Conversation with Jerome Ringo of Apollo Alliance

Oct 27, 2009 06:30 PM

SEIU 503

Jerome Ringo, President of the national Apollo Alliance, will be back in Portland next Tuesday, October 27.  We’ve invited him for an informal Q and A with members and friends of Oregon Apollo – 6:30 - 8 pm at SEIU 503, 6401 SE Foster, in Portland.  Those of you who heard Jerome speak last time he was here will understand our excitement!  He is a charismatic and articulate spokesperson for the new clean energy economy, and its power to create family-supporting jobs and move people out of poverty and into sustainable employment.  Jerome will fill us in on recent legislative debates in Congress, including the Apollo Alliance-supported Green Manufacturing Bill (IMPACT Act, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown). See below for more info on Jerome and his background.

As an added bonus, we’ll get a report on the formation of the Community Workforce Agreement for Portland’s much-heralded Clean Energy Works Program. Derek Smith, Director of the City’s Clean Energy Fund and facilitator of the CWA, will join us to report on how the project will work, and how it will meet the needs of community and labor advocates. 

About Jerome Ringo: Jerome Ringo came to the Apollo Alliance in 2005 as a dedicated champion of environmental justice and vocal advocate of clean energy. He has first hand experience of the challenges we face, after working for more than 20 years in Louisiana’s petrochemical industry. More than half of that time was spent as an active union member working with his fellow members to secure a safe work environment and quality jobs. As he began observing the negative impacts of the industry’s pollution on local communities – primarily poor, minority communities – Jerome began organizing community environmental justice groups. Jerome’s experience organizing environmental and labor communities and his drive to further diversify the environmental movement bridges many of Apollo’s partners to create a broad based coalition to provide real solutions for our energy crisis. In 1996, Ringo was elected to serve on the National Wildlife Federation board of directors and, in 2005, Jerome became the chair of the board. In so doing, he also became the first African American to head a major conservation organization. Jerome was the United States’ only black delegate at the 1998 Global Warming Treaty Negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, and represented the National Wildlife Federation at the United Nations conference on sustainable development in 1999. Jerome inspires audiences around the world to create a new clean energy economy.