The word of 2015 is resilience.
This year we are focusing on clean energy jobs by establishing a neighborhood weatherization program where community members will be able to take part in learning how to weatherize their own homes at low cost in addition to having a Community Resilience Center situated within Southeast Raleigh.
On July 22 our field program moved forward with the word resilience in mind and held the third meeting of our local organizing committee.
It was 6pm on a Wednesday night. People began to fill a small room in downtown Raleigh: mothers, children, fathers, elders, students, graduates, longtime friends, and newly formed acquaintances
Everyone was excitedly talking in pairs about what it would mean to them to have a resilient community. We focused on three main questions.
- What is resilience?
- What’s a story about a time when you or someone you know was resilient in the face of economic or environmental challenge?
- What would it mean to have a resilient community?
One participant stated that having a resilient community means that the doors of opportunity are opening for everyone. Another shared that having a resilient community means everyone has access to affordable housing, healthcare, healthy food, transportation, and employment. For Erika, resilience is a word that defines new opportunity and a way to spring back from despair.
Next, we talked about the reality that one of the main challenges facing already economically-distressed communities here in Wake County are high energy bills. In 2014 many members of working class communities spent over 36% of their income on energy bills. Utility bills are a driver for homelessness. Our program for training people how to do retrofits can not only economically help but financially help as well. Having lower energy bills and access to clean energy sources, which are healthier and more suitable for the environment, offer concrete steps for us to make things better for our community.
Clean energy also reduces carbon pollution emissions, which are the root causes of both climate change and some of the poor health conditions many of our community members face. One in ten African-Americans in North Carolina have asthma. In fact, African-Americans are hospitalized for asthma at 3x the rate of whites and the likelihood of African-Americans dying from asthma is 172% higher than whites.
Given all that we closed out the meeting by sharing a bit about our proposed neighborhood weatherization program. The just transition to a clean energy economy we want to build together will promote jobs, access to affordable housing, and improve the standard of living in marginalized communities.
Interested in learning more about how to build a resilient community in Southeast Raleigh? Contact Erika Moss at erika@nclcv.org or Kaji Reyes-Gertes at kaji@nclcv.org to get involved!
