Environmental Professionals Radio (EPR)

Leadership, Environmental Justice, and Electric Vehicles with Antoine Thompson

August 12, 2022 Antoine Thompson Episode 79
Environmental Professionals Radio (EPR)
Leadership, Environmental Justice, and Electric Vehicles with Antoine Thompson
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Antoine Thompson, Executive Director of Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition about Leadership, Environmental Justice, and Electric Vehicles.  Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

1:52 Nic & Laura talk about  never apologizing
8:47  Interview with Antoine Thompson Starts
10:45  Electric Vehicles
22:10  Environmental Justice
45:41  Leadership

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Antoine Thompson at https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoine-m-thompson-27139b4/

Guest Bio:
Antoine M. Thompson is the former National Executive Director of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) the largest organization of African-American real estate professionals in the United States. He is a partner with Creative PMO Solutions, a consulting firm that focuses on diversity, inclusion and advocacy work. He is also a licensed real estate agent with Mootry Murphy & Burgin Realty Group. Antoine is a staunch champion of fair-housing and community re-investment by local and national financial institutions. He has had a significant public service career in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. His positions have included election to the Buffalo Common Council where he authored the Buffalo’s Fair Housing Law and secured over $75 million for community development projects. He was elected to the New York State Senate in 2006 and 2008 and served as the Senate Deputy Majority Whip and Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Conversation and Co-Chair of the Senate Minority and Woman Business Enterprise Task Force. He authored the NYS MWBE Mentor/Protégé Law. He is a former delegate to the Democratic National Convention; and was a member of the 2004 Electoral College. Thompson currently serves on the Board of Unity 9 PAC. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and First Baptist Church of Glenarden. He serves on numerous boards, taskforces and working groups. In 2021, Antoine was ranked on the Swanepoel Power 200 list ranking of the most influential and powerful leaders and executives in the residential real estate brokerage industry.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

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Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and Welcome to Epi hearth your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I discuss why I use the phrase never apologize. Laura talks to Antoine Thompson about leadership environmental justice and electric vehicles. And finally, here is twice as fizzy as champagne. So in both the bubbles bring flavor and aroma from the liquid to the surface, enhancing the taste about that. Nice. There's not really a lot more to it than that. I just thought it was neat as like Oh it does have value okay, cool. Yeah.

Laura
 
Oh, wait, is there like a metric for that? I have no piece of equipment that measures fizziness

Nic 
bubbles. The bubbles are smaller and the beer so there's more of them. Yeah, that's about as far as I went down the rabbit hole truthfully. The tagline was good. So I threw it in. I need to get back. The rats that are being tickled. That was a good way. Oh, yeah. It that music

[NAEP Event News]


Laura 
Join the PAEP, the Pennsylvania Association of environmental professionals for their webinar on Historic Preservation 101 On Thursday, August 25 at noon, Eastern this webinar is an introduction to historic preservation within the context of federal state and local regulatory compliance for public and private infrastructure, land development projects. Check it out@www.paep.org We appreciate all of our sponsors and they work keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head on over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura's Segment: Never Apologize]

Nic  
Kara, life saving I say guys for not being able to get more involved this week. It's just it's just

Laura 
still magical that you've been able to get these published every single week so I will not apologize at all early and Kara who told us right at the beginning stop apologizing. Don't ever apologize

Kara
You get one more Nic, you get one more.

Nic
 
It's true. It's true, though, like I do because I used to do that all the time.

Laura 
So let's talk about that. Why. Why do you tell people not to apologize ever?

Nic 
Well, I'd say a dramatically I don't know I don't mean that literally right because there are times when you should apologize for something if you are mean malicious, rude. For no reason, which does happen. We all have bad days. Everybody has a bad day. You are more than welcome to apologize for those things, right? If I say something rude that I didn't mean, I need to apologize for that. If I hurt someone's feelings I need to apologize for that right. Or wrong? Yeah. When you when you've made a mistake when you made a genuine mistake. You should apologize. That's that's pretty straightforward. What you shouldn't do is apologize for existing, you know, sorry, I had a doctor's appointment. Now. You have a doctor's appointment. You need to do that. That's important. That's part of your life. Don't apologize for that. You know, you could apologize

Laura  
for not telling someone you had a doctor's appointment.

Nic 
Exactly. I was just about to say that. Like if you didn't tell somebody and then you missed it. Yeah, sure. But don't apologize for the appointment. Don't apologize for getting something in on time. Right. I know you wanted this earlier. I'm so sorry. I couldn't get to you earlier. Okay, well, I you know, we have a deadline, you met the deadline. You're good. You know, this is when I can get it. You can communicate. So that's not even an issue. Right? That should never be something you want to apologize or you have to apologize for. And there's a lot of people who apologize for a lot of different things all the time that they just don't need to

Laura 
tell a joke. The fault though in that or what's the issue with doing that?

