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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: Green The Block Liz Havstad, 202.460.2333, press@hiphopcaucus.org Marni Tomljanovic, 212.691.2800, tomljanovic@sunshinesachs.com |
Nearly 100 Green the Block 9/11 Service and Remembrance Events Nationwide
WASHINGTON - September 11 - Nearly 100 Green the Block events - in more than 24 states across the
country - were organized by churches, schools, and community groups to
honor the victims of the September 11th attacks. The Green the Block
events were in association with President Obama's United We Serve
initiative for a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
"Eight years ago today, we suffered a terrible loss - a loss that
brought us closer together as a country," said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins,
CEO of Green For All. "Today, we honor and remember those who lost
their lives on September 11, 2001, by working in service to bring our
country closer together still, to unite America on the path to a
prosperous, healthy future."
Green the Block partners joined together with their neighbors in
various activities, including: community clean-ups in Brooklyn; green
retrofitting of a 90-year-old community center in Chattanooga,
Tennessee; and elementary students delivering cards made from recycled
materials to the troops at Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center.
"This is a wonderful moment, when so many people are choosing to act on
encouragement instead of discouragement, on hope instead of despair,"
said Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., President of the Hip Hop Caucus. "To
honor and remember those who died on September 11, 2001, and in our
subsequent wars, humanity is bonding together by serving one another on
this little planet called Earth."
Green the Block was publicly announced on August 4, 2009, at the White
House where Rev. Yearwood and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins revealed that the
first milestone of Green the Block would be Service and Remembrance
events on September 11th. The Green the Block campaign and coalition,
of over seventy organizations, will continue with the goal of
connecting urban communities to the opportunities of the green economy.
About Green The Block
Green The Block is a non-profit, non-partisan campaign of the Hip Hop Caucus and Green For All designed to educate and mobilize low-income communities and communities of color to ensure a voice and stake in the clean-energy economy. www.greentheblock.net
About Green For All
Green For All is a national organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean energy economy. The organization works in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to create and implement programs that increase quality jobs and opportunities in green industry - all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of its agenda. www.greenforall.org
About Hip Hop Caucus
The Hip Hop Caucus is a national, non-profit organization that engages young people in urban communities in elections, policymaking and service. Founded on September 11, 2004 the organization has 700,000 members nationwide. www.hiphopcaucus.org
2 Comments so far
Show AllI understand how people in the USA feels about the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
I wish you could understand how myself and many people in my country, Chile, feel about the terrible events of September 11, 1973. It is particularly important for the citizens of the USA to understand our September 11, because your government, your secret services, your military, your corporations and business community had the deciding role in bringing my country to the point where the traitor military (trained by your forces at the School of the America's) betrayed our Constitution and their fellow citizens. Further, your systems supported the dictatorship that terrorized and killed more than 3,000 chilean citizens. They imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands (techniques learned in you know where), exiled in the hundreds of thousands. They utterly destroyed our country with the help of economists trained under Milton Friedman in Chicago. The neoliberal program implemented in Chile under the aegis of the IMF and the WB has devastated our society. Your country has brought only pain to mine. However, I feel for all those connected to the tragedy of 2001, I wish the USA would transform into the leader nation we need right now, not individualistic, but solidary with her citizens and the citizens of the planet. We all need that transformation.
Thank you for that post, Chilean friend. As a person who has watched American foreign policy in Latin America fairly closely since 1980 when I got kinda woke up to that part of the world, I have to say that my watching 9/11/01 go down was way different than I ever see reported. I my head, watching that morning unfold, all I could feel was," America, this is what it feels like." Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, many others, have lost many of their own at American hands, now America can have a taste.
What I remember was the brief moment afterwards when the question "why do they hate us ?" was raised. As I suspected, and to my great disappointment, America, with Bush/Cheney a the helm, lashed out, and most of America ducked or forgot about that question.