National People's
The Speak Easy, Speak Free National People's Hearing Tour is a public expression of testimonies and cultural celebration, lifting up community-based solutions to end threats to people's health, land and work. The events encourage communities to come forward to keep our aspirations alive, setting in motion what comes next to find a way out of the chaos, harm, and silence so many are suffering.
At every People's Hearing community representatives testify to a live audience, which includes invited national leaders who serve as formal witnesses. The witnesses commit to lift up stories and solutions through national writing, advocacy, and networking, bringing the messages of each hearing to future hearings, and building coalitions across participants at each stop of the national tour.
The Tishman Center for Environment and Design is using its longstanding expertise in community-based scholarship to document and analyze the testimonies, connecting the people's wisdom to specific calls to action and policy priorities.
Our Purpose is:
To uncover the national policy priorities that communities can see ourselves reflected in and that we would be willing to support.
To convene representatives of communities to testify to the threats to our health, land and work, especially representatives from the state and surrounding regions where the hearing takes place.
To create space for dialogue where community representatives and our partners can lay the groundwork for policies and movements that will secure clean land and water, healthy communities, flourishing and just economies, and vibrant cultures.
To reinvigorate policies that end poisonous pollution, opportunities to hold governments and private industries publicly accountable, and programs that foster community ownership or governance of energy infrastructure, climate resilience strategies, farming businesses, and environmental protection initiatives.
The PEJAC will build on some of its members longstanding roles as national leaders - roles which crystallized in 2021 when they were appointed by the Biden Administration to advise federal agencies across the government about environmental justice.
National People’s Policy Priorities for Environmental Justice: Including Tucson, AZ Testimonies.
Justice40 Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool & Executive Order 12898 Revisions.
From Testimony to Action: Key Issues & Next Steps From The North Carolina People's Hearing.
Media coverage amplifying community voices, stories, and solutions emerging from the National People's Hearing Tours.
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"This Viral Speech Shows How We Win Back Rural America: Voters aren’t tuning out because..."
"Dozens of Arizonans speak out about environmental justice at People’s Hearing in Tucson..."