Nic 
Because it makes it you're basically diminishing who you are as a person. It's almost you're taking your own confidence away, right? You're literally saying I'm so sorry. I'm a failure. I'm a mistake. I'm bad. Stop it. You know like just stop it. You don't have to apologize for stuff for being who you are. Right? You just don't have to do that. You have to do that if you're kicking someone you should apologize. I'm so sorry I gave to you right. You can be like you can do that. But this for existing for being who you are for doing a job and doing it exactly like you're supposed to. No, no. And so I say that never apologize because it happens a lot. People do it all the time. The being who you are

Laura 
one is is one in particular. We're sorry, I'm I'm a crazy person. Sorry. I talk a lot sorry I talk too loud. Sorry. Talk too quiet. You know, like for me, it's not so much that you're making You're belittling yourself but you are making excuses for maybe behavior you know, you should change or you've just said I'm not going to change this. So I'm sorry that I'm to speak to quiet. Okay, we'll do some things to learn to speak up. You know, like, you're acknowledging that there's something that maybe you could have a better situation from. You're now saying I'm sorry that I'm short. You know, I can't fix that. Or maybe I could maybe bring a chair with me. But I think it's recognizing when you're apologizing for something that is just legitimate. Is it because of something you did wrong legitimately or is it something that you're making an excuse for? Or are you just apologizing, like you said for existing, which is, it's not self serving and also isn't adding value even to the relationship with the other person like I like you for who you are? Most likely? And I don't want you to tell me that. I'm sorry for this or that, you know.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, and it comes back to competence too. You know, it's something that if you're apologizing or literally everything, you have no faith in your ability to do anything, right. And that's terrible. And you don't want to be living your life that way. You're basically affirming to yourself that you're bad at things you're trying to say, Oh, I didn't do this, right. Or oh, is this this is my fault. I screwed up when you didn't when you haven't done those things. And so you're just almost looking for a reason for this for you to put yourself down. And that's one of the other things that I don't love. And so when someone apologizes for something they shouldn't now I say never apologize. No. dramatic, but that's fine.

Laura 
Yeah, and I think you do have to get helps you be more aware about it when you hear it because otherwise I think the people that do it a lot don't realize how often they're doing it. It's more like say it's 1000 ohms. You know, it's just, it's a part of the way that they speak and it's hard to recognize that you're doing it I still do it all the time. I'll start an email with sorry, I didn't get back to you sooner than I'm like, No one expected me to get this to them sooner like he said and then so I will erase that and just say, Hey, I had a busy week. Here's my thing, or sometimes I won't even say that, like, here it is. I've often I've read this and seen this before, where instead of saying I'm sorry, just change it to a positive like thank you for being your patients. So instead of when I have that inclination to say, sorry, this is late or sorry it took too long. I will just say thank you for being patient. Here's the thing you've been waiting for, you know,

Nic 
yeah, that's perfect. That's a really good I love that. I'm gonna start using that. But yeah, you know, it's I've had coworkers, employees, etc. Lots of people doing things like apologizing for you know, I say hey, new changes, meeting time. Just doesn't work for me. Oh, sorry. For what for my schedule you're sorry for my schedule now

Laura 
don't pray Yeah, anything that is like instead of saying sorry that I'm short and I couldn't access the reach this thing I needed to wait for you right? Like maybe there's something I needed to go out and feel but I couldn't go because I had to wait for you. I don't know whatever. You could just spin that to like, I appreciate that. You are here to help me with my shortness of apologizing for being short, like, you know, I don't know something like that. But spinning that the saris into other sort of framework.

Nic 
I can say it helps you, it helps you kind of own what you're doing in a way because when you apologize, you're like, look, I'm acknowledging that this isn't perfect. You know, when really just say it this is the thing I did, this is what I've done. This is the product and and I have some faith in it. And it's it can be a little scary. I think sometimes. I'm sorry, it's a crutch. on us, like, you know, that people are using like, well, I don't know how they'll feel about it. So if I say I'm sorry, right away, they'll be sympathetic to me. But me as a person, I'm gonna be able to look at this whether you say that or not, and tell whether you did a good job or not. And if you say sorry to me, you know, I've seen it enough. I'm like, What are you doing? You know, and I'll point it out, but that's why

Laura 
Yeah, totally agree. All right, so no more sorries and let's get to our segment.

[Interview with Antoine Thompson Starts]

Laura
Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Antoine Thompson, Executive Director of Greater Washington region, Clean Cities coalition. On the show, advocate for people create jobs, housing opportunities and small businesses. Antoine began his career in public service as a legislative assistant for the buffalo Common Council central staff. And he has accomplished so, so much more. Welcome, Antoine.

Antoine Thompson 

Thank you. Thank you. My privilege and honor to be here and thank you for for having me. Yeah, awesome.

