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</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/house-democrats-hacking-dccc.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/house-democrats-hacking-dccc.html</font></a></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2016 hack</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Annette Taddeo lost a Democratic primary for a House seat in Florida after documents uncovered by Russian hackers were published by reporters and bloggers</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Eric Lipton and Scott Shane</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dec. 13, 2016</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WASHINGTON — </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">South Florida has long been a laboratory for some of the nation’s roughest politics, with techniques like phantom candidates created by political rivals to siphon off votes from their opponents, or so-called boleteras hired to illegally fill out stacks of absentee ballots on behalf of elderly or disabled voters.</span></font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there was never anything quite like the 2016 election campaign, when a handful of Democratic House candidates became targets of a Russian influence operation that made thousands of pages of documents stolen by hackers from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington available to Florida reporters and bloggers.</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was like I was standing out there naked,” said Annette Taddeo, a Democrat who lost her primary race after secret campaign documents were made public. “I just can’t describe it any other way. Our entire internal strategy plan was made public, and suddenly all this material was out there and could be used against me.”</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of the information released by the hackers on candidates like Ms. Taddeo in Florida and others in nearly a dozen House races around the country was largely lost in the focus on the hacking attacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But this untold story underscores the effect the Russian operation had on the American electoral system.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“This is not a traditional tit-for-tat on a partisan political campaign, where one side hits the other and then you respond,” said Kelly Ward, executive director of the D.C.C.C. “This is an attack by a foreign actor that had the intent to disrupt our election, and we were the victims of it.</b>”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the Links From Russian Hackers to the U.S. Election</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How U.S. intelligence officials have connected the Russian government to an attempt to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 27, 2016</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why the Russian government might care about these unglamorous House races is a source of bafflement for some of the lawmakers who were targeted. But if the goal of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, was to make American democracy a less attractive model to his own citizens and to Russia’s neighbors, then entangling congressional races in accusations of leaks and subterfuge was a step in the right direction.</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The intrusions in House races in states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina can be traced to tens of thousands of pages of documents taken from the D.C.C.C., which shares a Capitol Hill office building with the Democratic National Committee.</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The document dump’s effectiveness was due in part to a de facto alliance that formed between the Russian hackers and political bloggers and newspapers across the United States. The hackers, working under the made-up name of Guccifer 2.0, used social media tools to invite individual reporters to request specific caches of documents, handing them out the way political operatives distribute scoops. It was an arrangement that proved irresistible to many news outlets — and amplified the consequences of the cyberattack.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s time for new revelations now,” the Guccifer 2.0 website proclaimed, as it began to pass out the D.C.C.C. documents, trying to entice reporters to look at them on their own. “All of you may have heard about the D.C.C.C. hack. As you see I wasn’t wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the D.N.C. breach.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cybersecurity consultants believe the hacking of the D.C.C.C. took place around March or April of 2016 after a staffer clicked on a so-called phishing email. The D.C.C.C. shut down its computer system for a week — from the moment it learned of the attack in June. But it was already too late to close the door. The consequences started to become clear in August when the hackers released the home addresses, cellphone numbers and personal email addresses of Democratic House members.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The D.C.C.C. Responds to the Hack</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Letters from Democratic Party leaders responding to the cyberattack on servers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the subsequent release of personal and professional information of lawmakers and staff members.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dec. 13, 2016</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As you are aware, the D.C.C.C. and other Democratic Party entities have been the target of cybersecurity intrusions — an electronic Watergate break-in,” the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, wrote in an email the day after the personal information was released. The email continued, “It has been widely reported that this cybersecurity incident is part of a Russian cyberattack which appears to be an attempt to interfere with our elections. We take this troubling situation very seriously and have notified the appropriate authorities, including the F.B.I. and Sergeant-at-Arms.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">State troopers were sent to the homes of House Democrats across the United States, and they were urged to immediately change their cellphone numbers and personal email addresses, although this took place after many received a series of obscene calls, texts and emails.