The House Judiciary Committee Democrats led by chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) called in a climate extremist to their hearing on Wednesday who will testify that the process of federal agency rulemaking is killing the environment and disadvantaging mainly racial minorities.
Jacqui Patterson’s testimony, reviewed by Breitbart News in advance of the 10:00 a.m. hearing, details who she believes “is paying the price for a regulatory system that is being governed, de facto, by polluters” through the Administrative Procedure Act.
Patterson cites that industry groups, which have dominated influence over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule-making process, are one such example of “polluters.”
“EPA records from 1994 to 2009 found that industry groups held a virtual monopoly over informal communications that happened before proposed rules on hazardous air pollutants were publicly available,” the witness notes in her testimony.
Patterson lists the following as victims of federal regulations:
- Indigenous women who have been sexually assaulted along the under regulated oil and gas pipelines.
- As we described in our Fumes Across the Fenceline Report, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities are on the frontlines of the health, social, economic, and political impacts of being impacted by the toxic exposure, by the displacement due to under regulated fossil fuel infrastructure.
- BIPOC communities on the frontlines of near roadway air pollution from the under-regulated combustible engine.
- BIPOC and low-income communities and nations disproportionately impacted by climate change due to barely fettered greenhouse gas emissions.
- And as we detail in our Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People Report, according to the Department of Labor, 76,000 coal miners who have died of black lung disease while the amount of coal dust to which they were exposed went unregulated.
Patterson contends “groups on the frontlines” should have “clear pathways for input” with federal agencies, stating that those groups should be inclusive of the “more than 1 million African American individuals” who “live within a half mile of an oil and gas facility.” She argues that “race is the largest indicator of whether you live next to toxic waste facilities.”
Patterson, the founder of the Chisholm Legacy Project, a self-described “resource hub for black frontline climate justice leadership,” has also been active on social media in promoting her viewpoints.
In December 2020, for instance, Patterson said she was “only slightly joking” that her plan to receive the coronavirus vaccine was to “go to the whitest neighborhood I can find to make sure my dose comes from a white batch.” She used the hashtags “#DodgingGenocide” and “#OnlySlightlyJoking” with her comment.
In November 2020, Patterson posted that she was “longing for the innocence of childhood when I didn’t have to ponder if Nancy Drew was secretly a Trump supporting racist…” with a photo of the famous fictional character.
Last month, Patterson shared an article she wrote claiming that “capitalism has never really worked out for the Earth or for BIPOC.”
Among her social media posts Patterson has also compared the risk of getting coronavirus while vaccinated to the risk of getting in a plane crash as an argument for vaccinated individuals to continue wearing masks, and has repeatedly blamed the effects coronavirus has on the black community on racism.
Patterson is among four witnesses scheduled to testify Wednesday before the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, chaired by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI).
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