On March 31, we gathered in protest because the stakes for wildlife and our communities could not be clearer.
For the first time in more than 30 years, the Trump administration convened the Endangered Species Committee, often called the “God Squad,” to grant a sweeping exemption from the Endangered Species Act for offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Our protest was about defending the idea that public lands, waters, and wildlife should be protected for future generations.
We were honored to hear from Shantha Ready Alonso, Executive Director of the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, whose leaders represent communities on the frontlines of the nature loss crisis.
Shantha Ready Alonso brings a powerful perspective to this moment. Her leadership reflects a growing movement that understands conservation must be rooted in justice, equity, and community voice. The nature crisis is not separate from the challenges facing people. It is deeply connected to public health, cultural survival, economic security, and the right of all communities to live with dignity in healthy environments.
We are grateful to Shantha Ready Alonso for standing with us and for helping to frame this moment with clarity, courage, and vision.
Full remarks from Shantha Ready Alonso are below:
“We stand here on the steps of the U.S. Department of the Interior in the year that we are marking 250 years since the founding of the United States of America.
This is a year that we should be celebrating the natural and cultural heritage of America the Beautiful.
But our political leaders do not have a vision of America the Beautiful for All.
Their actions are showing us their true priority: enriching their fellow billionaires while selling off, selling out, and erasing Americans’ common inheritance.
They tried to sell our public lands. The American people put a stop to that by killing that provision in the Big Ugly Bill.
But they are selling out our shared natural inheritance on land and at sea to the highest bidders at an alarming rate for logging, mining, fracking, drilling, and industrial fishing.
And in our 250th anniversary, when our country should be telling an inclusive story about our struggles and progress to form a more perfect union, the Trump Administration is actively erasing our history. In addition to censoring museum exhibits and school curricula, since this time last year, the Trump Administration has removed or altered hundreds of signs and exhibits in national parks across the country, ranging in topic from climate change and pollution to slavery and Indigenous history. Sowing ignorance and disinformation about our shared reality makes it easier for our political leaders to cover up their disinvestments in climate resilience, environmental justice, and the communities of Black, Indigenous and people of color.
It is our responsibility to stand in our truth and keep holding up a mirror to the American people.
Today, we are standing on the land of the Anacostan and Nacochtank people outside the Stewart Lee Udall Building. Udall was the Secretary of the Interior when several bedrock environmental laws went into effect, and he presided over our country’s first listing of endangered species in March of 1967. One of the spaces inside the Udall building is the Rachel Carson room. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who served as chief editor of publications at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and whose bestselling book Silent Spring propelled the modern environmental movement forward, including the passage of the Endangered Species Act.
For the political leaders of this “God Squad” to meet within these walls undermines the legacy of Udall, Carson, and so many others who have used the power of government to advance the common good.
We do not want political leaders playing God, circumventing the environmental protections Americans want, and determining the extinction of species. We do not want politicians selling out millennia of our natural and cultural heritage – to try and make a quick buck. No.
But for anyone whose values are driven first and foremost by the Almighty Dollar, let’s remember: We are a nation that writes on our currency, “In God We Trust.”
For me, that means I trust in God’s wisdom as the Creator of all the mysterious and majestic creatures that live and breathe among us. I experience glimpses of divine purpose when I feel wonder, awe, and connection to the whole of Creation.
I want my children, and my children’s children to meet God in the divine fingerprints of the Creator on our natural world. That’s why I am so grateful to previous generations in this country who established national parks, wildlife refuges, marine sanctuaries and laws like the Endangered Species Act that sustain our homeland’s vibrant and diverse community of life.
We cannot let the big headed and small minded politicians who share with us this tiny blip on the divine timeline steal this inheritance from all of us and from future generations. Selling out the last 51 Rice Whales’ chance at survival is not going to bring down the gas prices.
So let’s stand together now and get everyone we know to speak out and push back: our country’s amazing wildlife is not for sale. Our children’s natural and cultural inheritance is not for sale.
I am working actively with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition and our partners here to save our natural and cultural heritage. Join us.
I am going to close out our time here with a few verses of a patriotic hymn you may know, penned by African American son of the Gulf state of Florida, James Weldon Johnson: “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.”
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