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, warned colleagues of “obscene” messages, after a hack released their personal contact information.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it turned out this was just a warning shot.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guccifer 2.0 followed up on the release of lawmakers’ personal data with large caches of internal party documents, starting with some documents related to House races in Florida, including Ms. Taddeo’s contest.</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The seats that Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country. In Ms. Taddeo’s district, the House seat is held by a Republican, even though the district leans Democratic and Mrs. Clinton won it this year by a large majority.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To prepare for the race, the D.C.C.C. had done candid evaluations of the two candidates vying in the primary for the nomination.</b> Those inside documents, bluntly describing each candidate’s weaknesses, are considered routine research inside political campaigns. But suddenly they were being aired in public.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ms. Taddeo, one of the internal D.C.C.C. documents noted, had “proven to be a somewhat poor fund-raiser and she has gained a reputation as an inadequate campaigner among some of the talkers in the community.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Her Democratic opponent in the August primary, Joe Garcia, “also made a large misstep during the campaign saying ‘communism works,’ </b>which did not sit well in an area with a large Cuban refugee population,” the document says. “More embarrassingly, Garcia was caught on a C-Span feed picking his earwax and seemingly eating it, and the video made the rounds on the internet.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Garcia was the first to use the material as a tool to attack his opponent, showing up at a televised debate with a printout of the documents and accusing Ms. Taddeo of hiring a private detective to follow him, an allegation she disputed. It was the first of many attacks based on the leaked material.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Mr. Garcia defeated Ms. Taddeo in the primary using the material unearthed in the hacking, the National Republican Campaign Committee and a second Republican group with ties to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, turned to the hacked material to attack him.</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Florida, Guccifer 2.0’s most important partner was an obscure political website run by an anonymous blogger called HelloFLA!, run by a former Florida legislative aide turned Republican lobbyist. The blogger sent direct messages via Twitter to Guccifer 2.0 asking for copies of any additional Florida documents.</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I can send you some docs via email,” Guccifer 2.0 replied on Aug. 22, according to a cellphone screen shot of the message that the blogger, who writes under the pen name Mark Miewurd, provided to The New York Times. “Great! Editor@hellofla.com. I’m just getting my kid from school but I’ll be able to get it up pretty quick after I get it. Thanks!”</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A blogger who anonymously runs HelloFLA! contacted hackers working under the made-up name of Guccifer 2.0 using direct messages on Twitter to request documents about Ms. Taddeo.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Do u have a size limit?”</b> Guccifer 2.0 replied, a question that led the Florida blogger to set up an anonymous Dropbox account so he could take thousands of pages of stolen information from the Russian operative, data that the blogger immediately recognized would have an extremely high strategic value for the Republicans.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t think you realize what you gave me,” the blogger said, looking at the costly internal D.C.C.C. political research that he had just been provided. “This is probably worth millions of dollars.”</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Guccifer 2.0 wrote back: “Hmmm. ok. u owe me a million.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By September, Guccifer 2.0 had expanded his releases to include documents related to House races in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina, working with individual political bloggers like Miscellany Blue in New Hampshire.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Exclusive: Leaked D.C.C.C. documents reveal effort to replace Shea-Porter with ‘fresh face for 2016,’” said one of the first dispatches posted in New Hampshire, on Miscellany Blue, referring to Carol Shea-Porter, the Democratic candidate for the House, who ended up narrowly winning the seat, despite the intense criticism directed at her by Democratic leaders that was revealed by the leaks.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carol Shea-Porter, a Democrat in New Hampshire, won her House seat despite intense criticism of her candidacy by her own party leaders revealed in the hacks.CreditThomas Roy/The Union Leader, via Associated Press</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Pennsylvania, the leaked documents showed that Democratic Party officials did not like their own candidate for one House seat — a local businessman named Mike Parrish — and worked aggressively to recruit an alternative. Mr. Parrish, the internal party documents noted, owned a company in Pennsylvania that had been sued eight times, had been delinquent on his taxes and had been named in a 2013 lawsuit “alleging racketeering and corruption,” the D.C.C.C. internal report said.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Concerned, the party tried to recruit a local businesswoman, Marian Moskowitz, to challenge Mr. Parrish. But Ms. Moskowitz ultimately declined to run for the seat, so the party was left with Mr. Parrish, whose standing was further hurt when the details about the Democrats’ misgivings about him drew coverage from bloggers and newspapers.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Parrish lost his bid for the seat.</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guccifer 2.0 even posted a cache of confidential documents focusing on Representative Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, the chairman of the D.C.C.C., who faced no serious challenger this year. Mr. Luján said it was a clear effort to send a message to the party leadership — that the hackers wanted to try to hurt Democrats at all levels of the party, from lesser known races in Florida to the leadership.