U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveils the Green New Deal resolution in front of the U.S. Capitol on February 7, 2019 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / Getty Images
For all its posturing on climate change, the Democratic Party has long been weak on the actual policies we need to save us from extinction. President Barack Obama promised his presidency would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow," and then embraced natural gas, a major driver of global temperature rise, as a "bridge fuel." Climate legislation passed in the House in 2009 would have allowed industries to buy credits to pollute, a practice known to concentrate toxic air in black and brown neighborhoods while doing little to cut emissions.
<p>Even this year, with interest in the issue at an all-time high, the candidates the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_Senatorial_Campaign_Committee" title="Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee" target="_blank">Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee</a> endorsed — like Amy McGrath, who eked out a victory in Kentucky's Senate primary, and former-Governor John Hickenlooper, who handily won Colorado's — have evinced skepticism about the Green New Deal, a resolution pending in Congress to put trillions of dollars into a transition to renewable energy plus job-training for a new clean economy.</p><p>On June 4, however, when the Democratic National Committee's Environment and Climate Crisis Council released a rigorous set of proposals for the party's 2020 platform, it offered climate voters some hope. The 14-page document's solutions for the warming planet included investment in communities that suffer every day with the consequences of industrial waste, shoring up public health services and making sure everyone has enough to eat. It also advises changing the structure of the society that allows police to kill unarmed black people with relative impunity.</p><p>"There's just no way to address the climate crisis without taking on systemic racism," says Michelle Deatrick, chair of the council. "They're intertwined and integrally related."</p><p>But proposals are not a platform; they don't represent any official statement of purpose from the DNC on climate or anything else. The climate council, founded in August 2019 after party members failed to persuade Chairman Tom Perez to hold a climate debate, is but one of three groups involved in crafting the party's final climate policies. Another, the eight-member Biden-Sanders Climate Task Force, will offer recommendations from the likes of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers. Then it's yet another committee that will draw up the actual climate platform with former Vice President Joe Biden, the party's presumptive nominee.</p>
<p>On its face, that process looks reasonable: A task force and a council inclined to progressive ideals will push the ultimate deciders to take bigger steps toward a zero-carbon future. The problem, Deatrick says, is that once the platform has been agreed upon by that final, 15-member committee, it rarely changes when it goes before the full committee for approval.</p><p>"It's mostly a formal vote," she says. The state and local officials in the DNC, despite the crucial knowledge they bring from their jurisdictions, "historically have had no impact on the final product." But this year, with its great convergence of catastrophes that have defined the spring and summer of 2020, <em>has</em> to be different. "We need to have an inclusive and transparent process around the creation of the platform," Deatrick says. "This is a great opportunity for Democrats to show that we are the party of listening and deep considerations of ideas."</p><p>Among those ideas is that none of the problems we're facing can be disentangled from the others. "The nature of environmental problems is bound up in the history of race in America," says Adrien Salazar, senior campaign strategist for climate equity with the social-justice think tank Dēmos. "The only way that [polluting] industries have been viable at all is because there are communities where they can pollute, places that have ended up being the sacrifice zones for the rest of America."</p><p>Racial inequality, he says, "undergirds the very fabric of American society."</p>
<p>"You can't have climate change without sacrifice zones,"<a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/racism-killing-planet" title=" wrote" target="_blank"> wrote</a> Hop Hopkins, director of strategic partnerships for the Sierra Club, in a recent essay. "And you can't have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism."</p><p>Robert Bullard, the author and researcher often called "the father of the environmental justice movement," has found that toxic hot spots across the U.S., from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" to the refinery rows of Texas, <a href="https://drrobertbullard.com/african-americans-on-the-frontline-fighting-for-environmental-justice/" title="align closely" target="_blank">align closely</a> with Jim Crow housing segregation and other discriminatory zoning practices. "America is segregated," he says, "and so is pollution."</p><p>The injustice bleeds into public health and disease transmission: The COVID-19 virus<a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20061713v1" title=" travels" target="_blank"> travels</a>, scientists hypothesize, on the sooty particles that blight communities on the front lines of industrial pollution. Those same places emit the greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere. In other words, it's not just pre-existing conditions causing the disease to hit harder in black communities. It's literally the air people breathe.</p><p>There are people tasked with air-quality regulation who argue that the common air contaminants that make people sick – the ground-level ozone that irritates lung tissue, the particulate matter that triggers cancer – belong to a different category than the greenhouse gases that trap the earth's heat. Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president of environmental justice, climate and community revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation, remembers hearing as much during the 24 years he spent at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "I've had these conversations with some of the best scientists in the world," he says. "And what I know is that it is impossible, <em>impossible, </em>to hit the numbers that we need to hit to win on climate change if you're not focused on environmental justice."</p>
<p>Fossil-fuel infrastructure, for instance, blights "lower-wealth communities," Santiago Ali says. "So if you focus on that, you're going to begin to minimize the impacts of oil and gas." Pipelines cut through indigenous land in the Midwest and end up on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. "If you stop those pipelines, you stop the climate-killing export of oil."</p><p>Cars and trucks drive global warming, too, and their proliferation is made possible by "policies of running highways through certain communities, moving wealth into certain communities and dropping off pollution in lower-wealth communities along the way." Writer Peter Simek has <a href="https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2016/03/the-racist-legacy-of-americas-innercity-highways/" title="noted" target="_blank">noted</a> that you can find the locations of Dallas' Freedmen's Towns — communities established by emancipated slaves during and after the Civil War — by following the highways engineers built on top of them. "Some of the most powerful planners in America were forthright about their intention to use their power as transportation engineers to rewire a society built on racial and economic segregation," he wrote.</p><p>If you stop dehumanizing people in order to pollute, you stop degrading the environment, Santiago Ali says. If you don't, we literally won't survive. "There's no way of pulling climate out and saying, 'We're going to win on this but not focus on any of these other issues," he says. "That's just bad arithmetic."</p>
<p>Whether the platform committee does better math depends on how well it responds to outside pressure: The group is diverse, but not necessarily progressive. (Journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter<a href="https://heated.world/p/dnc-snubs-progressive-climate-activists" title=" Heated" target="_blank"> Heated</a> has broken the group down in a useful<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PloB-PNkeg8j2s0UFFnFFPfcoxTMalI8S6pm8PhrVJ0/edit?usp=sharing" title=" spreadsheet" target="_blank"> spreadsheet</a>.) Fear surrounds this election — fear that pushing too hard on climate and racial injustice both will alienate white voters of the Rust Belt; fear that people will equate an expensive clean energy transition with the loss of jobs in oil and gas. Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mineworkers Union, told<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climate-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-democratic-party-irked-by-councils-insurgent-climate-plan-sources-idUSKBN23M1DO" title=" Reuters" target="_blank"> Reuters</a> that the circulation of the climate council's policy recommendations "has already cost Democrats potential votes in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan."<span></span></p><p>Deatrick, who in addition to her environmental work is a longtime union supporter from Michigan, isn't worried. "We have to walk the talk," she says. "We have to make sure that we commit to policies that support those workers, replace pensions, provide health care." What she's learned on three months of listening tours around the country is that people are less afraid of economic transitions than they are of the chaos a changing climate will bring.</p><p>"We have a real opportunity to reinvigorate the part of the electorate – which is the vast majority of Democrats and Independents as well – who rate the climate crisis among their top priorities," Deatrick says, along with health care and racial inequality. She wants to make sure that when the draft of the climate platform is drawn up, those people are heard. The DNC "has not laid out what that listening process will be," she says. "And we don't have much time left."</p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://capitalandmain.com/" target="_blank">Capital & Main</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A child stands in what is left of his house in Utuado, Puerto Rico, which was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Maria, on Oct. 12, 2017. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Jon-Paul Rios. Flickr, CC by 2.0
By Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope
To hear many journalists tell it, the spring of 2020 has brought a series of extraordinary revelations. Look at what the nation has learned: That our health-care system was not remotely up to the challenge of a deadly pandemic. That our economic safety net was largely nonexistent. That our vulnerability to disease and death was directly tied to our race and where we live. That our political leadership sowed misinformation that left people dead. That systemic racism and the killing of Black people by police is undiminished, despite decades of protest and so many Black lives lost.
