1-Month Hunger Strike: Chicago Activists Fight Metal Scrapper Relocation Into Black and Latinx Neighborhood

On Thursday the three original hunger strikers – Oscar Sanchez, Breanna Bertacchi and Chuck Stark – will complete their fourth week without food. “It is immoral, it is discriminatory and we cannot allow [this plant to operate] in a pandemic when we can prevent it,” Byron Sigcho-Lopez, the 25th ward alderman who has joined the hunger strike for “as long as it’s needed,” told The Guardian.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspended its environmental justice investigation into whether Illinois discriminated against the predominantly Black and Latinx Southeast Side community after the Illinois EPA began “informal resolution agreement discussions,” Block Club Chicago reported. Last month, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot also sought guidance from federal regulators and appears to be hoping the Biden administration will make the call over whether the scrap yard can be moved to the Southeast Side, according to the Chicago Tribune.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune:

Lightfoot has so far declined to meet the strikers’ key demand. But by reaching out to federal regulators for guidance this week, the mayor for the first time raised the possibility that Reserve Management Group won’t be allowed to operate its new facility along the Calumet River at 116th Street.

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If the Biden EPA steps in and blocks the state permit, the Lightfoot administration would be spared from making a decision about a final city permit RMG needs before it can start shredding scrap metal on the Southeast Side.

RMG’s opponents contend that locating more heavy industry in an already polluted, majority Latino and Black neighborhood is an immoral — if not illegal — example of environmental racism, a scourge both Biden and Lightfoot as candidates promised to aggressively confront.