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the first political advertisement appeared using the hacked material, Mr. Luján wrote a letter to his Republican counterpart at the National Republican Congressional Committee urging him to not use this stolen material in the 2016 campaign.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The N.R.C.C.’s use of documents stolen by the Russians plays right into the hands of one of the United States’ most dangerous adversaries,” Mr. Luján’s Aug. 29 letter said. “Put simply, if this action continues, the N.R.C.C. will be complicit in aiding the Russian government in its effort to influence American elections.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Representative Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was targeted by Guccifer 2.0 even though he faced no serious challenger.</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ms. Pelosi sent a similar letter in early September to Mr. Ryan. Neither received a response. By October, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super PAC” tied to Mr. Ryan, had used the stolen material in another advertisement, attacking Mr. Garcia during the general election in Florida.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, said he did not control how the material was used in the ad, although she did not dispute that the material had been stolen as part of an act of Russian espionage. “Speaker Ryan has said for months that foreign intervention in our elections is unacceptable,” she said in a written statement.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least some Republican players turned down a chance to exploit the material, including Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, who was running for re-election in a contest where he faced off against Mr. Parrish and was aware of the unflattering material about his opponent that had become public.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We believed it was neither necessary nor appropriate,” said Vincent Galko, a campaign consultant to Mr. Costello, “to use information from a possible foreign source to influence the election.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, Mr. Parrish, in an interview Tuesday, said he believed that the document dumps hurt his candidacy. But as a former Army cavalry troop commander who served in West Germany in the final years of the Cold War, he said he was not surprised to learn that the Russians were behind the cyberattack.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’ve have been fighting Russians my entire life,” he said. “To me this is just a continued punch-counterpunch; the Cold War games are still being played.”</font></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 16.8px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Latinos in the United States are a growing influence in American society and bring an important and diverse perspective to the issues we all care about, including keeping our air and water clean and protecting our planet for future generations to enjoy.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost 9 in 10 Hispanic voters<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/ecocentro/survey/2012%20Latinos%20and%20the%20Environment%20Survey_Exec%20Summary_English.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">prefer</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the United States to invest in clean, renewable energy sources over fossil fuels. And 86% of Latinos<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2013/05/07/latinos-remain-committed-to-reducing-air-pollution-and-preventing-climate-change/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">support<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>the Obama administration taking action to limit carbon pollution – an even higher percentage than the 61% of all Americans who support the President’s climate action plan. </font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps this is because people of color, including Latinos, are disproportionately affected by water and air pollution. Latino children have a 40%<a href="http://voxxi.com/2013/03/27/hispanic-health-issues-us/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">greater chance</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of dying of asthma and almost half of all Latinos in the United States<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.nrdc.org/air/files/LatinoAirReport.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">live<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>in one of the 25 most ozone-polluted cities in the country. </font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, Latino communities across the country have been doing some inspiring organizing for environmental justice and to protect the health of their families. And since 2011, the League of Conservation Voters has been proud to partner with Latino communities across the country to push for action on the issues of climate change and clean energy. </font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, we worked with our state league partners in Colorado and New Mexico -- as well as local Latino groups -- to build a grassroots movement of Latino activists for environmental action in these key states. In that initial effort, we successfully mobilized more than 10,000 Latinos to take action to stop water pollution and protect against the public health concerns arising from oil and gas drilling. </font>

<font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">In our nation’s capitol, LCV has been building relationships with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and working with other influential Latino leaders to create opportunities to elevate their voices and leadership on environmental issues. In September 2013, the League of Conservation Voters hosted a<span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span><a href="http://www.lcv.org/sept2013-latino-press-call.mp3" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">national press call</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span>with two environmental champions of the U.S House of Representatives—Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico—in which they discussed the need for national policies that address climate change, ensure clean air and clean water, and protect public lands for all Americans. </font></p>