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We are hiring a Coalition Community Organizer to coordinate and run the various community-coalition projects that Clean Air is supporting! Please apply and share widely – the full job description and details for how to apply are available now at https://www.cacwny.org/get-involved/jobs-internships/

We’ve had a couple of inquiries about why opposing mass detainment and deportation operations are a Clean Air issue, so we felt we should clear the air with some explanation.

First of all, we urge you to come to one of our General Meetings or meet with a Clean Air organizer to learn a bit more about our organization. Just as a refresher, circa 2005 our work started with Tonawanda residents, mostly women, meeting in kitchens and living rooms to share information with each other about strange illnesses among family members that many households were grappling with – ie, an unreported epidemiological cluster that residents suspected was linked to pollution from nearby industry. 

These residents were inspired by the work of previous generations of environmental justice organizers, like the Love Canal and Cancer Alley campaigners and Black civil rights organizers like Dr. Robert Bullard who drew the direct lines between how some populations, like Black communities, are systemically marginalized and how that manifests as environmental injustices. 

Our earliest members, drawing on the lessons learned from these earlier campaigns and from peers in other fenceline and frontline communities, decided to organize an environmental justice and public health campaign to identify the worst of the worst polluters to force those facilities to upgrade plant equipment and eliminate the public health hazards they were creating, and used a citizen science tactic (bucket brigade air sampling) to prove to the NYS DEC that action needed to be taken.

Through this work, they identified Tonawanda Coke as the main culprit, proving scientifically that this facility was emitting benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, at levels far above public safety standards, and they quickly started seeing major wins, leading to a very well publicized raid by the EPA, Coast Guard and other federal agencies.

Almost all of this occurred before Clean Air officially organized as a non-profit. Coming off these major wins, this first generation of Clean Air members realized that they could not let this work conclude merely with these wins, and that if the residents of Tonawanda and Western New York never again wanted to be exposed to similar pollution and injustices, they would need to formalize as an organization to make this work sustained with a long term vision for a Just Transition.

Thus, in 2009, the organization formalized with the following vision, mission, and values statements – 

“OUR MISSION

The Clean Air Coalition builds power by developing grassroots leaders who organize their communities to run and win environmental justice and public health campaigns in Western New York.

OUR VISION

A world where our environment promotes health and equity and where systems place communities at the forefront of decision making.

OUR VALUES

• • Leadership Development
  • Environmental Justice
  • Democratic Decision-making
  • Resident Knowledge
  • Race & Class Equity & Inclusion
  • Appreciation, Recognition and Celebration”

Note that our mission is NOT specifically and narrowly related to air quality improvement – it is a part of our work, but within the umbrella of fighting for environmental justice and public health. 

The name “The Clean Air Coalition of Western New York” was chosen not specifically for our mission and work, but instead based on the most successful tactics of our first campaign – focusing on air quality and building coalitions with community, labor, and other stakeholders to build power and force action. 

It has, honestly, at times created confusion – for example, there are a number of “Clean Air Coalition” organizations across the nation and globally, including a few right here in NY. We are not affiliated with any of those organizations. We are members of several local, statewide and national organizations like PPG Buffalo, USCAN, EDA, PPNY, and NYRenews, but these are more affiliations and groups to network with peer organizations in other fenceline and frontline communities – we are autonomous and are an independent 501c3.

In our 2017 strategic plan, rebranding actually surfaced as a priority goal, and we have over the past decade examined the logistics involved. Given all that we have been through and the changes the organization has been through over the past ten years, including the closure of Tonawanda Coke, Battaglia, and other major campaign wins, as well as a full change of staff, a rebrand simply hasn’t risen to the top as a priority. What we have also learned is that it is costly and would require changing not just a logo and a name but also refiling legal paperwork, changing websites and social media handles, changing billing information and more. 

To be successful, we would require direct involvement of our members and the public – folks in WNY know when “Clean Air” is mentioned as an organization who is being referred to, and the work that has been done under this title. Were we to change our name, to be contiguous as an organization, we would need everyone to help us correct folks when they refer to us as our original name – as a trans person, I can tell you that it isn’t always easy to get that buy-in!

