Presented to Three Rivers Democratic Women, Pittsburgh November 20, 2025.
We close 2025 in the waves of disruption and distress from the re-alingment of the federal government under President Trump. Maintaining focus in the face of the Trump administration retrenchment on climate, environmental protections, civil liberties and common decency has been a challenge for most of us in the battle for a sustainable future. I take hope from the continued advance of regenerative practice at the level of state and local governments across the country and around the world.
Women have the power to bring compassion, balance, dignity and joy to processes of governance too often mired in petty politics and power struggles over ego. It is time for women to stand together and call for a return to a government of compassion and caring; a government of shared prosperity and improved quality of life for all citizens; a government of moral alignment with basic human rights and dignity. It is time for women to step forward and lead from the heart of our nation.
As we face this New Year, I find hope and sustenance from the many bonds of friendship and community around me. People need each other, most especially in times of tribulation. The greatness of our nation is not measured by the number and notoriety of its billionaires but by the wellbeing of the least among us- the children, the elderly, the infirm. We do not yield to hatred and anger but rather embrace the many opportunities to care for each other and for our Mother Earth. Extending dignity and respect to each person we meet reflects joy back and amplifies the sense of belonging to a common purpose. We build toward a shared prosperity based on regenerative systems for food, energy, and infrastructure. We preserve and strengthen our life support system: clean air, fresh water, fertile ground and the vast diversity of species that constitute the great Web of Life. We are stronger together and together we rise.
I wish the blessings of this Season of Hope and Joy for you and your families.
Wrapped in legal-sounding language, this memorandum asserts the intention of the President to quell dissent by defining those who disagree with his policies as terrorists. Followed by his charge to the gathered military generals last week, this, to me, is a declaration of civil war against those who oppose the policies and positions of this President. Evidence of retributional practices toward his detractors was made plain with the barring of Congressionally authorized funds specifically from states with Democratic leadership and his intent to target “Democratic favored programs” for layoffs and reductions. https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/10/03/government-shutdown-senate-cant-end-standoff-will-continue-through-weekend/ This includes environmental protection, any climate, renewable energy or emissions reduction actions, and any “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/white-house-cancels-nearly-8b-in-clean-energy-projects-in-blue-states
Federal agents clash with demonstrators outside the ICE Detention Center in suburban Chicago. (Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)
This is not “Government for the People under any interpretation of the law! I Implore those with power to act to assert sanctuary in our State, County and Borough. I ask for Resolutions of objection to this perversion of American values. I ask my fellow citizens to speak out to your elected officials at all levels to object to this divisive violence and ask for justice. I am not willing to stand silent while fellow citizens are hauled away in the dark of night, even children, with no notice of charges, refusal of legal representation, or refusal of communication. This is not the America my Father fought for. This is not the America I have served for over 50 years. The greatness of our country is not weighed by the number and fame of its billionaires but by the wellbeing of the least of its citizens- the children, the elderly, the infirm and the poor. Living in fear destroys our communities, our quality of life and our future. We must restore the sense of confidence in the rule of law, in securing liberty and justice for ALL.
It is time to call ENOUGH! to this abuse of power, corruption and terrorization of our communities. Is “Innocent until proven guilty” no longer the law here? Is the right of due process no longer applicable in America if your Governor is a Democrat? Have we lost the basic freedom of speech in the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects the public expression of opinions? Are peaceful protests now to be subject to tear gas, arrest and incarceration, as occurred in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles?
This kind of evil will only prevail if good people stand by and say nothing. We should flood the White House with Resolutions of Objection, signed by the millions who seek to preserve our representative democracy, or the “government of the people, by the people and for the people” may indeed perish from this Earth in our time.
The EPA is currently holding public hearings on its proposed reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and Vehicle Efficiency Standards that authorized action to curtail greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Eliminating this regulatory authority will nullify climate change actions to control emissions from power plants, vehicles and industrial operations. EPA is accepting comments until Sept 22,2025. Please consider filing a statement.
