A historic vote and tools it gave us

Vice President Kamala Harris is sure to be remembered every March in Women’s History Month as the first woman and the first person of color to serve our nation in that position. As notable as those two facts are, she may grow to be known just as much for a single vote in the Senate that helped save the planet.

Last August, she broke the 50-50 deadlock between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. That historic package, along with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Vice President Harris had crisscrossed the country in 2021 to build support for, give us a once-in-ageneration chance to protect the climate and build a cleaner, fairer economy. Both laws bear the vice president’s mark. For example, the two packages provide billions to replace diesel school buses with electric ones and an additional tax credit for purchases that counties and cities make on their own. When serving in the U.S. Senate, Vice President Harris repeatedly sponsored bills to electrify the nation’s school buses. Similarly, she championed proposals to help recovery in low-income communities that bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and climate; the IRA includes $60 billion directed to help those places.

Vice President Harris’ role inside and outside Washington on environmental issues isn’t surprising. When she was elected San Francisco’s district attorney 20 years ago, she started one of the first environmental justice units in a prosecutor’s office.

When she moved on to be California’s attorney general, she fought to protect the state from fossil fuel interests, winning tens of millions in civil settlements and a criminal indictment against the pipeline company responsible for an oil spill off Santa Barbara, as well as suing the federal government to block fracking off the coast. It’s a path others have been able to follow since then (Columbia University keeps a database of attorneys general’s environmental actions now).

It’s a concern that runs deep. Like I did, Vice President Harris grew up in environmentally conscious Northern California in a household deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She learned early that conser- vation was a good thing, so much so that she has joked she couldn’t understand as a youngster why people she knew said conservatives were bad.

The Biden-Harris administration has provided leadership. With Congress, they’ve given us the tools to clean up pollution, to boost communities’ resilience to climate related natural disasters like wildfires, and to create good jobs in clean manufacturing across the country in unprecedented ways. Through the infrastructure and inflation reduction packages, the United States can spend more than double protecting Earth than we spent putting astronauts on the moon.

“I think we all understand we have to be solutions driven. And the solutions are at hand,” Vice President Harris said at a climate summit earlier this month. “We need to make up for some lost time, no doubt. This is going to have an exponential impact on where we need to go.”

It’s time for the rest of us to pick up those tools and build. There are powerful interests that would be more than happy to let the inertia that allows people and places to be treated as disposable continue indefinitely. Our planet can’t afford that, and we have to marshal a movement to prevent it.

The writer is executive director of the Sierra Club.

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who seeks to maintain the power of House Speaker, gave Fox News viewers exactly what they wanted. The same is true for Mr. Carlson and Rupert Murdoch, who aims to increase ratings and revenue. Therefore, the propaganda and misinformation continue, as does the viewership. But the right-wing media giant may have met their match. The writer is founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body.

Regina H. Boone reginaboone@richmondfreepress.com James Haskins, Rudolph Powell and Clinton A. Strane Vice President – Administration Tracey L. Oliver traceyoliver@richmondfreepress.com Advertising Traffic Coordinator Cynthia Downing advertising@richmondfreepress.com

I am writing to address what I consider an inaccurate representation of my making a personal decision to deny same-gender parents’ names on a birth certificate. This representation, announcing the retirement of Janet Rainey, was in an article in the Richmond Free Press, March 9-11, 2023, edition. When the request was made to place both adoptive parents on the birth certificate, Virginia law only allowed a mother and father to be listed. The law did not enable same-gender parents to be listed on the birth certificate. As the state registrar, the law required me to file vital records within statutory requirements.

Ms. Rainey, state registrar at the time of the Virginia Supreme Court decision (Davenport et al. v. Little Bowser et al.), was allowed to record same-gender parents on a birth certificate once it became state law, removing the restriction of not listing same-gender parents on a birth certificate.

I am requesting that this misrepresentation be corrected in a follow-up article. The history of the vital records system can be out of sync with societal changes and may require legal actions to change.

DeboRAh LittLe bowseR Richmond

Editor’s note: It was not the intention of the Richmond Free Press to characterize the actions that led to the Davenport et al. v. Little Bowser et al. Virginia Supreme Court case as being made solely by Mrs. Little Bowser or at her personal discretion. We

Stories by Fred Jeter

JM’s Justices win third state crown since 2018

Coach Ty White’s team crushes Radford 91-34

The Class 2 State final was more showtime than showdown.

Fans looking for a tense, hotly contested game were disappointed.

But if folks packed the Siegel Center to see for themselves what might be the best team in Richmond area history, they got their money’s worth.

There were at least 10 dunks, many of the theatrical variety, among JM’s 39 field goals. A partisan JM crowd of about 7,000 were highly entertained.

In a start-to-finish rout, Coach Ty White’s Justices crushed Radford, 91-34, for their third State crown since 2018 and fourth since 2014.

“We knew as soon as we got on the bus we were beaten. We never had a chance,” said Radford Coach Rick Cormany.

“In the history of the VHSL, I don’t think there’s ever been a blowout like this.”

It could have been worse.

None of JM’s starters played more than 24 minutes, and a running clock was used much of the fourth quarter. A total of 15 Justices saw action.

Dennis Parker and Latrell Allmond had 17 points each, Jason Rivera 15, Redd Thompson 12 and Dominique Bailey 10 as JM finished 28-0.

Quick reserve Damontique Hodge stole the spotlight in the late going, scoring seven in the final three minutes. A 6-foot-8 freshman, Allmond is likely the best big man prospect to hit the 804 since Petersburg’s Moses Malone in the early 1970s, and Benedictine’s Ed Davis in the early 2000s. Allmond is more advanced as a ninth-grader than former JM centers Isaiah Tate and Roosevelt

Wheeler.

Cormany, whose Bobcats finished 23-5, has won six State titles at Radford and is among the most respected coaches in Virginia. “I’ve probably coached more than 1,000 games,” he told the press. “And only twice did I know I had no chance to win – the two JM games (in ’22 and ’23).”

Afterward, Coach White praised his team’s academic success, its unwavering work ethic (“We start practice at 6 a.m. each day.”) and his 11 assistant coaches.

“I really didn’t have to work that hard this season,” he added. The Justices looked as sharp off the floor as they did on it.

With help from Justin Fairfax, former lieutenant governor of Virginia, all the JM players, coaches and support staff traveled to VCU with tailored blue suits and ties.

Expect more of the same. There are just two senior starters. Parker, the likely Player of the Year in Virginia, is headed to North Carolina State.

Rivera, a transfer from New