Colette Pichon Battle Quotes

This is not about greenhouse gas reduction. This is about do we value people equally? And if we do, we’ve got some recalibrating to do, as a planet.

it was a moment for me that I understood, well, I have a purpose here. We’ve got to change these laws. We’ve got to change the society. It is the structures that we are living in that is the problem. I am not talking about you liking me, or me liking you, anymore. We’re now going to talk about, does this work for the least of us, which goes back to that very Catholic upbringing...That’s what I learned. That’s who we’re supposed to care about. That’s who we’re supposed to take the time to make things work for.

people ask me all the time, if you know your land is going to go, why are you still fighting?...I don’t know what they’re expecting, you know? We going down swinging if we going.

I think that’s the part that scares me the most. We’re losing generations of people who know the anatomy of these things. And we’re getting new people into our space who have no clue what a hurricane is, and the hurricanes that we know to describe are not the ones we’re facing now.

I don’t have this law degree for nothing. And the laws as they are written right now are not meant for me, and they’re not meant for my community, and they’re not meant to help people, and they’re not meant to save people, and they’re not meant to do those things with the utmost humanity and dignity. They are meant to preserve a middle-class tax base, period, almost every law that we have. How does this affect the taxpayer? is the analysis that is used.

We must subsidize healthy crops and farm biodiversity instead of monocultures. Our food system must be rooted in principles of community-based agroecology and food sovereignty.

there are bad people in this world, but mostly, there are just people who don’t know.

We are not a people who are energized by hatred. I come from people who are energized by joy.

Climate gentrification often happens in the aftermath of vlimate disaster...Rather than seeing displacement and migration as an opportunity for private sector profiteering, what if we saw it as an opportunity to rebuild a social infrastructure, rooted in justice and fairness? We could actually put money into schools and public hospitals and help these institutions prepare for what is to come through climate migration, including the trauma that comes with loss and relocation. We could combat climate gentrification by affirmatively furthering fair, affordable, and equitable housing linked to reliable public transportation. We could protect homeownership by providing material resources to families-especially in communities of color and among others who are vulnerable-for elevating and flood-proofing homes.

Policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions must also clean up the toxic lands left behind by oil and gas, with the same financial support and urgency. In this cleanup, and in every other aspect of the fair and just transition, the costs and burden must be paid by the industries that have polluted communities and deliberately deceived the public about the threat their operations pose to our climate.

I’ve learned that even people who are — who see the world differently from you, they love something. And if we take the time to share what we love with one another, we can see each other’s humanity, and we can feel each other’s value. And if we can connect in a real way, that’s what we need to accompany each other, because some of what is going to be asked is that you just let me be. You know. As relocation and all of this stuff happens, some people are going to choose something other than what you would choose.

Climate gentrification that happens in anticipation of sea-level rise is what we're seeing in places like Miami, where communities that were kept from the waterfront are now being priced out of the high ground, where they were placed originally, as people move away from the Coasts. And climate migration is just one small part, but it's going to have ripple effects in both coastal cities and cities in the interior.

Our work proves that media depictions of the Green New Deal as a program for liberal elites could not be further from the truth. Here on the third coast, poor black, white, brown, and native people, small businesses, neighborhood associations, and regular folks from all walks of life are ready for a Green New Deal, and we know the same is true of people all across this country.

The ocean commons belong to us all. A Blue New Deal must end attempts to industrialize the ocean through factory fish farms and large-scale aquaculture.

a constant reality of Gulf South life that may be invisible to many outsiders is the centrality of the military to our economy and culture. We must honor the historic significance of the military in Gulf South communities while transitioning investment away from the military and toward job creation in regenerative local economies.