A coalition of Indiana Black civil rights groups, and business, religious, and nonprofit leaders are calling on the federal government to reject the state’s proposed EV charging network. That plan, they argue, is fatally flawed because both it, and the process by which it was created, failed to account for historical inequities and in doing so, perpetuated them.

“The highways tore through the historically Black neighborhoods destroying homes and businesses, uprooting families and community, poisoning the air that we breathe,” Elder Lionel Rush, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance in Indianapolis, told Indiana Public Broadcasting. “If we don’t get in now, we’re going to be behind — and we’ll never catch up.”

The working group that created the plan was entirely white, and failed to conduct outreach to communities of color, Denise Abdul-Rahman, head of the state NAACP’s Environmental Climate Justice Program, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We are calling on our comrade and fellow Hoosier [former South Bend Mayor and current U.S. Transportation] Secretary Pete Buttigieg to come to Indiana, embark on a ‘Justice for EV Infrastructure’ tour and reject the Indiana plan until ethnic and racial justice commitments are met, as outlined by our alliance,” Abdul-Rahman said. (Indiana Public Broadcasting, Indiana Capital Chronicle, Energy Live News, Inside Indiana Business $)