August 16th was the first time since the onset of COVID restrictions that the Sac City Council has held an in-person meeting, and climate justice activists showed up to make their voices heard!
The image below, picturing environmental activists, is pulled from this Sac Bee article on the 8/16/22 meeting
The Sacramento Climate Coalition (website linked here) held a rally at City Hall before the Council meeting that Councilmember Katie Valenzuela, as well as members of 350 Sacramento and Sunrise Movement Sacramento spoke at. Several other environmental groups were present at the rally and meeting as well, including: SacBike, EnviroDems, and Third Act (a group of elders focused on saving democracy and climate that branched off of 350 Sacramento). After the rally lots of folx went inside to make public comment!
You can watch a visual recap of the rally here.
You can find Sac Bee video coverage of what Third Act is all about here.
There were two items relevant to climate justice at this City Council meeting:
11 - Quarterly Climate Update - provided by City staff and linked here
12 - City Council Workshop on Accelerating Carbon Neutrality - conducted by City staff, item doc linked here
The tangible outcome from discussion of these two items was:
A commitment that City staff would try to get the climate adaptation section of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan out in October (the first preliminary draft was released missing this entire section), rather than later along with the full General Plan, which is expected to be delayed.
In the video below you can find some amazing public comments around these items from the following people:
Moiz Mir - Program Director at 350 Sacramento, and SJPC Counselmember!
Elizabeth - Citizens’ Climate Lobby of Sacramento
Kate Wilkins - 350 Sacramento
Chris Brown - Organize Sacramento