Laura 
We are certainly glad to have you and I'm excited to talk about all the things that you're doing. And actually your background so impressive. We had a hard time figuring out where to even start. So why don't you just go ahead. We are an environmental professionals podcast. So start off telling us about the work you do with the greater Washington region Clean Cities coalition.

Antoine Thompson 
Yes, yes. So we are headquartered in the Greater Washington DC area. This is a stone's throw from the Capitol in the White House and we focus a lot of our efforts around reducing America's dependence on on oil, particularly foreign oil and reducing pollution as a relates to transportation, environmental sustainability, grid resiliency. We promote the use of alternative fuels, and we're big proponents of environmental justice, equity, inclusion, and environmental protection. So those are the main buckets where we focus on we have a number of significant programs that we worked on. And many of those programs because of the current administration, under Biden, in this Congress, we're even more busy than we normally are. Because there's so much funding out there and everyone who knows anything about this type of work, is chomping at the bit to try to get some of the funding.

[Electric Vehicles]

Laura 
Awesome. So why don't you tell us about some of the projects that you're working on? Are these within the Washington region or do you work out of the Washington region and wave their cities?

Antoine Thompson  
So we're part of a 90 to 100 City network of planned city organizations we work primarily in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. However, some of our work takes us around the country, particularly around some of the equity issues, some of the electrification issues, some of the biofuels and renewable biodiesel projects, issues that were involved with. So some of those are takes us outside of the region. But again, we're part of a 90 plus community network that spans from East Coast always California, we meet with other cities organizations on a monthly basis, and strategize around the things we've talked about earlier.

Laura 
That's awesome. Well, I just read that. EVS just surpassed 5% of sales of all autos in the US so what you're doing must be working. Yeah. For the future of EVs.

Antoine Thompson 
Yeah, well I we still have a long way to go. But I think that the one President Biden is really provided a lot of vision and leadership in the industry. A lot of the America let me start by saying America is behind the world, the industrialized world in this space when we look at Germany, China, much of Europe, we are behind in this and transition to electric vehicles and in and hydrogen vehicles. So you are playing catch up right now, unfortunately, President Biden's commitment to the bipartisan infrastructure law on the $1.2 trillion that's been allocated for different forms of infrastructure, but particularly the millions that are going towards vehicles and electric vehicle charging infrastructure is important, not enough as a down payment, but as a significant investment. I would say in short, that we still have a long way to go, because the costs for purchasing electric vehicles has to come down. The ability to charge must be faster. While it is getting better. It's still anywhere from 2015 25 minutes or so. Which to me, we've got to change to get more adoption. There's got to be a lot more education and outreach. With only 5% of Americans have an electric vehicle. So many people don't know they're interested. They're intrigued, but we've got to do a lot more education outreach. Half of electric vehicles were bought in California last year. So what about the rest of the country? We got a long way to go on education outreach. And so the other thing is about the uptime for charging, charging. We had a board member of ours or an event for the West DLT in DC at their headquarters. And one of our board members Luis McDowell has been putting in charging stations for 20 years. He was trying to find a place to charge he went to five charging stations, and they weren't working. And so about 20% of charging, Evie charging charges are down any given hour of the day. So we've got to fix that. And the feds have to curate policies that address that issue. Those are just some of the high level points that I see. And I will add to that a workforce development upskilling workers, making sure that we have a workforce that can deal with the technologies of creating an Eevee. Sustaining that electric vehicles maintaining electric vehicles training firefighters and contractors and developers and builders on that whole process of managing maintaining properties and projects and infrastructure vehicles when they things are electrified. So a lot of stuff to do a lot of stuff to do.

Laura 
Yeah, well you raise a good point. So there used to be, you know, classic cars and it just happened to have recently been the Syracuse Auto Show weekend thing that like seven different auto events happening and my boyfriend is out with his dad and a car that they bought and they're working on together. Is that the future is is dads and sons getting together and cranking on electric vehicles together. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah,

Antoine Thompson 
well, let's think about it. Some of the earliest electric cars were made it were built at home. So it's a thing where people got to learn and that happened with the computerization of the cars we have now. People had to learn skills to deal with all the technology over the last 20 years that has come into cars. So this is just a continuation of that. I mean, if you think of the cars of the 1920s to compare it to the cars of the 1960s and you compare the 1960 vehicles, to the 2000 2010 2020 vehicles, even of the non electric, they are dramatically different. And so we've got to continue to tell people they don't have to be afraid, but it's a never ending process of learning as these cars evolve with technology, and that's a good thing and so does well sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers sisters, work together to learn these vehicles. Absolutely. It's nothing new. There's nothing new under the sun that has not been done. And there are a lot of folks who build their own electric vehicles and it would be great to see even more doing it given the high gas price. I was at the car shop just the other day and I am trying I have three cars in our house and I am on the hunt for a electric vehicle myself. I want one I want one that and whether it's electric or hybrid. I want one like yesterday, and so I'm hunting and the inventory is tough. Right now, but it'll come down over the next three to four months, and the market is gonna realign and so everyone's save up your money. Get ready to get you a new car and for them to be here.