To hear many journalists tell it, the spring of 2020 has brought a series of extraordinary revelations. Look at what the nation has learned: That our health-care system was not remotely up to the challenge of a deadly pandemic. That our economic safety net was largely nonexistent. That our vulnerability to disease and death was directly tied to our race and where we live. That our political leadership sowed misinformation that left people dead. That systemic racism and the killing of Black people by police is undiminished, despite decades of protest and so many Black lives lost.
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<p>Journalism is now engaged in explaining and contextualizing this moment, a frenzy of feature writing prompted by the filling of morgues and the throngs of people in the streets. Some of these pieces will be impressive; a few will win our most prestigious journalism prizes. We'll look back at the spring of 2020 and congratulate ourselves on the central role played by professional reporters, who helped the nation navigate these crises.</p><p>But let's save the self-congratulations. While it is true that the virus and the uprising in the streets have exposed deep injustices and inequities in our nation, none of them are new.</p><p>This summer and fall, all of these stories will crash together as Americans vote in an election that is also a decisive turning point in the overarching story of our time—the onrushing climate emergency. This summer, scientists say, will bring heat waves, wildfires, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/coronavirus-hurricanes/" target="_blank">and "one of the most active" hurricane seasons on records</a>. Protests against racial injustice may well rise along with temperatures, no doubt fueled by more videos of pain and death. In the fall, our health crisis may well increase, as the COVID-19 pandemic collides with the seasonal flu, all while the US economy continues to experience Great Depression levels of unemployment. It is to the shame of journalism if we don't get to the root of why all of this is happening so that voters can make informed choices in November.</p>
<p>It's worth remembering the media hand-wringing that followed the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Mainstream news outlets, out of touch and understaffed, reported largely from inside their own establishment bubbles, and few in those confined spaces believed Trump had a shot at winning the presidency. So the press missed the story. It didn't understand the stirring of disaffection in the country; it underestimated the racism and economic fear that would drive white people to support Trump; it misread polling and cherry-picked data to convince itself that a Trump loss was inevitable.</p><p>In a presidential election, the media's job is to understand the electorate, not predict the outcome before voters have cast ballots. Four years ago, reporters and editors became too obsessed with political gamesmanship, personality, and trivia to do the media's primary job. The result was a humiliating defeat for journalism and an acceleration of the mistrust of the press that already existed.</p><p>At the start of the 2020 election year, despite pledges by newsroom leaders to do better, the same tendencies showed. Trump was defining the narrative. Structural chasms in the country were ignored. The Democratic field was reduced to caricature.</p><p>Then came the coronavirus and the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among too many others. Exactly none of what we as journalists learned about our nation in the past three months should have come as a surprise. We have known, or should have known, that the public health system in the US is overpriced and unequal. We have known, or should have known, that Americans are not equipped to withstand an economic downturn. We have known, or should have known, that racial injustice is pervasive in our country (and in our media) and that Black people continue to die, be incarcerated, and suffer economically at tragically disproportionate rates.</p>
<p>The fact that it took a pandemic, police killings, and mass protests to focus mainstream journalistic attention on these issues is damning, and must prompt a reappraisal of how we work. Why weren't newsrooms obsessing about these issues before the world imploded this spring? Why must we always be reactive to injustice, instead of proactively highlighting it? Isn't it the job of journalism to ferret out wrongdoing even if people in power want it to remain hidden? Why aren't we advocating for our audiences and their lives?</p><p>Which brings us to the climate crisis. This summer, wildfires will ravage the American west. Deadly heat will pound the global south. Hurricanes will march up the Atlantic coast. Homes, and perhaps whole communities, will be lost. Crops and people will die.</p><p>If the journalistic status quo holds, news organizations will respond by going into disaster-coverage mode, mobilizing their dwindling staffs to cover the crisis as it unfolds. They'll take astonishing pictures of the destruction and hear heroic stories from survivors and rescue workers. They'll tally up the economic costs and run heartbreaking profiles of families who died in their swimming pools while trying to escape the fire or children who were washed out to sea. And then, only after the work of covering the disaster is done, will they perhaps take a moment to examine why all this is happening—why these disasters are occurring, again and again, all over the world, with increased frequency and ferocity.</p><p>There's a pattern here. The news business waits for news to happen when, in fact, we shouldn't need another Black person to be shot to start reporting on racism in the police force. Nor should we need yet another Category Five hurricane to flatten yet another community before we sound the alarm that the planet is on the brink of climate collapse.</p><p><span></span>These are deep, structural stories that are all linked. Novel viruses like COVID-19 often begin in wild animals, many of which are coming into closer contact with humans because their habitats are being destroyed by deforestation, mining, and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/coronavirus-habitat-loss/" target="_blank">other extractive activities</a>. The first line of infection is often among disadvantaged communities. The heat waves, droughts, storms, and other effects of rising temperatures almost always punish the poor and people of color first and worst.</p>
<p>Where we are in covering the climate-emergency story? Not remotely close to where we should be. The <em>Columbia Journalism Review</em> and <em>The Nation</em>, in partnership with the <em>Guardian</em>, co-founded Covering Climate Now a year ago because we were convinced that most newsrooms were not doing enough to tell the climate story. Over the past year, we have made impressive progress. <a href="https://www.coveringclimatenow.org/partners/" target="_blank">Our partners</a> now include more than 400 news outlets representing more than 50 countries, with a combined audience of roughly 2 billion people. Our collaboration has done weeks of joint coverage that yielded thousands of additional climate stories. During our first week of joint coverage, last September, Google searches for the term "climate change" <a href="https://grist.org/article/google-searches-for-climate-change-finally-beat-out-game-of-thrones/" target="_blank">were the highest in history</a>. And some news outlets that are not Covering Climate Now partners also have upped their game, hiring dedicated climate editors, adding and deepening climate coverage, and including climate among the key issues in the 2020 elections.</p><p>And yet. And yet. And yet.</p><p>While we have been heartened (and grateful) to see so many of our colleagues join this effort, we still don't sense the urgency that the climate emergency demands, especially as the 2020 election approaches. Our window to prevent catastrophe is closing fast. In some respects, it has already shut: at least three feet of sea level rise is inevitable by 2100, and possibly much sooner, scientists say, compelling the relocation of millions of people and trillions of dollars worth of coastal infrastructure <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/08/sea-levels-could-rise-more-than-a-metre-by-2100-experts-say" target="_blank">around the world</a>.</p>