All that to say, we have taken on resisting mass detainment and deportation in the Tonawandas as part of our Tonawanda Just Transition campaign because we are driven by our mission and our members.

Quite simply, mass deportation is a policy that anyone of conscience should object to, and our members want to take action.

It’s also counter to the economic goals of a just transition for the Tonawandas that Clean Air and all of those we have worked in coalition with fight for – the population growth we have experienced in recent years comes from new migrants, and should be encouraged, not suppressed.

Clean Air has a very specific niche in this fight that other groups do not fill – we advocate for equitable and just governmental practices, like zoning codes and enforcement, and allowing for the development or continuation of infrastructure in the Tonawandas and WNY involved in mass deportation operations is counter to our campaign goals.

But let’s get a little more concrete for a moment on the public health impacts of these operations – there is, of course, the state violence all across the US that we have all witnessed this past year, including the well publicized and documented killings of US citizens, including Keith Porter, Ruben Ray Martinez, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti.

Locally, for over a year now, people have been getting grabbed on the street of the Elmwood Village, the West Side, and throughout our communities. I personally have needed to take time off from work to join a neighborhood ICE watch. Just a few weeks ago, news broke that a parent picking up their child from Public School #3 on Buffalo’s West Side was taken into ICE custody. 

Our members are being directly affected in their neighborhoods in Tonawanda, Buffalo, and throughout WNY, and it’s affecting our capacity to address more traditional environmental justice issues that we normally focus on.

And, just this past week, we learned of the disappearance of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56 year old blind Burmese refugee who spoke exclusively Rohingya. 

Shah Alam was arrested in February 2025 shortly after resettling in Buffalo for accidentally trespassing on a neighbor’s porch during a morning stroll, and was held at Erie County Holding Center for a year out of fear that if he were bailed out, ICE would deport him.

After a year of negotiations between local and federal officials, Shah Alam’s lawyer expected that he would be released from Erie County Sheriff holding into ICE custody in Batavia, where Shah Alam would then be free to leave. 

Instead, Erie County sheriffs released him without shoes into the custody of CBP officers, suspected to be from the Tonawanda station at 600 Colvin Woods Parkway, who left him at the closed Tim Hortons on Niagara at Amherst, a mile from his former home, which his family no longer lived at. 

That coffee shop happens to be the closest one to the Sawyer-Kaufmann community in the River Road corridor, and we have met our members there for meetings on many occasions. It is an area surrounded by heavy traffic, including the 190 ramps, and is not very accessible by foot.

Shah Alam was reported missing by his family on Thursday February 19.

Shah Alam was found deceased on Wednesday February 25.

At least 32 people were killed in ICE detainment in 2025, the deadliest year on record for the agency. There are multiple reports of disease outbreaks at currently operating ICE facilities. ICE is trying to build warehouses for mass deportation operations which will house thousands each – concentration camps.

But it is CBP, not ICE, which has shot and killed people in the streets of the United States just this past year during their mass deportation operations, and it is CBP which left Shah Alam alone and helpless, among other local incidents, and it is our local and county police and sheriff departments right here in WNY who have supported these actions.

All this to say, mass deportation operations and mass incarceration are as much of a public health hazard as cancer causing emissions.

All of this also means that the entire community is increasingly frightened of our federal government, which filters down to local government – how can we expect people to whistleblow on dangerous industrial polluters when they fear that any interaction with even local government officials could lead to deportation, injury, or death?

Quite simply, the national policy of mass deportation is affecting our environmental justice and public health work, because we are a member-led organization, and these policies directly affect our members. 

Our members brought us this topic as a a campaign priority that they wanted to organize around. They asked us to bring their concerns to the Town Board and other area officials, and to help residents in the Tonawandas organize a rapid response resistance campaign.

Our member priorities and working within our specific niche within this fight is what makes resisting mass deportation part of our environmental justice campaigns. 

Read more at the links below, and if you are interested in joining our Tonawanda Just Transition Team, please reach out to me, Bridge Rauch. You can become a Clean Air member by clicking here to donate today, and read about membership in our handbook.

