02/27/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 02/27/2024 11:28
Melanie Morelos (she/her/they) is the California Strategy Senior Program Manager, where she advances the organization's legislative priorities and develops strategies to achieve them. Melanie brings more than 5 years of experience serving the California State Legislature, where she crafted policies aimed at increasing affordable housing production, expanding employment leave for women and LGBTQ+ communities, and reducing gun violence in high risk neighborhoods. Her most recent role was Legislative Director to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, where together they started a working conversation about how social housing could be achieved in California, negotiated high stakes legislative priorities like workplace vaccine mandates, and advanced the Assemblywoman into her highest role as the Chair of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development. Melanie is a daughter of farmer workers, and a proud member of the LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities. She believes housing is a human right, and that equity should be accessible to low-income families, women and people of color. When Melanie isn't working, she enjoys rock climbing, socializing with friends, playing fetch with her dog, Grace, and planning her next trip out of the country.
For decades, discriminatory practices like redlining systematically denied economic services, investments, and opportunities to communities of color, triggering cycles of disinvestment and neglect. Deliberate infrastructure policies compounded these inequities, targeting certain communities for highways and industrial facilities, disrupting business corridors and saddling residents with higher levels of pollution. These systemic injustices are deeply interconnected and continue to fuel the racial health, wealth, and opportunity gaps.
Greenlining is the practice of deconstructing systemic discrimination and proactively driving investments and opportunities into formerly redlined communities. The goal of Greenlining is to build a just economy that will pave the way for an abundant future for all.
A just economy is one that is cooperative, sustainable, fair, participatory, and healthy-and getting there requires us to focus on the intersections between economy, climate, and race.
This year, our 2024-25 Legislative Agenda is all about Greenlined Policies-policies that address interconnected systemic injustices with intersectional solutions. Our legislative priorities include sponsored legislation and budget asks that will:
Our transportation system sits at the critical nexus between race, climate, and the economy, informing the health, wealth, and opportunities within our communities. From how transportation funding is allocated, to where heavily polluted highways versus clean mobility infrastructure like electric rails and EV charging stations are located, transportation policies have the potential to shape our communities for the better.
However, inequitable transportation policies have saddled communities of color with higher rates of pollution, limited and less reliable transportation options, and a lack of decision-making power when it comes to transportation decisions that impact them. Greenlined transportation policies aim to deconstruct the systems that resulted in our highly inequitable transportation landscape, while building towards a more just transportation future that equitably connects our communities with healthier air, reliable and clean transportation options, and community ownership over transportation decisions. This will not only improve the lives of communities of color, but support California's climate and economic goals more broadly.
Greenlining our transportation policies requires a holistic approach to transportation planning that recognizes the intersectionality of economy, climate, and race. By centering equity and sustainability in decision-making processes, these policies aim to create more just and resilient communities while advancing broader climate and economic goals.
Economic downturns have the harshest impacts on communities of color and low-income communities that are already struggling to make ends meet. In the face of rising costs, climate crisis, and widening racial health, wealth, and opportunity gaps-now is the time to fortify resilience in underserved communities, not delay or cut back already underfunded equity programs.
We are urging the California Governor and Legislature to make the following investments to help our communities build resilience and meet the challenges we face today:
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To learn more about The Greenlining Institute's California Legislative Agenda, please visit our landing page.