<p>The public sees the urgency and actually wants more climate news. Even during the peak of coronavirus coverage in April, some of the world's biggest news organizations told us that their audiences had little appetite for stories that weren't about the virus, with one exception: climate change, which continued to generate significant traffic.</p><p>Journalism now has a window of opportunity to get these interconnected stories right. Editorially, we are urging our partners—and journalists everywhere—to play the climate story bigger. It's not enough to do one story on one candidate's position on climate change and be done with it. Climate change should be a continuing part of the narrative about any candidate's campaign, just as the candidate's positions on COVID-19, the economy, and health care are. The word "climate" should be included in headlines and broadcast scripts often enough that the public can't miss it.</p><p>Above all, we hope newsrooms will remember the big picture and cover the real horserace. It's easy for campaign coverage to get mired in minutia. The contest between Republicans and Democrats is of great interest, of course, and the outcome couldn't matter more. But the horserace that matters most is humanity's collective race to defuse the climate emergency, which means strong action must begin now, not four years from now. What's ultimately being decided in these elections is nothing less than whether all of us are going to have a livable planet 20 years from now and beyond. If the press is most comfortable chasing fires and sending reporters into disaster zones, so be it. But newsrooms should know: the disaster is here. It is raging now. Our job is to cover it with the urgency it deserves.</p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in </em><a href="https://www.cjr.org/" target="_blank">Columbia Journalism Review</a><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646313949#/" target="_self"></a> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis visit the National Renewable Energy Lab on Aug. 1, 2019. National Renewable Energy Lab
House Democrats are releasing an aggressive new plan to fight the climate crisis on Tuesday. The 538-page plan includes various goals to dramatically reduce the nation's emissions. It sets a target for every new car sold by 2035 to emit no greenhouse gases, to eliminate overall emissions from the power sector by 2040, and to all but eliminate the country's total emissions by 2050, according to The New York Times.
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<p><em><a href="https://climatecrisis.house.gov/report" target="_blank">Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and Just America</a></em><span style="background-color: initial;"><em> </em></span>is the first major piece of legislation from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, established last year as the Green New Deal was garnering attention, and would put the country on a path to meeting the goals of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement">Paris agreement</a>, as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/505147-house-dems-to-offer-up-roadmap-to-solve-the-climate-crisis" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p><p>"While local communities and states and businesses take climate action, what's been missing is the federal government," said Rep. Kathy Castor, (D-FL), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, in an interview with the <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/06/29/house-democrats-to-unveil-climate-plan-calling-for-emissions-cuts-and-new-deal-style-jobs-program/" target="_blank">Tampa Bay Times</a>.</p>
<p>Prior to creating its bold plan to set the course for a zero emissions future, the committee heard testimony from researchers, local officials and a bevy of environmental activists like Greta Thunberg, according to the Tampa Bay Times.</p><p>"Turning this plan into reality will build a safer, healthier, and fairer America, restore our global climate leadership, enhance our national security, and provide a livable climate for today's youth and future generations," the report says.</p><p>The ambitious plan, which faces an dubious future in a Republican-controlled Senate, requires companies to pay for emitting excessive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. While that cost will pass down to the consumer, it may have the net effect of reducing consumption. It also has provisions that give money back to low- and moderate-income households, according to The New York Times.</p>
<p>Since racial minority communities are disproportionately affected by pollution and extreme weather from the climate crisis, the report ties environmental justice to racial justice, citing the police killing of George Floyd in its opening paragraph. As The New York Times reported, the report argues that the government should prioritize racial minority communities for new spending on energy and infrastructure.</p><p>"We have to focus on environmental-justice communities," said Castor, according to The New York Times. "There is an awakening across the country to systemic racism, and this is a report that at its center, at its core, focuses on those communities."</p>
<p>Representative Castor and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are announcing the plan at an event in front of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday morning. The Democrats underpin their report with pitches on the economy, including the chance for new jobs in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" target="_self">renewable energy</a> and $8 trillion in climate and health benefits through the middle of the century, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/29/democrats-climate-crisis-carbon-emissions" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>Leah Stokes, an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies climate policy, told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/29/democrats-climate-crisis-carbon-emissions" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> that the plan was "ambitious and comprehensive."</p><p>"It shows that the committee has been listening to stakeholders, and has watched the Democratic primary carefully. Clearly they have learned from climate champions like [Washington] Governor Jay Inslee," she said.</p><p>"I am very heartened to see the detail and ambition that the committee has put forward – it shows that the Democratic party is waking up to the scale and urgency of the climate crisis."</p>
<p>The plan calls for not only taking action to stop greenhouse gas emissions to slow down the climate crisis, but also to build infrastructure to deal with its effects. It champions investments to respond to climate impacts, including water infrastructure to handle increased flooding and a next-generation 911 system to make sure wireless communications networks are reliable during disasters, according to The Guardian.</p><p>It also acknowledges that fortifying communities with improved infrastructure will not be enough as hurricanes and other storms increase in frequency and intensity. People will need to relocate. "Communities need support developing longer-term strategies, including options to relocate and resettle willing neighborhoods or communities," the report reads, according to The New York Times. Federally funded programs should "consider the trade-offs of relocation and protection."</p>
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Demonstrators march down Pennsylvania Avenue near the Trump International Hotel during a protest against police brutality and the death of George Floyd on June 3, 2020 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
By John R. Platt
This year has brought us some brutal lessons so far, chief among them the fact that systemic racism drives or amplifies nearly all our societal and environmental ills.
Now is the time to listen to the people affected most by those problems of environmental justice and racism — and the activists working to solve them.