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Patricia M. DeMarco, Ph.D, author of “In the Footsteps of Rachel Carson: Harnessing Earth’s Healing Power”. Discover how you can break free from old patterns, overcome trauma, and reclaim your life through authenticity, healing, and a deep connection to nature. This powerful interview explores the blueprint to becoming your true self — the author of your own story. Don’t miss this transformative dialogue on personal empowerment and ecological wisdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxRwsrpyGw
My Dear Colleagues and Friends. The passion for preserving our life support system – the living earth – runs as an elixir of inspiration through our work as teachers, guides and models of living in harmony with Nature. Regardless of any pronouncements or Executive Orders, the laws of Nature are not negotiable.
Earth Day has marked annual community clean-up days, opening farmer’s markets, flower displays and recycling events. But really in this year where the EPA Administrator gleefully proposed rolling back 31 environmental protection regulations that were intended to curtail toxic air emissions like mercury and proliferation of forever chemical materials like PFOS, we need more than one-time reminders and displays. We need to take the issue of actively protecting our life support system seriously. That means addressing climate change with leadership and courage. That means curtailing pollution from man-made materials, especially plastics. And that means looking at our own lifestyle for ways to live with less burden on the earth.
On this Earth Day I share with you Rachel Carson’s words: “…man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man’s future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.” {From Rachel Carson’s essay on Biological Sciences for the National Council of Teachers. In Lost Woods- the Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. Linda J. Lear (Ed.)Beacon Press. Boston. 1998.Page 165.}
As we celebrate this 55th Earth Day, may we remember that the greatness of a nation is not determined by the number and fame of its billionaires but by the well-being and shared prosperity of its children, the elderly, the infirm and the poorest among us. We cannot have healthy people in a polluted environment. We must offer leadership and give voice to the 73% of Americans, of both parties, who want more direct action on climate change. We who know cannot remain silent in defense of the Living Earth that provides fresh water, oxygen-rich air, fertile ground and the millions of species that constitute the great web of life, of which we humans are but one part.
On this Earth Day re-dedicate yourself to stand as a strong advocate for preserving our living earth…every day! Call you Senators and Congressional Representative today and remind them that our quality of life, indeed our survival, depend on preserving and restoring a healthy environment.
One tulip spared by the rabbits and deer!
Here is the link to my presentation for Earth Day at the Duquesne University Law School
and my interview with Dr. Dana Noescue. 4-22-2025Duquesne_Law-Earth_Day.pptx (11054 kB) Healing the Land and Empowering the People: A Message for Earth Day
DKLL LEGAL TALK SERIES Patricia Demarco-Event.pdf (255 kB) Event Sponsored by DKLL and the 2025 Students of Climate Change Law, Research, and Writing
The interview with Dr. Dana Neascu can be found here.
the Black Appalachian Coalition partnering with the Ohio River Valley Institute is continuing the Petrochemical Lunch & Learn Series in 2024. Archbishop Marcia Dinkins and Patricia DeMarco have collaborated in producing this series taking a deep dive in 2024 connecting the health of people with the health of the environment. We recognize that too many front line communities experience daily conditions of air, water and land pollution that seriously deteriorate the health of people, especially children and the elderly. We also recognize that the mainstream systems for health care often do not reach communities of color living in the shadow of industrial facilities.
This series of webinars proposes to arm people who live and work with frontline communities with information, resources and tools to understand the situations they face. We hope to provide connection by sharing lived experiences from people who have food solutions and are moving forward.
We believe that health is a human right, not a privilege for those who can buy enough health insurance. We believe that to have healthy people we must have clean air and water, land that provides safe, fresh food accessible to everybody, and free of contamination. We are working together to build connections among communities with common problems from the Appalachian region, to the Gulf South, to the industrial East Coast. We have a common vision of a better future we can build together.
We depend on the living Earth for fresh water, clean air fertile ground and the wonderful array of living things in the interconnected Web of Life, of which humans are but one part. If we preserve our Mother Earth, we will have all we need to survive and to thrive for generations and generations.