You can donate to Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s family through this GoFundMe – https://www.gofundme.com/f/standing-with-nurul-amins-family-in-buffalo

General Resources 

• https://projectsaltbox.substack.com/about 
• https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/americans-protest-ice-detention-facilities-trump-mass-deportation
• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline
• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-look-at-shootings-by-federal-immigration-officers
• https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-dilley-children-letters
  https://www.propublica.org/article/life-inside-ice-dilley-children

600 Colvin Woods Parkway

• https://www.cacwny.org/2026/01/600-colvin-woods-parkway-detainment-facility/
• Recent Coverage
  • https://www.investigativepost.org/2025/06/13/feds-adding-migrant-detention-centers-in-buffalo-area/
  • https://www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/20/landlords-earn-millions-from-immigration-leases/
• Older Coverage
  • https://littlesis.org/news/buffalos-immigrant-detention-profiteers/
  • https://littlesis.org/reports/selling-out-new-yorks-immigrants/

Shah Alam Coverage from Investigative Post

• https://www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/24/blind-man-missing-after-border-patrol-dropoff-at-a-tim-hortons/
• https://www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/blind-refugee-abandoned-by-border-patrol-is-dead/
• https://www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/26/calls-for-investigation-into-refugees-death/
• https://www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/26/timeline-burmese-refugees-arrest-to-death/

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Clean Air recently hosted a Midwest Academy Hub Training Series – we are thrilled to share that this series was a resounding success, with 32 local organizers across a multitude of movements participating in the full certification training, and an additional 82 members of the public joining us on Saturday for a “crash course” non-certification training in the basics of the Midwest Framework, led by our cohort of organizers.

Thanks to funding from our friends at the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and space offered by Trinity Episcopal Church and PUSH Buffalo, we were able to offer this training series for FREE to all participants, and some even received stipends for taking time off of work to attend.

The Midwest Academy is a 50+ year old training institute for organizers based out of Chicago, and it’s framework stems from lessons learned from Chicago’s labor and community organizing dating back over a hundred years. Clean Air utilizes the Midwest framework in our organizing campaigns, and all our staff are certified by Midwest.

Anyone can become an organizer – but organizers need to be trained and supported in their professional development, and campaigns need to be strategic rather than reactive in order to be impactful.

Our hope is that by offering this training to local organizers across movement lines, we can work collectively and cohesively together to meet the current crisis moment.

We also hope this is just the first of an annual series, with a mix of national training organizations being brought each year to Buffalo to train up area organizers – if you have ideas for national training schools you would like to see brought to Buffalo, please reach out to Bridge, and if you are a funder interested in supporting future training series, please reach out to Chris.

Below are some of our favorite photos from the training series!

The Clean Air Coalition of WNY and Showing Up for Racial Justice Buffalo (SURJ Buffalo) held a vigil on January 22 near the Customs & Border Patrol detention facility at 600 Colvin Woods Parkway in Tonawanda to call attention to the lawless violence of federal immigration agents here in Western New York as well as in other places like Minneapolis.

In 2025 alone, 32 detainees held by ICE died, the largest number of deaths in a single year since 2004, with December 2025 representing the deadliest month to date for the agency. This is partly a result of the reckless expansion of the immigration detention system, which cages people in inhumane conditions indefinitely without adequate due process. Here in Western New York, immigration agents have rapidly transformed spaces into jails, including the facility on Colvin Woods Parkway.

As our national attention is drawn to the horrific violence ICE and CBP are inflicting on the people of Minneapolis, these same agencies are terrorizing, abducting, and detaining residents of Tonawanda without due process while our elected officials have remained silent. The town’s failure to act is rapidly eroding trust between the community and our local, state and federal government.

We appreciate that the town government responded to our vigil with a statement acknowledging that the community does not want local police or other agencies to collude with federal immigration agents. Similar, we applaud Mayor Sean Ryan and the City of Buffalo signing the recent executive order clarifying that city employees may not collude with CBP, ICE, DHS or other federal agencies over civil matters.

However, these words are meaningless without action and without enforcement. The town claims that the TTPD do not collaborate with ICE or CBP, but the Investigative Post has documented collusion between the TTPD and Border Patrol agents. The town must hold TTPD officers who collude with ICE and CBP accountable, and specifically address relations between TTPD and CBP concerning civil matters.