<p>Here's a good place to start: We've gathered 16 essential recent books on environmental racism and related topics from leading journalists and experts. Two of these are hot off the presses and scheduled to hit shelves this month, while the rest were pulled from <a href="https://therevelator.org/tag/revelator-reads/" target="_blank">previous "Revelator Reads" installments</a>. All provide vital insight into the problems that plague people and the planet, while also offering solutions for a more just future.</p><p>Since we're still in the middle of a pandemic — another problem made worse by racial injustice — it obviously remains challenging to visit local bookstores and libraries, so these links all go to publishers' sites, where you can order hard copies or e-books. You can also find enough information to order any of these books from local stores, which may offer delivery or curbside pickup.</p><p>This list is hardly exhaustive and pulls mostly from books published over the past two years, and it weighs a bit heavily on Indigenous authors and protests like Standing Rock. So please feel free to <a href="mailto:tips@therevelator.org" target="_blank">recommend</a> any insightful books we missed.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.newsociety.com/Books/E/Engage-Connect-Protect" target="_blank"><em>Engage, Connect, Protect: Empowering Diverse Youth as Environmental Leaders</em></a> by Angelou Ezeilo</strong></p><p>The founder of the Greening Youth Foundation provides a critique of the too-white environmental movement and a toolkit for engaging younger participants from African American, Latinx and Native American communities.</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.beacon.org/As-Long-as-Grass-Grows-P1445.aspx" target="_blank">As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock</a><em> </em><strong>by Dina Gilio-Whitaker </strong></strong></p><p>The history of Indigenous resistance may offer all of us the strength we need to keep fighting, from the coauthor of <em>"All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans</em>.</p><p><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamie-margolin/youth-to-power/9780738246666/" target="_blank"><em><strong></strong></em></a><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamie-margolin/youth-to-power/9780738246666/" target="_blank"><strong><em>Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It</em></strong></a> <strong>by Jamie Margolin</strong> <u><strong><u><span></span></u></strong></u></p><p><u><strong><u><span></span></u></strong></u>An essential book by one of the country's most engaging youth activists. Margolin, a queer Latinx, cofounded Zero Hour and helped energize 2018's record-breaking Youth Climate March. Now she shares her experience and expertise — along with that of other young activists — and offers advice on everything from organizing peaceful protests to protecting your mental health in a time of crisis. Greta Thunberg provides the foreword.</p>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300743/environmental-justice-in-a-moment-of-danger" target="_blank">Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger</a> </strong></em><strong>by Julie Sze</strong><strong></strong></p><p>As we've seen many times over the years, activists standing up for environmental justice often face violent reprisal. This academic book examines the what Sze calls the "historical and cultural forces and resistance to violence, death, and destruction of lives and bodies" to reveal guideposts for future (and hopefully safer) action.</p><p><strong><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300232158/climate-change-streets" target="_blank">Climate Change From the Streets</a><em> </em>by Michael Méndez</strong></p><p>Méndez argues that the climate crisis is also a crisis for public health, especially in lower-income communities of color, and that both problems can only be solved by addressing issues of environmental justice. His book — subtitled "How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement" — taps into Méndez's own research into California communities and grassroots activism to show how the problems that plague us can also bring us together — but only if we invite everyone to the table.</p><p><em><strong><a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009800" target="_blank">Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial</a> </strong></em><strong>edited by Sarah D. Wald, David J. Vázquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra and Sarah Jaquette Ray</strong><span></span></p><p>More than a dozen top minds come together to examine thoughts and cultural processes otherwise ignored by the environmental movement.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.littlebrownspark.com/titles/harriet-a-washington/a-terrible-thing-to-waste/9780316509428/" target="_blank"><em>A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind</em></a> by Harriet A. Washington</strong><br></p><p><span></span>This book will open your eyes, make you angry, and then point you toward solutions for ending the plague of pollution-related health problems in marginalized communities of color.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.sevenstories.com/authors/65-aric-mcbay" target="_blank">Full Spectrum Resistance</a><em> </em><strong>by Aric McBay</strong></strong></p><p>This two-volume series provides a powerful primer for activism on social-justice and environmental issues, using examples from more than 50 resistance movements around the world. The first book discusses how to build movements, while the second examines strategies for change.</p><p><strong><a href="https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/indigenous-environmental-justice" target="_blank"><em>Indigenous Environmental Justice</em></a> edited by Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen</strong></p><p>When pollution harms your physical, financial and spiritual health, it's more than an injustice. But that's what happens time and time again in Indian Country. This book addresses situations ranging from Standing Rock to uranium mining on Navajo and Hopi lands through lenses of colonization, sovereignty and — perhaps most importantly — victory.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/poisoned-water-9781547602322/" target="_blank"><em>Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation</em></a> by Candy J. Cooper with Marc Aronson</strong></p><p>We've already seen several bestselling and powerful books address the Flint water crisis, but this is the first one specifically written for young-adult readers. When you consider that kids were among the worst affected by the Flint tragedy, that makes this a story they need to read and understand — so they can grow up and help prevent it from happening to anyone else.</p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/unearthing-justice" target="_blank"><em>Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community From the Mining Industry</em></a></strong><strong> by Joan Kuyek</strong></p><p>Covering everything from how to stop a new mining project to figuring out how to clean up an abandoned mine, this important book offers activists a primer for taking on all manner of extractive industries that can harm human health and the environment.</p><p><strong><a href="https://ecwpress.com/products/whose-water-is-it" target="_blank"><em>Whose Water Is It, Anyway? Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands</em></a> by Maude Barlow</strong></p><p>One of the world's most notable water-justice activists provides a step-by-step guide to help communities keep themselves from going dry due to the actions of irresponsible companies and governments.</p>
<p><u><strong><a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/standing-with-standing-rock" target="_blank"><em>Standing With Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement</em></a> </strong></u><strong>edited by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon</strong></p><p><u><strong></strong></u><em>An essential volume to understand the history and significance of the famous resistance action, combining everything from essays and interviews to poems and photography.</em></p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://us.orcabook.com/One-Earth-P12339.aspx" target="_blank">One Earth: People of Color Protecting Our Planet</a><em> </em><strong>by Anuradha Rao</strong></strong></p><p>This book for pre-teen readers delivers 20 short biographies of activists around the world who are working to save everything from trees to dolphins to people. In the process, it hopes to inspire the next generation of activists — especially those who might not have seen themselves represented in the still all-too-white environmental movement.</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/" target="_blank">Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land</a><em> </em>by Leah Penniman</strong></p><p>A how-to guide for ending racism and injustice in our country's food system, both on farms themselves and in nutrition-starved African American communities. Bonus: The same techniques improve the soil, treat livestock humanely, preserve rare plant varieties and provide benefits for the climate.</p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622853/who-killed-berta-caceres-by-nina-lakhani/" target="_blank"><em>Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads and an Indigenous Defender's Battle for the Planet</em></a> by Nina Lakhani</strong></p><p>Honduran indigenous leader and activist Berta Cáceres won the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2015 — one year before she was murdered for her work trying to stop a hydroelectric dam from destroying a sacred river. This powerful book tells the story of her life and death, a tragedy echoed in the murders and assaults committed against hundreds of environmental defenders every year.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://therevelator.org/author/john/" target="_blank">John R. Platt</a> </em><em>is the editor of <em>The Revelator</em>. An award-winning environmental journalist, his work has appeared in <em>Scientific American</em>, <em>Audubon</em>, <em>Motherboard</em>, and numerous other magazines and publications. His "Extinction Countdown" column has run continuously since 2004 and has covered news and science related to more than 1,000 endangered species. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. John lives on the outskirts of Portland, Ore., where he finds himself surrounded by animals and cartoonists.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/environmental-justice-books-june-2020/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A house in "Cancer Alley," which stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a dense concentration of oil refineries, petrochemical plants and other chemical industries reside alongside suburban homes. Giles Clarke / Getty Images
By Kristoffer Tigue
In many ways, Maleta Kimmons defines her neighborhood by what it lacks.
