Hispanic Heritage Month
Floor Speech
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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, this Hispanic Heritage Month, I want to honor a powerful community mother in our district. She is an advocate. She has been a social worker for over 40 years. Our community mother, Mary Turner, serves with so much incredible commitment to community.
Mary's Catholic faith drove her to service. In southwest Detroit where there are 20 different ethnicities, you will find someone who has a story about Mary helping their family.
She brings so much heart and humanity to everything that she does, helping families navigate our broken, inhumane immigration system that too often works against them.
Her commitment to justice, equality, and compassion reminds us of the essential contributions that our Latino neighbors make every day in our Nation.
Mary doesn't just serve our community, she empowers us.
As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and the more than 63 million Hispanic and Latino Americans in our country, let's honor people like Mary Turner and continue to fight for a future where every person, regardless of their background, has access to the opportunities they deserve.
I thank Mary Turner for her many years of service. She continues to inspire us all. Hazardous Waste
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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, this month I join Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans for a townhall to discuss the impending radioactive waste shipments that are coming to Michigan from New York.
This waste, and thousands of other truckloads our residents never hear about, comes to our communities right into our backyard because Michigan has become the country's hazardous waste dumping ground.
Wayne County, the largest county in Michigan, is home to six of Michigan's eight hazardous waste dumps. Our laws must change, Madam Speaker. We must protect our residents.
I don't know if folks know, but it costs about $13 to dispose of a ton of waste in a landfill in Wisconsin, but it only costs 36 cents in Michigan.
We have made ourselves the most attractive place in our Nation to dump hazardous waste while surrounded by 84 percent of our country's surface freshwater. It doesn't make sense.
The truth is our environmental protection laws aren't strong enough to protect our people. They certainly do not go far enough, again, to protect working families and communities of color.
I introduced the Cumulative Impacts Act that would require the EPA and EGLE to consider cumulative impacts of pollution on our communities when it considers permanent facilities like this one and reject those permits when they would put our health at risk.
We need to pass this bill and more. Our residents are getting sick every single day while we do nothing. Palestinian Babies
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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, we are witnessing the Israel Government carry out a genocide in Gaza.
Recently, the Gaza ministry of health released a 649-page document with the name, age, and ID number of 34,344 Palestinians killed in Gaza who have been identified.
Most of them are women, children, and the elderly. These are just the identified individuals; many public health experts believe the death toll will climb. Every single day higher numbers will come out due to disease and starvation.
There are thousands more who are dismembered, unrecognizable, or buried beneath the rubble. However, behind these numbers are real people who have had their futures stolen. Their lives are forever changed.
The first 14 pages alone are the names of babies--I wish my colleagues would look at--who were under the age of 1 when they were killed. There are 14 pages of babies' names. That is 710 babies that the Israeli Government has murdered. This is not self-defense. This is genocide.
How can anyone justify this?
Madam Speaker, I include in the Congressional Record the link for the list of the children: https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.net/ tlaib.house.gov/uploads/2024/09/Palestinian-Ministry-of-Health- Casualty-List-31-Aug-24.pdf
We are living through one of, again, the most documented and horrific crimes against humanity in our history.
Again, these are children who did not live to see their first birthday. We cannot normalize this, Madam Speaker.
My colleagues continue to be silent. I wonder if it is because these babies are Palestinian. They are children. That is it. They are children. I can't believe I have to consistently remind my colleagues that Palestinians are also human beings.
Our tax dollars paid for this. U.S. weapons are being used to commit war crimes in violation of our own U.S. Leahy Laws and international laws, but many of my colleagues in the Biden-Harris administration continue to send bombs to kill children.
This is not working tirelessly for a cease-fire. If the Biden-Harris administration wants a cease-fire, then they should stop sending the bombs and the weapons. We must stop arming and funding genocide.
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