The town must also take action against the privately-owned detention facility within an office park that CBP leases at 600 Colvin Woods Parkway. The facility is visible from one of the town’s most popular parks and neighbors a church as well as residential areas, forcing our entire community to watch as our neighbors’ basic human rights are violated by a lawless federal agency. The Town Board’s silence on this facility is unacceptable.

Clean Air and SURJ Buffalo call on Town of Tonawanda officials to take the following actions:

• Use zoning enforcement and health and safety related building codes to inspect conditions for detainees at the 600 Colvin Woods Parkway facility and issue any appropriate fines to Customs & Border Patrol and their landlord Government Investment Partners for inappropriate use of the Colvin Woods facility. This parcel is zoned as Mixed Use Industrial (MU-I) , but detainment of inmates is limited to the public safety campus areas of Community Facility Districts, a subset of Special Purpose Districts. The facility was sold to GIP after the new zoning code became official, and we feel this sale should have eliminated grandfathered status and triggered a zoning appeal process. We recognize this is a relatively novel use of zoning, but we urge public officials to consider creative tactics to resist the unprecedented harmful acts of this administration. We also recognize direct inspection of the facility may require the assistance of Congressmember Kennedy, and we urge Town officials to request this support if necessary.
• Pass a non-collusion resolution that would impose consequences on any Town of Tonawanda government agents who collude with federal immigration agents
• Pass a resolution supporting the adoption of the New York for All Act and directly request that our representatives in Albany take rapid action to adopt this legislation immediately

Clean Air and SURJ Buffalo also urge our members and residents of the Town of Tonawanda to contact Town Supervisor Joe Emminger, and other members of the Town Board, to urge them to take action. We also urge contacting Congressmember Kennedy’s office.

Just like the people of Minneapolis, the people of Tonawanda love our neighbors, and we reject narratives of hate and fear that seek to divide us. We call on the Town Board to join us in protecting and supporting our community.

If you are a Clean Air member and would like to join these efforts, please reach out to Bridge.

If you have any questions or are interested in joining Clean Air’s Tonawanda Just Transition Teams (Tonawanda Tomorrow and River Road Watchdogs), please reach out to Bridge – bridge@cacwny.org

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Happy new year! Last year was an intense time, and we navigated through some extremely rocky storms – unfortunately, we’re expecting more stormy seas ahead in 2026.

Here are a few topics we’re keeping tabs on as we enter this new year – 

Data Center Boom and the AI bubble

• We expect to continue to see data centers, a largely unregulated industrial sector, continue to be an issue in 2026, with a growing trend in upstate of mostly speculative data center project developers transitioning from plans for cryptocurrency mining to leasing to Artificial Intelligence developers, with only a few developer plans actually leading to shovels in the ground (but causing spikes in energy costs as NYISO reports these proposals as future energy demand), and those few that do get built causing significant environmental justice concerns. 
• We urge following developments at STAMP, the Riverview Innovation and Tech Campus (former Tonawanda Coke site), at the TESLA plant, and, of course, at the Fortistar plant in North Tonawanda. Clean Air is part of a growing statewide alliance that is developing regulations and other policies that we hope to see implemented at the local and state level this year.

• We also urge keeping an eye on the market this year, and how it could affect you personally, especially if you are a retiree who depends on your investments for your income. The economy is currently in an artificial economic bubble due to the massive investments in AI development and data center industrial developments, and there are strong warning signs on the horizon that a significant economic downturn is coming our way. Without pre-emptive policy to head this downtown off, it’s not a matter of if, but when, and our current elected leadership in DC is more interested in inflating this bubble rather than taking those actions. This could be a limited downturn, like the one following the dot.com bubble, or it could be a far broader reaching one, like the 2008 housing crash.

Migrant Justice Intersections

• Clean Air is keeping an eye out for any proposed large warehouse developments, or for lease contracts from Department of Homeland Security agencies, as well as urging local governments to consider utilizing zoning code violations by ICE and CBP detaining migrants in our community. We also urge local governments to pass resolutions in favor of the NY For All Act and examine any potential collaborative actions by local police with deportation actions. New York City recently passed a resolution which can be used as a model.