Several houses near her home remain vacant. Last week, she had to drive seven miles just to buy groceries. And two weeks ago, at the height of the Minneapolis protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a police officer on May 25, looters broke into the only pharmacy in the area, forcing the store to close and leaving many in the neighborhood without easy access to life-saving medication like insulin or inhalers for asthma.
<p>Kimmons, who prefers to go by the name Queen, said what her neighborhood doesn't lack is pollution. Near North, where Queen lives, is one of several neighborhoods that make up north Minneapolis, an area that is predominately Black and is surrounded by a large number of polluting facilities and infrastructure, including roofing manufacturers, a trash incinerator, a metal recycling plant and several major interstate highways.</p><p>The ZIP code that covers much of north Minneapolis has the highest hospitalization rates for asthma in Minnesota, according to <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/09/25/minneapolis-community-funds-focus-on-lead-poisoning-asthma" target="_blank">Minnesota Public Radio</a>. It's also home to the highest rates of lead poisoning among children in the city.</p><p>Add the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on top of these factors, and her neighborhood is in a "horrific" situation, said Queen, who is Black.</p><p> "Where are you going to get an asthma pump when Walgreens is closed?" she said. "I know a lot of people that have asthma, particularly in North."</p><p>Queen moved to Minnesota from Chicago in 1974 at the age of 10, first living in what used to be St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood—<a href="https://www.mnopedia.org/place/rondo-neighborhood-st-paul" target="_blank">a once thriving African American hub</a> before it was cut in half by the construction of Interstate 94 in the late '50s. Her family, she said, was "looking for a better life, where there would be more resources, education, housing."</p><p>Eventually, Queen's family moved to south Minneapolis. But in the 1990s, she said, the area became gentrified and too expensive, so she left for the city's cheaper north side.</p><p>Queen attributes the issues that north Minneapolis faces today—the vacant homes, the poor access to medicine and food, the proximity to industrial pollution—to a lack of Black ownership and the political power that accompanies wealth. "Right now, over in North, you can't name 10 Black businesses—they ain't there," she said. "If you don't own anything, you're not changing nothing."</p><p>In 2018, the median household income in Queen's neighborhood was <a href="http://www.mncompass.org/profiles/neighborhoods/minneapolis/near-north" target="_blank">about $39,000</a>, compared to the state average of <a href="https://www.mncompass.org/economy/overview#:~:text=Median%20income,for%20highest%20median%20household%20income." target="_blank">more than $70,300</a>.</p><p>As protests raged across much of south Minneapolis, destroying several blocks of Lake Street—another historic city business corridor—Queen <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/citizen-patrols-make-statement-in-minneapolis/2020/06/06/cc1844d4-a78c-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html" target="_blank">helped rally residents on the north side</a> to protect the few Black-owned stores that do exist along Broadway Avenue from more looting. (Much of the looting came from out-of-towners, Queen said.)</p><p>The destruction she witnessed reminded her of the stories she had heard of the 1967 riots, which also <a href="https://www.mnopedia.org/event/civil-unrest-plymouth-avenue-minneapolis-1967" target="_blank">destroyed parts of north Minneapolis</a>. And it reminded her of seeing her first limousine in 1974 outside of a black-owned pool hall in St. Paul.</p><p>She remembers her Black neighbors inside the stretched-out sedan, a symbol of wealth, celebrating in their "loud colors," their button-up shirts and their hard shoes. She remembers just years later, many of the Black-owned businesses shuttering their doors along Rondo's Selby Avenue—today, an upscale food co-op stands where the pool hall used to be.</p><p>"You've got to have ownership," Queen said. "It's race, class, money and politics. That is the narrative. That is the story."</p>
St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana: "We've Already Been Written Off"
<p>Reserve, Louisiana, had an agrarian economy when Robert Taylor was born. His parents worked at a local sugar refinery. "I'm a lifelong resident," he said. "I was born here in 1940, so I've seen some changes." When he was a boy, he said, "I could just walk out my house and go out my backyard and I was in a sugarcane field."</p><p>By the time he was a young man, the petrochemical industry was moving in. He bought a plot of land on the edge of town and built a home, finished by the time his fourth child was born, he said. "I went and got my wife from the hospital and brought her with our child to our new home."</p><p>Around the same time, he said, DuPont began operating a new chemical plant less than a thousand yards from the home.</p><p>St. John the Baptist Parish, which includes Reserve, lies within Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," a stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that is cluttered with petrochemical development and the pollution it brings. The Environmental Protection Agency's National Air Toxics Assessment, which uses emissions estimates to model health risks, estimates that the risk of developing cancer in Reserve is 50 times the national average, and that the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/la/laplace-louisiana-frequent-questions#highest-risks" target="_blank">five census tracts with the highest risk</a> are all in the area.</p><p>But as Taylor watched the development spring up around him, he didn't know any of that. All he knew was that a lot of people seemed to be getting sick. Several family members have died of cancer, he said, while his wife is a cancer survivor. It wasn't until four years ago that Taylor began to connect what he saw with the industry that had developed around him.</p><p>"I came home one night and my wife was so sick, and the odor was so horrible coming from the plant, that I called 911," he said. "And the emergency personnel, they were taken aback by the odor. Of course, all of them was white, none of them lived in the community I lived in," he said. Almost two-thirds of Reserve's residents are black.</p><p>It never occurred to him that other parts of the parish didn't have it as bad. And soon after that incident, the EPA arrived and began monitoring for a chemical, chloroprene, that is used in the nearby plant and is considered by the agency to be a "likely carcinogen."</p><p>"I got the first results of the monitoring, it scared the heck out of me," he said. When the EPA found high levels of the chemical in the air near a school, "that's really what sparked the people to join me and we formed this Concerned Citizens of St. John."</p><p><a href="https://www.ccosj.com/" target="_blank">His group</a> has been trying ever since to get Denka Corporation, which bought the plant from DuPont in 2015, to limit emissions. Denka did not reply to requests for comment from InsideClimate News, but a <a href="http://denka-pe.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DENKAFAQ.pdf" target="_blank">company website</a> says it has voluntarily reduced emissions and that "there is no evidence to suggest Denka's operations are harmful to local residents."</p><p>Taylor's wife now lives in California, to be away from the pollution. Some of his children have moved out of the parish, too. His great-granddaughter was born recently nearby, "and she has no future here," he said. </p><p>But he feels trapped with his home. Beyond the low value of the property, Taylor said, he wouldn't feel right selling to another family, only to have them live with the same burden.</p><p>"We've already been written off. We're walking dead people," he said. "We've been sacrificed."</p>Bears Ears National Monument, Utah: Trump Ended Tribal Governance