Laura 
Yeah, what do you have your eye on?

Antoine Thompson 
What I really, really want is the Cadillac reach. Cadillac is my car of choice, that's all Yeah, I love that car. There's Mercedes as well as she V i think is the EB 50 or something like that. I've been looking at one of their SUVs, none of them are in stock right now. So that's the you know, frustrating thing about it, but I'm patient so but those are the two that I'm really looking at right now. The most so I have a we have three cars in the house and none of them are electric and I want one of them to be electric by the end of the year. But I've been advised in the fall inventory is going to be in abundance and prices will come down and we should be good to go. So that's my Christmas gift to myself.

Laura 
Very cool. I want to see a picture. Yes, yes,

Antoine Thompson 
I will. I can't wait to post it. I can't wait trust me. I don't want to ever buy gas anymore. I don't care if there's electric hydrogen or whatever. Get me out of paying for gas.

Laura 
Oh, I hear you. Speaking of that, so you're living in Washington now and you're from Buffalo. Would you be using the transit a lot I would imagine.

Antoine Thompson 
I don't use it as much as I probably could. Unfortunately, the way the transit runs from I live in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, I work downtown DC. So it's not as friendly so sometimes I do the parking ride or something and clock kicks in, right? I often drive more than I drive probably 99.9% of the time, just because I'm not in this district. And so it would take me almost three hours to get home every day. So each way so I'm not prepared to do that. You don't have to do it.

Laura 
That's a big sacrifice. It is it

Antoine Thompson 
is it is. So I've done the park and ride net saves a lot of time off, but it's still not an effective use of time so often in the wet where I live. The parkway is right out of my subdivision so I can drive right on the parkway. It's like nine miles and it's three miles from the end of the parkway to the front door of my office. And so I won't even literally make five or six turns to get to work and but that five or six turns can be anywhere from 28 minutes to hour and a half. It sounds simple, but believe it or not five or six turns maybe seven at tops. I'm at the front door of my office and their range can be anywhere from 28 minutes to an hour and a half on the train. It can go from anywhere from two hours and 15 minutes to three and a half hours every day. Each way an app just can't do that.

Laura 
So I might imagine then then you enjoy going back to Buffalo where things are not quite as crowded. What work are you still doing in Buffalo

Antoine Thompson 
so I still do some real estate in Buffalo. been licensed in real estate 11 years. I do some advising folks on different strategy or strategy where but I've been licensing real estate for 11 years I'm actually studying for my real estate license here in Maryland finally. So I should have that sometime within the next month. But that's what I primarily do when I go there. I mean, my main thing is my son is 16 He goes to Nicholls and so just trying to make sure I stay engaged with him because I don't come out of buffalo so I tried to get down when I first came down in 2015. I was in Buffalo about three weekends a month. Now it's a lot less and so I got about two more years of this going you know so much and I'll be on a quarterly basis. Go see my mom and my daughter so my daughter is she's grown and Mary. She's 26. So she you know she just says hi and keeps the movement. Family now an attorney so so yeah, so that so I love DC though. I love Buffalo but DC is the place where if you're in politics, advocacy, you concerned about the environment and social and environmental racial justice. This is the place where you can really make a difference. And so I love being in this area.

[Environmental Justice]

Laura 
Yeah, awesome. So tell us a little bit about how you went from politics and law and then somewhere into the electric vehicle Clean Cities coalition. Yes, yes.

Antoine Thompson 
So I'll give you just a quick snapshot. On the journey. I started in college being involved with social, environmental, racial, economic justice issues. When I was in college people were fighting just to get recycling on campus. I came out of college. I was on the board of a group called Citizen Action. And they were fighting for curbside recycling. Believe it or not, folks, it was the fight to get curbside recycling, because local governments didn't believe in it and think it was profitable, greenies and these were people who are anti environment they thought we were crazy. So I was involved with issues like that. When I was young. I was involved with some some contaminated site projects and to community level was involved with a number of issue organizing around issues related to that. And then when I was on the city council in Buffalo, I had this crazy idea about covering an expressway in Buffalo that ran through the inner city that separate two neighborhoods. When they put the expressway in, so I got verbally berated and also in writing by the newspaper, but now 20 years later, the governor of New York Kathy Hoku is and many and every major federal state and local official now supports that project and they're gonna they're gonna do it but I got the initial seed money helped organize people they kept going long after I left office and now that's finally happening. I've been involved with public transportation issues. The rail line a subway in Buffalo only goes down one street goes down Main Street.

Laura 
I didn't know they had one.