State Regulatory Overlooks

• As we have come to learn in recent years, neoliberal austerity policies at the state level have left our state regulatory oversight very frayed, with some air permits “SAPA-extended” for a decade or more (ie, these permits were supposed to be renewed over a decade ago, and these plants continue to operate on these older permits while the DEC catches up on paperwork.) This has led to some alarming stories in recent years, and we will certainly continue to track this issue as well as support efforts to address this backlog in 2026.

New Elected Leadership, New Possibilities

• Similar to peers downstate excited by the new Mamdani administration, we are excited by the newly inaugurated elected leadership throughout our region, particularly the progressive shifts in the Tonawandas, in Cheektowaga, and, of course, in the City of Buffalo. After years of stagnation, we expect 2026 will see some rapid changes and, while we do not expect that every fight for progressive policy will be won in 2026, we look forward to celebrating some big wins. Check out our memo that we sent to Mayor Sean Ryan’s transition team shortly after the election for some policies we hope to see adopted during his term!

Petrochemical Fascism Dying but Dangerous

• As we grimly were aware at the end of 2024, we knew we would see some setbacks in 2025, particularly in the movement for a Just Transition away from petrochemical reliance and towards an equitable and green economy. Indeed, we saw a resurgence last year not only in oil and gas, but also setbacks in wind and solar, and even saw the federal government intervene to keep coal power plants that were slated for closure after years of phase down on life support at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers and ratepayers. 2026 has already started off with a shockingly grim note, with the US government invading Venezuela to conduct a coup and pull us into yet another war for oil, as the President admitted openly. Clearly, while a transition away from oil, gas, coal and petrochemicals is inevitable, it will require a greater fight than expected, and will also require directly tackling the fight against fascism, bigotry, imperialism, and authoritarianism, which are all intertwined. 
• This is especially disturbing given the larger existential crisis that climate change presents, and the news that we are not only rapidly approaching several tipping points, but have already passed at least one. We are rapidly running out of road to prevent catastrophe.
• However, there were still some wins in 2025 that we hope to build off of. Notably, the “Big Beautiful Bill”/”Billionaire Bailout Bill” did not revoke tax credits or subsidies for thermal energy projects, like geothermal or thermal energy networks, nor did it revoke credits or subsidies for utility-scale battery storage projects, which will be crucial for the transition to renewable energy for grid reliability. We are especially excited by the potential for TENs as a just transition solution, as the work involves with building a TEN in a neighborhood shares many of the skills that building a gas pipeline network does. 

Organizing Levels Up

• There are more people today interested in resisting the MAGA agenda than there were a year ago, and we hope that in 2026 this will manifest in people finding an organizing home, whether that’s with Clean Air or with any number of our peer organizations. 
• Each and every one of us are superheroes in our own way, but even superheroes fight as a team – and with practiced tactics, not just throwing themselves into the melee. Too often, people who want to fight for justice wind up repeating the same mistakes, and commit to show up for protests but not for the longer campaign. 
• We hope that in 2026 there will be a shift towards building a collective movement built across demographic and policy lines, rather than following charismatic self-described leaders, and towards winning longstanding policy campaigns rather than protesting after harms have been inflicted – the growing movement for May Day 2028 is a key opportunity for Western New York to engage in mass movement and solidarity oriented organizing.
• With that said, we urge signing up for the Midwest Academy 1-day training on Saturday January 24 in Buffalo – click here to sign up, and please share this link widely with friends, family and colleagues!

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We are bringing the Midwest Academy to Buffalo on Saturday January 24 from 10am-3pm at School 77, 429 Plymouth Ave in Buffalo! Sign up today at this link, and please share it widely among your peers – https://actionnetwork.org/events/midwest-academy-buffalo-hub-1-day-training-saturday-january-24/

We are aiming for 125 participants so we need your help to get the word out!

This will be a fast paced and participatory class which will walk through the full Midwest framework on how to run and win an advocacy campaign, and is an essential training for organizers who are serious about policy change.