<p>Alfred Lomahquahu helped build the five-tribe <a href="https://bearsearscoalition.org/" target="_blank">coalition</a> that proposed the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.</p><p>The land might seem remote, but the struggle against racial and environmental injustice has been no different for the indigenous people of the Southwest than for those protesting on the streets of the world's cities.</p><p>"People are actually getting united," said Lomahquahu, a Hopi. "That's the main thing that the government is afraid of, that's why they don't want these protests going on."</p><p>The coalition's work focused on protecting red rock canyons and pinion-dotted desert containing hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites and areas of deep cultural significance to the Hopi Nation, Zuni Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Utes.</p><p>"We started speaking with Obama on a one-to-one, government-to-government basis," said Lomahquahu, now community administrator in the Hopi village of Baqavi in northern Arizona. "Part of our strategy was that we were going to work side by side with [the U.S. Bureau of Land Management] and all these other government entities as part of the planning for the whole monument."</p><p>The Obama administration embraced the idea, establishing and empowering a Bears Ears Commission when it <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/28/proclamation-establishment-bears-ears-national-monument" target="_blank">created</a> the monument. Lomahquahu was the commission's co-chair until it was abolished when the Trump administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-proclamation-modifying-bears-ears-national-monument/" target="_blank">downsized</a> the monument by 85 percent not quite a year later.</p><p>Trump administration officials rebuffed commissioners and other monument supporters, he said. "But we already knew at that point that everything that we achieved was going to go down the drain—and for every other minority too."</p><p>Yet, the experience also showed the tribes, which have historically been at odds with one another, the power of working together, he added. And, later, conservation groups, professional societies, recreation groups and even large companies like Patagonia joined the tribes' campaign to protect the land from mining and pollution.</p><p>"Some people are going to use their privilege in order to help others that aren't privileged," Lomahquhu said. "I think that's something that you really need to look at now ... Some people are privileged more than others and willing to use that privilege to help everyone get back on their feet."</p><p>New uranium mining, coal-fired power and oil and gas development in the region are other threats that the Four Corners region has faced. More recently, Indian Country communities have united against Covid-19.</p><p>"We're just waiting for Trump to leave office," Lomahquhu said, "so we can get back in there and regroup again and bring all entities back together."</p>The Rockaways, Queens, N.Y.: Young Leaders of Color Building Resilient Communities
<p>Milan Taylor was 21 when he founded the <a href="https://rytf.org/" target="_blank">Rockaway Youth Task Force</a> in 2011, to sponsor community clean-ups and encourage voter registration in this outlying neighborhood on a barrier island in Queens.</p><p>A year later, after Hurricane Sandy left homes four- to 10-feet underwater and knocked out power for days, Taylor found himself helping to lead rescue and relief efforts in a neighborhood that was 60 percent African American and Hispanic and the poverty line was 20 percent higher than the state average.</p><p>He mobilized hundreds of volunteers in a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hurricane-sandy-far-rockaway_b_2109224?guccounter=1" target="_blank">widespread effort</a> to assess the needs and deliver food and medications to hundreds of home-bound community members, including elderly and disabled residents. As they meticulously canvassed high-rise apartment buildings, the major relief organizations and the NYPD seemed strangely missing in action.</p><p>"Sandy gave us the exposure that [the Rockaway Youth Task Force] needed to grow," said Taylor, now 31 and the group's executive director.</p><p>And a good thing that is, with climate scientists predicting sea level rise of at least a foot by 2050, which will make the Rockaways more prone to climate change-fueled flooding and storm surges than they already are. </p><p>"What we're trying to accomplish as an organization is to build more resilient communities," Taylor said, "We want to be there, whether it's a disaster brought about by climate change or even human disasters"—a reference to the ongoing protests for racial justice and an end to police violence. </p><p>Taylor said that it is important for the task force, made up largely of young people of color, to be "led by our own constituency, meaning that those who are directly impacted decide which direction and which campaigns we take on as an organization." </p><p>Despite being told after Sandy that his organization couldn't grow, he said, "We're still here ... still doing work, still helping our communities, and still training the next generation of leaders."</p><p>He noted that one former RYTF organizer, Khaleel Anderson, is now <a href="https://khaleel4thepeople.com/" target="_blank">running</a> for the New York State Assembly. </p><p>In the future, Taylor said, he hopes the broader climate movement embraces his work with the task force, which recognizes how race, gender and socioeconomic factors contribute to environmental injustice. "The conversation of Black lives mattering isn't just limited to police violence," Taylor said. "It also extends to climate justice." </p>Los Angeles: Latino Children in Boyle Heights Play in Lead-Contaminated Soil
<p>Idalmis Vaquero sees such joy in the exuberance of a neighborhood boy named R.J.</p><p>The six-year-old runs to her to show off his newest feat—a backflip—on the dusty patch of grass outside of their aging apartment complex owned by the Los Angeles Housing Authority. </p><p>Yet there is a dark contradiction between the glee of this boy and the reality of life in the shadow of a lead recycling plant that has poisoned the ground that dirties R.J.'s bare feet.</p><p>The boy, like so many other children and families living in this neighborhood, is exposed every day to the high concentrations of lead that have contaminated this mostly Latino community just southeast of downtown Los Angeles.</p><p>The Exide Technologies recycling plant and its predecessors emitted lead, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants, leaving homes, apartments, schools, parks and day care centers with dangerously high levels of lead contaminated soil.</p><p>Vaquero, 26, a third-year student at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, grew up in public housing in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, where she still lives and where her parents settled after emigrating from Mexico nearly 30 years ago.</p><p>There has been little change in her neighborhood since she was a child. Factories, smoke stacks and exhaust-belching diesel trucks define the community more than grassy parks and welcoming recreation centers.</p><p>So she worries about the future of R.J. and other children.</p><p>"Living here will have an impact on the quality of life for the rest of their lives," she said. "It makes me mad that our lives are not considered equal when it comes to addressing environmental hardships."</p><p>As many as 250,000 residents, mostly working-class Latinos, face a chronic health hazard from exposure to airborne lead and arsenic that subsequently settled into the soil from the recycling plant, according to <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/exide/exideab2588hra15jan13_15may13_cor.pdf?sfvrsn=2" target="_blank">a 2013 health risk assessment by the South Coast Air Quality Management District</a>.</p><p>Lead contamination has been found in children growing up in neighborhoods surrounding the now-shuttered Exide battery plant, <a href="https://news.usc.edu/156523/lead-in-baby-teeth-exide-battery-plant/" target="_blank">a USC study found</a>. Lead is a neurotoxin, and there is no level that is considered safe in humans.</p><p>The 15-acre recycling facility operated in the industrial city of Vernon for decades with minimal regulatory oversight. It churned out poisonous pollution around the clock seven days a week as the lead from 25,000 old car batteries was melted down every day for use in producing new batteries.</p><p>The facility received more than 100 environmental violations for such things as lead and acid leaks and maintaining an overflowing pond of toxic sludge.</p><p>The Exide plant was shut down in 2015 by the U.S. Department of Justice, which also ordered the company to pay $50 million to clean up the site and nearby neighborhoods. The state later pledged $75 million for the ongoing cleanup, which is being overseen by the <a href="https://dtsc.ca.gov/exide-home/" target="_blank">California Department of Toxic Substances Control</a>.</p><p>The cleanup has been painfully slow, which Vaquero takes as yet another signal that her neighborhood and neighbors are just a forgotten footnote in a city defined by the glitz of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. </p><p>Vaquero majored in environmental studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she made the decision to stand up for her community and others like hers.</p><p>She described <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6945854-Vaquero-Paper-Fighting-for-Environmental-Health.html" target="_blank"> the environmental injustices in her community in a 2016 thesis</a>: </p><p>"The health of these communities need to be prioritized and protected from any more pollution from Exide and other environmental injustices," she wrote. "The community's power and resilience will prevail and environmental justice will be served to Southeast Los Angeles."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Race and the Climate Movement: What Our Black Colleagues Want the Rest of Us to Know
