could sense each others emotions and needs. During trial, she could turn around and look at me and I would know she needed a specific document while she was crossing a witness. Or I would turn around while [delivering my] closing and see her and it would give me that moment of inspiration said Wasz-Piper.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Lyla Wasz-Piper

After a short deliberation, the judge delivered a not guilty verdict that was witnessed not only by the clients family but also by the many CJI students who were in attendance. Wasz-Piper and Kennedi-Williams both saw the kind of support from their classmates as an extension of their partnership and representative of CJIs clinical teamwork.

To hear the sigh of relief from the client, see the tears of joy in the clients mothers eyes and receive tight hugs from her was inexplicably rewarding. I was thoroughly impressed with the kindness that was central to their team. There was never a harsh word, nor any tension, said Umunna. They were fully focused on securing the clients freedom and lifting each other up the entire time.

Credit: Richard Thornton

Having grown up in Brooklyn, New York, Williams-Libert notes her experiences as an Afro-Caribbean-American woman and her exposure to politically and socially active communities shaped her interest in fighting for representation of marginalized groups in legal forums.

During her time at HLS, she was a member of the archival research team with the Harvard Blackletter Law Journal, formally the Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice, and she worked on preserving institutional knowledge, as well as documenting the impacts of black legal scholarship at HLS and beyond. In her capacity as an executive article editor, she helped devise themes for volumes, select articles, and helped expand the breadth of authors included in the journal.

She co-founded the Caribbean Law Students Associationto promote legal scholarship and to leverage her role as a Harvard Law student to create a space for other students of the Caribbean diaspora. She served as president of the organization during the 2019-2020 academic year. Williams-Libert has also served as the chair of community outreach for the Black Law Students Association.

Williams-Libert spent her 1L summer as a judicial intern in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Her 2L summer was spent at Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she will return after graduation.

Wasz-Piper recalls her first exposure to prisoners rights and civil rights cases during a college internship with Uptown Peoples Law Center and says it was one of the factors that drew her to want to pursue a career in criminal justice.

Beyond her clinical placement at CJI, Wasz-Piper was also a student in the Crimmigration Clinic, where she advocated for a clients release in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, drafted an amicus brief in a case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and wrote a bond hearing letter for a client who was eventually granted asylum.

She was also very involved in the Prison Legal Assistance Project, serving as a parole coordinator her 2L year and as executive director her 3L year. At PLAP, she represented clients in disciplinary hearings, parole hearings, and emergency parole revocation hearings. At both PLAP and CJI, Wasz-Piper was a mentor to her fellow students, her guidance spanning not only clinical work but also post-law school careers in public-interest.

During her 1L summer, Wasz-Piper focused on criminal and immigration reform legislation at the House Judiciary Committee, and she spent her 2L summer at the Legal Aid Society in New York, focused on public defense litigation.

After graduation, she will join First Defense Legal Aid, in Chicago, as a Public Service Venture Fund Fellow, focusing on civil rights work and in particular on police brutality. Wasz-Piper also plans to serve as a law clerk in the Northern District of Illinois in 2021.

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Lyla Wasz-Piper and Kennedi Williams-Libert receive 2020 CLEA Outstanding Clinical Student Team Award - Harvard Law School News