2024 Petrochemical Lunch & Learn: Your Health and Your Environment Production
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins- Convenor and Welcome
Ben Hunkler- Ohio River Valley Institute -Technical support and evaluation surveys
Patricia DeMarco, Ph.D. – Research and Background
Kidest Gebre- BLAC Fellow – Communication and Coordination
Esther Baldwin- BLAC Fellow – Organizing and Support
The 2024 Petrochemical Lunch & Learn Series addressed these topics:
1. Health is a Human Right Feb 21, 2024 explored the connection between people and the environment; every person has the right to breathe clean air, have safe water and freedom from pollution
2. Air Pollution March 21, 2024- sources, health harms and mitigation
3. Water is Life– April 18, 2024 water pollution, health harms and mitigation
4. The Land Beneath Our Feet– May 16, 2024- abandoned mined lands, abandoned oil and gas wells- health effects, amelioration and reclamation
5. Forever Plastics- Everlasting Poisons June 20, 2024 Addressed plastics in our everyday life, avoiding and substitutes
6 When Disaster Strikes– Protecting Vulnerable Populations August 15, 2024
7. Environmental Justice and Building a Clean Energy Economy Sept. 19, 2024
8. Healthy Mothers and Children in a Healthy World Oct. 31, 2024
9. Action Strategy- November 21, 2024. Mobilizing and empowering people to hold polluters accountable. Freedom to Breathe Campaign
The programs reached over 1,500 registered attendees from 28 states and three countries. Clearly, there is much work yet to do in bringing frontline communities into a greater state of awareness and empowerment to take action against the chronic and damaging pollution that has become an accepted part of industrial might. This cannot be contiued at the expense of the health of millions of people exposed to toxic materials exposure through contaminated air, land and water.
As we look toward 2025, we will focus on moving from awareness to action. We will harness the power of informed citizens to hold the polluters accountable. BLAC launched the Right to Breathe Campaign at the end of this series. This will carry forward the momentum for health as a human right into the next year.
It has been my honor to be involved with this highly impactful series of programs. Archbishop Marcia Dinkins has inspired many discussions and brought hope to people enduring situations that cannot be considered normal and right, sometimes for generations. Ben Hunkler of the Ohio Valley Research Institute has kept the whole operation operating technically smoothly and has assembled and added to the resources in the Petrochemical Lunch & Learn Toolkit.
The landscape has changed with the season from green filled with flowers to brown, red and gold of the deciduous tree canopy in this temperate Pennsylvania community of Forest Hills. As we push forward with budget setting we struggle to implement the plans laid down over the past several years- A Comprehensive Plan for Development, a Climate Action Plan and an Active Transportation Plan. The local governments of America are on the front lines of addressing the great existential challenges of our time. But they do not appear as cataclysmic surges everywhere at once. While coastal areas may struggle with rising sea levels and extraordinary king tides, we in the middle lands have different problems.
Light Up the Hills- Forest Hills Borough 11-19-2022
Here we seek to reinvest in communities long abandoned by the extractive industries of coal and steel and petrochemical production that laid down the wealth of the 20th century. Here we seek to reshape a future built on the foundations of past systems, but with the resilience and ingenuity that has sustained the people of this land for millennia. Adaptations come slowly, but now more quickly as the tools of policy begin to take hold. The grassroots ideas compiled into the ReImagine Appalachia Blueprint during 2020-2022 are now being implemented through successful incorporation into the Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act adopted by Congress this year. Funds begin to percolate down to the communities, with the new concept of Community Benefit Agreements attached to federal funds. We are slowly dragging equity and inclusion considerations into the policies that drive progress.
What does that look like at the Borough level? Well, we see the prospect of upgrading our sidewalks and public transportation corridors for safer and more frequent bus transit service, and eventually bicycle lanes. We see funds for repairing pedestrian walkways connecting shopping and parks with communities. Walkways and stairways were once prolific in the days when the community was served by electric streetcars, but have fallen into disrepair, overrun with vines and the inevitable succession of saplings growing into the cracks. The remnants of a more active society remain and can be restored.