22 June
Insights + Opinion
View from roof on Fulton street painted huge Black Lives Matter slogan during unveiling ceremony in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The completed mural stretches from Marcy Avenue to New York Avenue for 375 feet. Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket / Getty Images
Climate movement, we have a problem.
We've been marching and speaking out demanding justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other victims of white supremacy.
<p>But if we're honest, a lot of us — white activists at least — still aren't looking in the mirror. We don't want to see our own privilege. We don't want to acknowledge that we insult and anger our friends, colleagues, and partners of color every day without even realizing it. More than anything, we don't want to admit that we inadvertently help keep racism and all its poisonous inequities alive and well. <em>Yes, us</em>.</p><p>Fixing that can't be on people of color. They've been trying to get us to listen for decades. If we can spend the time researching the best schools in our area or the best car for our budget, we sure can spend the time educating ourselves about our privilege and unintentional racism (we'd suggest Robin DiAngelo's excellent book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism-ebook/dp/B07638ZFN1/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=white+fragility" target="_blank"><em>White Fragility</em></a> as a start).</p>
<p>But when people of color do speak with hard truths, we have to listen. It's true for the movement and it's true for us at Climate Reality.</p><p>So we wanted to share some perspectives from activists of color here at Climate Reality who were generous enough to talk about what many white activists <em>still</em> don't get — and need to.</p><p>For white activists, we'd ask that you put your defenses down and really listen to what these voices are saying. The quotes are direct and come from Black staff all over the organization. They don't try to speak for all Black activists, but the issues they speak to will ring true for many white activists and allies.</p><p>Chances are, a lot will be uncomfortable to hear (and if it's not, we'd suggest some real reflection). But if we're going to confront injustice in the world, we've got to start by confronting it in ourselves.</p>
1. What Our Black Colleagues Want the Rest of Us to Know About Culture
<p><strong>Black People Are Not a Monolith</strong></p><p>"Whether in terms of appearance, experience, personal interests or opinion, Black people are not a monolith. We come in many shades, shapes, and colors. Our hair comes in many textures and styles. We represent different opinions and interests. We represent a myriad of cultures and community experiences. These are not pop cultural trends, but are reflective of who we are as individuals. While there may be some common themes, just as with any culture, Black people are still individuals and should be recognized as such." </p><p><strong>We Have Experienced Racism </strong></p><p>"Most of us have experienced racism in some shape or form. Whether it's a derogatory name, gaslighting, second-guessing our success as the result of external charity rather than individual prowess, or a denial of history (statements like "slavery wasn't that bad"), it's there. It manifests in many different ways, and we learn to recognize it at an early age. Our reactions to this reality are as diverse as we are as individuals. Each of us are experts on our individual experience and, while there may be some overlap, our individual experience it is not necessarily fully representative of the Black experience. Also, we don't all necessarily agree on everything nor do we all know each other." </p><p><strong>It's Not Our Job to Educate You</strong></p><p>"As a Black person, it is not our job to educate you on the Black experience or race. Having conversations on race are fine (and necessary), but recognize it is not something you are owed. If we choose to engage, understand that it is often through mixed emotion of frustration, anger, and microaggressions. Also recognize that if we do choose to engage with you, it is often a good sign not that you've gotten it all right, but that we think there is hope for you before you're too far gone. Appreciate that."</p><p><strong>Black Comes in All Shades</strong></p><p>"People who are of a lighter skin aren't necessarily mixed. Black comes in all shades."</p><p><strong>Black Culture Is Not for Your Entertainment</strong></p><p>"My culture is not for your entertainment. I have spent a lifetime fighting stereotypes so I don't wear straight back cornrows or outfits that show my shape. I stay away from color and wear blue, black, and gray. We are taught that our natural way of being is ghetto. Then other races co-opt our style, music, and slang, and it is considered 'pop culture' and 'fashion forward.'"</p>2. About Privilege
<p><strong>White Privilege Is a Symptom of Racism</strong></p><p>"Recognize your privilege. Just a short time ago, most Americans thought that police killings of Black Americans were isolated events. Now, most agree that there is a systemic problem. White privilege is a symptom of racism. It is critical for white people to have uncomfortable conversations about race so that they can recognize their privilege and understand how they benefit from a society that is profoundly separate and unequal. Just as people of color did nothing to deserve unequal treatment, white people did not 'earn' disproportionate access to compassion and fairness."</p><p><strong>White Privilege Means We Carry a Burden That You Do Not</strong></p><p>"The fact that you just recently started thinking deeply about these issues is a sign of your white privilege. I've had to discuss racial injustice at my dinner table for my entire life, not just the last few weeks. When you grow tired of the news stories about racial injustice, you can unplug and go for a run or walk your dog in the park. Those same innocent activities can turn deadly for me, so I don't have the 'privilege' to unplug."</p>3. About Ally-ship
<p><strong>You Need to Do the Work Yourself</strong></p><p>"I am tired and trying to stay afloat, so I can't always be a source for your political education. Being an ally requires extensively educating yourself on colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, racism, and anti-Blackness. Part of the work is finding these resources with your community."</p><p><strong>Ally-ship Means Asking Hard Questions</strong></p><p>"Solidarity is advocating for material change in our fight to end all state sanctioned violence. Questions to ask yourself: Are you willing to relinquish your comfort and power? What are you willing to risk? Are you prepared to be on the frontline? Why now? Has your guilt brought you here? How will you keep the momentum? What does ally-ship mean? Are you ready to interrogate your own internalized anti-Blackness?"</p><p><strong>We Are Not Here for Your Photo Op</strong></p><p>You will not exploit or destroy my relationships in my community. I will NEVER let my people be a photo opportunity for your grant project, board of directors meetings, or anything else. I can make an introduction but you need to put in the work because we believe in transformational relationships, not transactional ones."</p><p><strong>Words Matter</strong></p><p>"When listening to our liberal and progressive white allies speak and the mainstream media, they have a way of using verbiage and unwittingly pushing dog whistles that sound like bullhorns to the Black community. Words matter and how things are framed matter. If there is a group of Black people with guns, they are 'thugs' and 'gangs.' When they are white they are a 'militia.' When white people are suspected of committing a crime the word 'allegedly' is used 99.9 percent of the time. George Floyd was murdered by the police because someone called them because he passed a fake $20 in a store. He has never been convicted of that. He 'allegedly' passed a fake $20 in a store. And by not using this word, you are assigning guilt that is not appropriate and it criminalizes him to justify his death."</p>4. About Racism and White Supremacy