Antoine Thompson 
Meaning it won't leave the city line because for the last 40 years suburbanites have thought that and because there's reasonable transit, all these other subways and rail lines, starting out and other communities after buffalo Buffalo has failed to make progress in that despite the fact that many employers continue to say they have jobs and people in this in the municipalities, particularly in Buffalo can't get to those jobs because they don't have reliable public transportation. So I was involved with trying to expand the rail line saying, Hey, you got these old trolley lines underneath the road. Why don't we just tear those up? And, you know, as all this federal money that continues to happen, the MTA, which is the transit authority that covers New York City, they always get millions and billions of dollars to expand and protect their railroad system on their train system. Why not do the same upstate New York a second biggest city? So I have been involved with so many issues around that. And then I chaired the committee on environmental conservation when I was a state senator in New York, and was very involved with everything from Green Jobs Green New York legislation to did I used to host the Green Expo every year. I was so were legislator of the year for the solar industry association. So I did a lot with solar. I'm a solar fanatic, as well. And so I've been involved with a number of green related initiatives. And so last year, I had the opportunity, a lot of different opportunities. When I left running a Real Estate Association. I saw this job. I had about five different job offers. And I knew that this was something that was going to take some work, but it brought me full circle to stuff I, you know, I've been doing on and off for some time. So I'm really excited for the good work that we're doing. And it's impactful. You know, and we can help a lot of people takes a lot of patience but good work, we deal with a lot of different alternative fuels, everything from bio fuels to propane, natural gas to electrification, you name it, so we've got a good mix of folks and then we help with jobs and businesses and air quality. Water quality, energy efficiency and buildings. It's so it's a lot of good stuff. And we've got a number of other initiatives are doing putting together with you around community engagement and teaching our young people about alternative fuels at a at a young age. So a lot of good stuff we're doing.

Laura 
Yeah, that's, it sounds like a great fit for you. You know, you've done a lot of things in Buffalo in upstate New York and then to move like you said, it's to where the action has happened and the the center of it all there in DC and the work that you're doing then with the youth leads perfectly into one of my next questions which was about so when you were back in college and passionate about green energy and recycling and all these things. Who were your influences that because that was a rare thing back then. So who were the people that mentored you or that you just looked up to or did this just was just just the thing that was intrinsic to you?

Antoine Thompson 
Well, so it was in college? I'm not sure who in college. I just think that one of my good friends Gary and some of the others. They were, you know, were involved with student government. And it was just something that we were really interested in. And so I gained a liking for that. When I got out of college and started working for the city got involved with citizen action. One of my colleagues who later worked for me when I was a state senator, but he was he was my colleague and one of the leaders in our office when I worked for the city council Bill noec have known since 1996. He was into a lot of green initiatives, everything from district heating, to recycling to ride his bike to work on the snowy buffalo to just hydroponics. I've been involved with so much stuff, super fun stuff. And he was really into a lot of energy related issues. And so he was like kind of a mentor for me on things. And then citizen action was and then I just kind of mushroom into a lot of different other organizations. But I'd say I can't build a lot of credit. And when I got to the State Senate, and I began as the Chair of the Committee on Environmental Conservation. I hired bill as my policy director and we did a lot of good stuff. A lot of good stuff. I did the bigger better bottle bill which puts the five cent deposit on water bottles in New York, one of the few states that does that. I did toxic tree, baby bottles, which we need to do the same thing for water bottles because a lot of people had his water bottles in there and no we did. We made sure that the unclaimed deposits would go back to the state and to help for us to help more people start beverage center so we we increase the ecosystem for more people to start beverage recycling businesses in the state which are disproportionately owned by small businesses and women as well. So a lot of good stuff. We were involved with a lot of energy a lot on green jobs, green business issues. And so now being in DC the last seven years I've been with this organization
________

Antoine Thompson 
GE green jobs, green business issues. And so now being in DC, the last seven years I've been with this organization since November 1. We're just on fire trying to make it happen. And I love being able to interface with members of Congress, federal agencies, and being able to network and help and empower people all over the country to do good work.

Laura 
Yeah, that's awesome. I don't know how you stay on. There's so many things you could possibly be doing. I don't know how you stay on top of it all.

Antoine Thompson 
How many good network

Laura 
Yes. How many people are in the coalition?

Antoine Thompson 

So in our coalition, there are a few 100 Right now we're trying to grow that number. Our reach is we have probably a good 15,000 followers that follow us that are either our newsletter, plus another, you know, newsletters, social media and all that. So we've got a good reach. We're trying to grow that reach every day. And really, I feel like I've only been here since November 1. So we're trying to really build a movement grow the movement and not only in DC, but from here to across the globe. I just actually had the opportunity to speak at a Smart Cities conference in Algeria, North Africa, about alternative fuels and, and smart cities. And so we're just getting started and we're really going to try to do our best to make the world a better place.

Laura 
Okay, cool. Did you mention in your bio that you went to school in Ghana?

