Eddie Bautista is an award-winning organizer, planner, strategist and non-profit leader. Since 2010, Eddie has served as the Executive Director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), a network of community-based organizations of color advocating for the empowerment of environmentally overburdened neighborhoods. For over 30 years, Eddie and NYC-EJA have been at the forefront of City and State campaigns to advance environmental and climate justice. Under Eddie’s leadership, NYC-EJA’s campaign accomplishments have come to re-define environmental/climate justice advocacy in New York – campaigns have included:
- the Waterfront Justice Project, (NYC’s first citywide community resiliency campaign)
- the Sandy Regional Assembly
- the historic 2014 People’s Climate March (the largest climate mobilization in history, with over 400,000 marchers in NYC alone)
- NYC’s first Waste Equity Law (reduced waste transfer station capacity in NYC’s most overburdened communities)
- Transform Don’t Trash NYC (the largest proposal to overhaul NYC’s commercial waste system in decades)
- Climate Works for All (won the 2019 NYC Climate Mobilization Act, the most ambitious climate action plan by any major U.S. city)
- NY Renews (lead for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act, CLCPA, the most aggressive climate action law among U.S. states – inspired President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative)
- Congestion Pricing for NYC’s central business district (the first by any North American city)
- PEAK Coalition (the first citywide campaign in the U.S. advocating to replace all of a city’s polluting peaker power plants with clean renewable energy + battery storage)
- Last Mile Coalition (the first citywide campaign in the U.S. to advocate for the regulation of e-commerce distribution facilities disproportionately sited in EJ communities)
- the NYC Climate Justice Hub (a partnership with the City University of NY, connecting CUNY’s resources and students to NYC-EJA and 6 of our frontline organizational members to address local and regional climate change issues)
In addition to his work with NYC-EJA, Eddie serves on the NYS Climate Justice Working Group, the entity that created NYS’s first “disadvantaged communities” criteria under the CLCPA, whereby 35-40% of NYS’s entire clean energy funding portfolio will be directed. Eddie also serves on several non-profit boards of directors and multiple government advisory boards.
Before taking the reins at NYC-EJA in 2010, Eddie served as Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of City Legislative Affairs, where he spearheaded passage of several landmark laws, and Director of Community Planning for NY Lawyers for the Public Interest, where he organized coalitions blocking the siting of polluting infrastructure while advancing sustainable environmental policies. Eddie has been interviewed by local and national media, and several books feature Eddie’s work, including The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, (2010); and Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice, (2006).