As the cost of renewable energy systems comes down and is better supported with incentives, more people and businesses are making installations, some linked with their electric vehicle charging stations. The community looks toward establishing micro-grids where solar on business and municipal buildings helps to meet energy requirements, and centrally located battery storage units can ameliorate the cost for the whole community as well as offer better reliability and resilience in storms. The electric grid is being evaluated and upgraded to accommodate the changes that are coming soon. Investment tax credits and production tax credits that are established in law for 10 years, instead of two or three requiring constant budget reauthorization, now make investors more interested in these projects. Stability in the market actually works where exhortation and pleading fell on deaf ears.
As the crises of extended droughts afflict many parts of the world and even significant and growing areas of America, we see the pattern of abundant water from storms in our area instead. Stormwater surges and landslides are our greatest climate change vulnerabilities. This pattern of storm water from climate change carries a huge opportunity and also an obligation. In Pennsylvania and our neighboring Appalachian states, we will have water for growing food, for domestic use and for other purposes. We will not have water to waste, or to contaminate by deliberately adding contaminants for fracking or industrial sewer discharge. Fresh water is essential for life. We must become adept at managing the storm surges, storing water for later use, and conserving its integrity from contaminants. Water can be reclaimed, reused and recirculated endlessly, if the laws that govern its distribution and flow are respected and not abused.
The COVID pandemic that has cost over one million lives in the US alone has reshaped our society. We carry the scars of this pandemic in our loss of social interaction, our pain and grief at losing loved ones, and our economic stress. We have seen our vulnerabilities magnified in the global marketplace when supply chains have been disrupted. People begin to look again to regional and local systems for things that are necessary. Will the homogenized global marketplace yield once again to regional and local specialization? Can we look forward to specialties that make places unique, that mark them as home? I hope so. The handmade homemade craft of folks who made much out of little has earned a place in our history, and may become a hallmark of our future. COVID also revealed the disparities in broadband access and affordability. Here again, new laws begin to address this issue that restrains participation in the virtual marketplace for many people in both urban and rural areas. Is it time for broadband access to be an essential utility service?
I attended the Forest Hills community celebration of Light Up the Hills on Friday evening. There were people from all around the neighborhood and surrounding communities as well. The faces of children telling their wishes to Santa, the people coming in for hot chocolate and donuts after watching young performers all came together to greet each other, and share a few moments of joy. That is what makes communities matter. Shared joy, shared accomplishments, and the sense of belonging in a special place that we can shape, but that also shapes us.
As we prepare for the Thanksgiving Celebration, this week, I think of this time for extending gratitude and appreciation among our kinsfolk, and to our neighbors and friends. And I hope that we can also extend a smile and friendly expressions even to strangers we may meet along the way. We are more alike in our humanity than different in race, gender, culture, religion, or even politics. It is a time to remember the deep history of this land and the Indigenous Peoples who thrived here for thousands of years before the European colonists arrived. Their resilience to changes over millennia gives testament to the ability of people to adapt, to find ways of cooperating through changes, and to share the love and respect for this bountiful land.
In one of the last public speeches of her life, Rachel Carson addressed the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group in San Francisco. Her thoughts on that occasion resonate today with even more clarity, as much that she feared in 1963 has become our reality.
In that speech “On the Pollution of Our Environment” she said, “In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom, for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.” Rachel Carson used her knowledge of science and her early understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things to advocate for policy based on science.
The challenges we are facing today can be addressed by recognizing that the laws of Nature are not negotiable. We must adjust our laws, our ways of interacting with the living earth and each other to align more closely to accommodate the laws of chemistry, physics, physiology and ecology.
Here is a presentation I gave for the C.F. Reynolds Medical Historical Society on September 20, 2022.
Patricia DeMarco Ph.D. 