Antoine Thompson 
Yeah, I did. So in fact, someone just called me yesterday, asking if I wanted to go to Ghana, but yes, I studied in Ghana. I'm a student graduate of Sonic Brockport. While in graduate school, I studied at the University of Ghana in a crowded zone on education and social change. And so I have been trying to get back to Ghana on multiple occasions and I actually had a meeting with a guy who has a solar taxi business about six weeks ago, and he was asked to meet with me. He's from Ghana, and he has a solo taxi business, which is kind of like it's kind of like Uber for ride sharing for EVs in Ghana. And so I met with him giving him some advice, and they may have a summit in December. Hopefully, I'll be a speaker at that. So we'll see. But I want I'm also I want to go back to Ghana. I've had at least three opportunities I couldn't go for different reasons at the last minute, but my heart is trying to get back to Ghana, which I love and have I used to contain almost anything about Ghana years ago. So but I think God's gonna get me back there and hopefully for them in a year.

Laura 
Very cool. I have a very good friend who is her fiance isn't gonna they've been separated since COVID. The wedding was supposed to be in 2020. And we're fingers crossed having it in this December around Christmas. So if there's a summit I want to know maybe I can combine those. Yeah, that's

Antoine Thompson 
cool. I am I email the guy, the see where things were. Maybe I'll reach out to the Eisenhower foundation, but we're trying to have Evie related summit in December and bring some different investors, policy people and all that to Ghana. So I need to follow back up with the guy to find out where that is. But I'm hoping if it doesn't happen there will happen in the spring but I also got invited with the other thing is more of a tourist thing but they've asked me to maybe see if we can put some business stuff so maybe I'll if we don't get it figured out. See if I can get all that connected from with them and put some value to what they're trying to do our real estate and in alternative fuels and green technology for AVS.

Laura 
Yeah, well, if Nic was here, he would be a big champion of us doing like any EPR recording there too. So yeah, what's up, guys? Nic, we're going to Connor

Antoine Thompson 
Yeah, that will be that will be good, but we're going to try to pull it together. So I'm a big fan of Ghana. I've been asked to come back go back to Algeria as well. The world is a lot smaller than we realize, and the need for Evie solar biofuels. A lot of the I was in Algeria, a number of folks were asking about how can they get people to show them the way in alternative fuels in that country and in that region where you know, there's oil isn't abundance, but they know that is they got a pivot right. And so we can help places pivot. The other thing is most people are not aware that Sub Saharan Africa has the largest number of people in the world that do not have electricity. So, you know, it's 40 50 million people or more, that do not have reliable electricity in their home in Sub Saharan Africa. So there's a lot of market opportunity for American businesses. The other thing I just wanted to mention too, was the I'm not sure if you have talked about the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the opportunities that are there for people. In that bill. There's the justice 40 under Biden is justice 40 initiative. I'm not sure if you are have talked about that in the show. Actually, we

Laura  
haven't and I do have a question kind of related to that that I think Kara put in here so we can go right to there. Alright, so after we have our trip to go on a walk come back to the states and continue our conversations about environmental justice, which thank goodness is finally becoming something that people are interested in talking about and continuing to talk about. And we haven't really talked a whole lot specifically about the things that are included in the infrastructure bill. So what are your What are your thoughts and experiences with that?

Antoine Thompson 
A lot. So first thing is the not enough people know about the infrastructure funding. The average person on the street I don't think they know or understand and I had some testing the way it will but it said remarkable piece of legislation that was passed by Congress signed by President Biden, and it has significant investments in roads, bridges, to vehicle technology, in a whole host of places. From manufacturing of batteries, to making buildings more resilient to investing over $5 billion. We'll go with electric school buses and clean school buses, some for electric electric, some could be propane or, or different biofuels as well. But the goal is to reduce the pollution from school buses in the country, which is really, really important because some of our school buses, the air quality is two to three times higher on the bus and it is quiet and behind the bus. Think about that. The air quality for our kids on some of these school buses is two to three times worse on the bus than it is if you were sitting or standing or driving behind the bus. That's a problem we've got to fix. Right, but we gonna do that quickly. The other thing is, as we talk about the electrification of vehicles, there's a thing that your listeners understand which is called range anxiety. All right, you know that from your cell phone right? When your cell phone charger starts getting low in the blink starting to come. You got to find me in charge. I'm gonna need to charge I need to charge can I use what type of charge Do you have? Right? People get all freaked out, right? It's not like the old days when you just had a landline phone most of you all you know what a landline phone is. But the same is true for your car. When your gas light comes on. You start panicking making sure that you get some gas before it runs out because you don't want to have time. Yeah well the same happens. People are worried about that for electric vehicles, because there's just not enough electric vehicle stations. They may not have it may live in apartment building or condo or some other place where they were they're worried about having access to charging so if Congress would support of the President, they're gonna create five hundreds of 1000 or more charges that will go from one part country to the other. And that's still not enough, but it's a significant investment and hopefully the private sector and in local state governments will add additional charges so that we can build out this electric national electric vehicle infrastructure so that people can get up and down the highway on ramps off ramps, local fueling stations, right now are very diverse. So if you go to a fueling station right now some already have Evie charging there. Some have at the same ones you can probably get diesel fuel, you can get three different grades of unleaded fuel right now at most gas stations. So we can push the industry and consumers and the public and private sector to invest more in charging stations, particularly public or for profit charging stations, and different areas. We will be more successful in terms of increasing the number of people that are using electric vehicles versus the gas vehicles or gas vehicles are going to be around for at least another 15 to 25 years. However, we want to try to reduce that number as you mentioned earlier from 5% and get it up to 5060 75 80% of either gas or hydrogen vehicles. You're gonna see more hydrogen cars coming on the road and we'll see what other technologies that come out because some people are talking about hydrolysis, which is using water to power cars as well. I don't care what we use as long as I'll add step long as I can stop paying a gas bill.

