On July 22, 2026 GreenLatinos convened congressional staff for a widely-attended event sponsored by Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva (AZ-7) for a congressional briefing. There, the briefing MC, Andrea Delgado (Hawk Eye Strategies), and briefing panelists, Angelo Villagomez (Center For American Progress), Jazzari Taylor (Latino Outdoors) and Juan Roberto Madrid (GreenLatinos) covered topics such as: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congresswoman Grijalva, represented by her Legislative Assistant, expressed her concerns about eliminating national monument protections, reductions to the National Park Service workforce, and removal of exhibits that interpret the truth about slavery and indigenous history, stating, \u201cIn Arizona, our home state, those threats are especially real.The construction of a second border wall (which you saw on the screen previously) through the nation and other protected public lands without meaningful tribal consultation is a stark reminder that conservation and justice must go hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watch the full briefing on @GreenLatinosOfficial Youtube<\/a>. Some highlights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you go to New York, visit Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, you may or may not see this sign. It may have been taken down, it may have been put back up; it's kind of hard to keep track of all of the goings on with Interior right now, but I'm going to read this to you because for many years, this is what visitors to this National Wildlife Refuge would see. It says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Parks preserve not just lands or buildings, but our nation's ideas and ideals. They remind us of things we hope to live up to, like women's rights and liberty, and things we hope never to repeat, like slavery, massacres of Indians, or holding Japanese Americans in wartime camps. It is important that future generations be reminded of these ideals and experience our nation's treasures. To ensure this, we must make environmentally sound choices and be stewards of these valuable resources. How we do this is ever changing, but the mission remains the same: to protect and preserve for today and tomorrow. National parks inspire us to keep reinventing ourselves as individuals and as people<\/em>.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing in there should be taken down, and the thing that I hope you take away today is the massive scale of the erasure of public history and the stories of the American people<\/a> that are being removed from our public lands.\u201d -Angelo Villagomez<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is bipartisan. We have on both sides, Democratic and Republican, support with over 200 [national monument] proclamations historically. I want to make sure that we're saying here today that one: it's unlawful; two: that we prioritize Indigenous-led initiatives. Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears are stewarded and led by Tribal leaders and coalition members. We continue to stand by the tribes and support not only the cultural and historical significance of the place, but all the intersectional benefits when it comes to geological significance as well as environmental impacts.\u201d -Jazzari Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLosing our national parks and our monuments, it would be disastrous. That's free therapy. If you go ride a bike, that's free therapy. In an age when they're cutting all our healthcare benefits and getting rid of the ACA, access to public lands is even more important. Being a veteran who had suffered from PTSD from 2001 after 9\/11, through 2010 when I was medically retired by the Navy\u2026 I had nine deployments in that time period to Iraq and Afghanistan. I was injured four times. There's nothing like going out and listening, climbing a mountain, hearing the birds, hearing the wind, feeling that oneness with nature. And then finding that camaraderie with your fellow veterans and other recreationists that are experiencing the outdoors. And then from the medical perspective, we know that research shows you can lower your blood pressure in a green space after 10 minutes, and it lowers it as much as blood pressure medications do. Is it going to get rid of blood pressure medications? Maybe not for all, but it's a space where we can go and you instantly feel at ease. You feel at one right that grounding with nature, and that's incredibly important for veterans.\u201d -Juan Roberto Madrid<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince we're aware that congressional offices and the media are not necessarily getting transparency and responses from agencies, we did the analysis ourselves. And what it tells us is that\u2013across the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies within the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Interior\u2013more than 26,000 staff were lost<\/a> since the administration and DOGE began its work to reduce the size of the federal workforce, resulting overall in a shrinkage of 17%. And when we looked at 11 western states, western communities bore a disproportionate share of these cuts, losing more than 9,200 staff. These numbers represent a significant reduction in capacity. This is not just data points coming off of data sheets that we can extract from Office of Personnel Management data. We're talking about park rangers, hydrologists, entomologists, fish and wildlife biologists, engineers, dispatchers, meteorologists: people who help land managers make data-informed and science-based decisions. Speaking of Freedom 250, there's an irony that we simply cannot ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as this administration is using our public lands as the backdrop of its Freedom 250 celebrations, it's also simultaneously undermining the civil service and the funding structures that makes those very lands possible to visit, to protect, to cherish, and pass on for current and future generations. You cannot celebrate 250 years of shared American stories on one hand, while erasing the stories that get told and defunding the people that protect that land where that story lives.\u201d -Andrea Delgado<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n