Laura 
Hear you on that. We have a lot of listeners who are also into historical and cultural preservation. You authored the buffaloes, fair housing law and secure is that right? I said, Yeah,

Antoine Thompson 
I did. I did. I did do that. And I did a lot more historic preservation as well. I can tell you some crazy stories on that too.

Laura 
Okay, so you authored the Buffalo's fair housing law and secured over $75 million for the community development project like 60 Hadley place, which was a 19th century farmhouse linked to the Underground Railroad. What was that about?

Antoine Thompson 
Yeah, so So the neighborhood had a lot of Quakers in that area. And Quakers were known to be big supporters of ending slavery. And buffalo is a community along with Niagara Falls, which I represent both of them when I was in Buffalo when I was on the city council of Buffalo and Niagara Falls when I was a state senator in New York. And so Niagara Falls was the last stop on the Underground Railroad because it was right by Canada. And so there are a couple historic Underground Railroad heritage areas that I was very involved with getting designated, and then a number of different projects as well. So the 60 Headley place was a farmhouse, which is near Canisius College in Buffalo, and historic Hamlin Park neighborhood, which is the largest African American pres historic preservation area in New York state, if not the country. And so it was important to save and preserve that building for the possible connections to underground railroad. And because we were trying to preserve that building so that the Hammond Park Association and others can use that building for community purposes. And we were able to do that the city wanted let the building just collapse on its own. And, and so, we fought against that. And in fact, the current mayor buffalo, he has started the project and the previous public works commissioner who later worked for him as well. They were all a number of folks were trying to let the building just collapse on its own staff put a brace around the building to stop it from collapsing. And they were dragging their feet with funding and I said hey, I need you to come to this meeting. We're gonna do a press conference and all that. And we did it and got funding from the city. And then a few years later, he became mayor and it was it's actually around the corner from his house. And so the when he ran for mayor he made to let the residents know that he was struggling support, finishing the project. And we were able to do that. And so there's been a good project I've been involved with. So one of the other preservation things is that inner city areas a lot of time preservation rules and policies are not adequately enforced. Compared to not communities of color. And so the utility company at that time, national fuel when I was on a city council, they were putting gas meters on the front side of homes in the inner city, and then and not putting flowers in front not getting the preservation Board approval, all this like, you know, leaving their laws crappy, and it's nice, middle class neighborhood. And so I became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the utility company for violating the preservation rules. And then we won, and we had a settlement. So I've been involved with just a lot of stuff in those things, particularly around historic preservation.

Laura 
Very cool. Yeah, there's so many buildings here in Syracuse that I like, Oh, can I have this? Can I just can you take this one and put it somewhere? There's a lot of being restored. But then there's a lot that you're like, oh, gosh, how long does it have left? Yeah, take care of

Antoine Thompson  
it. You know, what's happening now as they call it, adaptive reuse and all the other fancy names that preserve certain buildings. And so that's a good thing. And that's why we have historic property tax credit that a lot of developers use for mixed use properties and for housing, and it's just that too often in these underserved neighborhoods, they just don't get the appropriate investment nor attention the way they need and so we gotta, we gotta fight. You know, it's just what it is. You know, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

[Leadership]

Laura 
Isn't that right? Well, having talked to you for the last 40,50 minutes or so, it, you believe at this intersection of leadership and environmental issues and concerns and really pouring a lot of your heart and soul into making the world better. What kind of advice do you have for other people because you seem to take it in stride, but I'm sure it's very taxing. And so what advice do you have for people who are especially young people who are in a position like that, where they're really trying to affect change? I think young people, especially now that climate change is widely accepted are really feeling like they want to be able to do and if we have more us making all these improvements, you know, we can make these changes faster. So what kind of advice do you have for them to stay positive and motivated?

Antoine Thompson 
Yes, excellent question. So I would say a couple of things. One is that you got to keep pushing. Some battles happen immediately. Most are like wars. It takes time. And you're doing this because you believe in the end result, which is to make a difference. And so it will happen. It's just that some things take longer than others. As I stated when I was in college, that students were fighting to get them just to have recycling on college on the college campus. Right now. We looked at like, oh my god, I remember when I was debating for over two hours, electronic recycling in New York State. Can you believe that I had to debate a Florida debate for almost two hours or more on electronic recycling. 10 years, about 12 years ago and 2010. Now people, Democrats and and Republicans understand the value of recycling. So sometimes you're going to be fighting for issues that you may be ahead of your time. But that's what leadership is about believing, taking calculated risks, knowing that data in history will be on your side, but it may not be easy. You may not be celebrated. Now, right? It may be 10 years from now. Well, five years or 20 years from now, but you got to believe in your mission, believe in your cause. And you got to read you got to build a good support network. You got to have a decent work life balance, not perfect, but do that. And then keep fine tuning your skills. One thing that I've always tried to do for the last 30 years, is have a thirst for learning, training. Being a good organizer, always learning how to organize. I've worked on issue and political campaigns since I was in college, and I still take classes. I still read best practices. I'm still trying to learn. Even now as a leader. I probably participate or attend five or six or seven leadership development workshops every month. Every month. I've been I've been a leader of organizations since I was in high school as the cabinet and tracker cross country team. Then in college, president of my college fraternity, Black Student Union, leadership development and cat Institute, National students support Council of Africa. Then I was a city council member, state senator, etc, etc, etc. Running national nonprofits, regional nonprofit businesses, but I still continue to have a thirst to learn how to lead, how to listen, learn intently. Listen, learn. Then Lee pass the advice that I like to give young people don't assume that everything that the old folks do is outdated. Right. Now, something some approaches may be outdated. Some of them may not be outdated. There's tweaking, exactly and some needed no tweaking, some may need to be revolutionized. But understand that there's nothing new under the sun. It's just different. ways in which you get there. And we often say as organizers that young people bring the energy elders bring the wisdom is not either or you need both. You need that wisdom from your elders because they've run through the water before they've run through. That glass window before they've run into that wall before you absorbed that now. And that was one of the things I did as a young person. I would you know, when I was in high school, when I was in college, talking to professors and administrators about how to organize what they did when they were in college, too. When I first started really getting into community organizing. It was a lady named Marcus Dresner. She was trained under assault Solinsky back in the 60s, and she worked for the Community Action organization. I remember when I was 2526 2728. I will go to her office and talk to her about community organizing. And that's how I became a good organizer from not just going to school for not just from working on issue campaigns, but being under the mentorship of people. That learn how to organize for bigger and better things when it was even more turbulent than it is right now.

Laura 
Right. Awesome. Thank you so much. super inspiring. So I hope everyone is grabbing some tidbits of knowledge there. And I have to ask you, we're overtime. But I gotta ask you one more question. Nick and I both love music. And you talked a little bit about work life balance, but how often and how well do you play the saxophone?

Antoine Thompson 
You know, good, great question. I am just getting back into it. So I'm playing about one or two days a week. I need to get my time up. But I literally just started a couple of weeks ago, about six years. But my dream is it gets so good. So I can do like Bill Clinton dead and be on TV playing my sag. So that is for those young folks who don't know, former President Bill Clinton is a great saxophone player. And that is one of my one of the outside of a couple books I'm working on. I want to be able to play my saxophone at a high profile event. And people say oh, he doesn't, you know, I do some other things. But that's my big thing I want to do in life is be able to play my saxophone on stage or on TV.

Laura 
Awesome, very cool. I'm gonna check in on you with that. So that's about all the time that we have. Where can people get in touch with you?

Antoine Thompson 
They can find me personally on LinkedIn and Antoine Thompson on LinkedIn or Instagram or Twitter. My office you can reach us at GW er triple c.org gw er triple c.org re watching reaching Clean Cities coalition. Just Google that or do an internet search on that. And it'll take you right to us on Twitter, or Instagram or Facebook as well. So that's where you go, GW er triple c.or Antoine Thompson and let's make it happen. I'm available if you ever need some advice, and need some help feel free to is I'm Antoine Thompson a yahoo.com Yes, he's Chennai me and turn it all. Yeah, I give I give a wife say I shouldn't give as much free advice. But you know, it's it's good karma. You know, good karma. You know, I meet with folks giving me advice all the time. And sometimes I do charge but a lot of times it's just let's go meet up you're in DC or Buffalo. Let me know if I'm in Buffalo. We'll connect for lunch or coffee and we could talk about how we can help you make a difference. That's how it is good. Good Karma.

Laura 
Love it. All right. Thanks, Antoine. We'll stay in touch.

Antoine Thompson 
Thank you.

[Outro]

Nic  
That's our show. Thank you, Antoine for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See everybody bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai


Nic & Laura's Segment: Never Apologize
Interview with Antoine Thompson Starts
Electric Vehicles
Environmental Justice
Leadership