<p><strong>Racism Is Traumatic</strong></p><p>"The shock that many of you experienced after watching George Floyd's murder on camera is reflective of the shock that many in our communities live with every day. The fatigue some of you have expressed from a few weeks of racial upheaval — we've lived with that and then some for generations. We've lived with the frustration of communities for decades screaming that this was happening to us, only to have society turn a blind eye. We live with this trauma. And we still show up to work. We still achieve. We still smile, despite the pain. Recognize this — and not for sympathy, but for solidarity."</p><p><strong>Our Lives Always Matter</strong></p><p>"Black lives don't only matter when we are already dead. Our lives always matter. Solidarity is redistributing your wealth and resources. Organize for the liberation of all Black people globally. Believe Black people. Protect all Black lives."</p><p><strong>Use Your Privilege to Fix Racism</strong></p><p>"We don't directly blame you for racism; we know this has been around long before you were born. But please realize you have privilege due to racism and though you didn't start it, you have the power to fix it."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation, but Collective Ownership Offers a Solution
19 June
Insights + Opinion
Freed slaves harvest land for their own profit on the former plantation of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. ©Corbis / Getty Images
By Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone
Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/julian-agyeman-147077" target="_blank"><em>Julian Agyeman</em></a><em> is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University.</em></p><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kofi-boone-1113883" target="_blank">Kofi Boone</a> is a Professor of Landscape Architecture, College of Design, North Carolina State University.</em></p><p><em>Disclosure statement: The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from The Conversation.</em><br/><span></span></p><iframe height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140514/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" width="1"></iframe>
<p>The "<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/" target="_blank">40 acres and a mule</a>" promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.</p><p>June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as <a href="https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm" target="_blank">Juneteenth</a>, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation" target="_blank">Emancipation Proclamation</a>. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the "black commons" – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress. As professors in <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/uep/people/faculty/julian-agyeman" target="_blank">urban planning</a> and <a href="https://design.ncsu.edu/staff/kofi-boone-asla/" target="_blank">landscape architecture</a>, our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.</p>
Land Grab
<p>The proportion of the United States under black ownership has actually shrunk over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial-wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/" target="_blank">the last 100 years or so</a>.</p><p>At their peak in 1910, <a href="https://psmag.com/news/african-american-farmers-make-up-less-than-2-percent-of-all-us-farmers" target="_blank">African American farmers</a> made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">16 to 19 million acres of land</a>. By 2012, black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a <a href="https://thecounter.org/usda-black-farmers-discrimination-tom-vilsack-reparations-civil-rights/" target="_blank">98% decline</a> in black farmers between 1920 and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">increase in acres owned by white farmers</a> over the same period.</p><p>In <a href="https://archive.org/details/timetoact1545usda" target="_blank">a 1998 report</a>, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and "well-documented" history of discrimination against black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA <a href="https://eji.org/news/one-million-black-families-have-lost-their-farms/" target="_blank">discriminatory practices</a> dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.</p><p>Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/breaking-down-black-white-homeownership-gap" target="_blank">at its highest level for 50 years</a>, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/redlining-what-is-history-mike-bloomberg-comments/" target="_blank">racist housing practices such as redlining</a>, which denied black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.</p><p>The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/blog/black-and-latino-households-are-short-road-zero-wealth-hollowing-out-americas-historic-middle" target="_blank">hollowed out the black middle class</a> and continues to plague black America – making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.</p><p>A 2017 <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx" target="_blank">report</a> found that the median net worth for non-immigrant black American households in the greater Boston region was just US $8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was due to "general housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices."</p><p>Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/resources/road-zero-wealth" target="_blank">black household wealth decreased</a> by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.</p>Freedom Farms
<p>Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sylvia-wynter" target="_blank">Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter</a> called this land "the plot."</p><p><a href="https://www.aaihs.org/towards-usable-histories-of-the-black-commons/" target="_blank">Wynter has explained</a> how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways – growing yams, cassava and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called "<a href="https://english.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/DeLoughrey-Yam-Roots-Rot-Small-Axe.pdf" target="_blank">yam grounds</a>," so important was this staple food.</p><p>The connection between food, land, power and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine and midwifery, and other African American <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807853788/working-cures-/" target="_blank">healing practices</a> were seen as acts of resistance that were "intimately tied to religion and community," according to historian Sharla M. Fett.</p><p>With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.</p><p>The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer's <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/fannie-lou-hamer-founds-freedom-farm-cooperative/" target="_blank">Freedom Farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07409710.2017.1270647?journalCode=gfof20" target="_blank">cooperative model</a> designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest black farmers in the American South.</p><p>In Hamer's view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.</p><p>This idea of a black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois' 1907 "<a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/digital/dubois/dubois12.pdf" target="_blank">Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans</a>." DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/10/07/dangerous-history-what-the-story-of-black-economic-development-means-for-us-today/" target="_blank">ground economic empowerment</a> in the cultural bonds between black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.</p>
Credit Unions and Co-Ops
<p>The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a black commons.</p><p>In 1967, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/us/harold-cruse-social-critic-and-fervent-black-nationalist-dies-at-89.html" target="_blank">social critic Harold Cruse</a> argued for a "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034433?seq=1" target="_blank">new institutionalism</a>" that would create a "new dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture." In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of black communities – politically, culturally and economically. This could be achieved through a black commons.</p><p>As the political economist <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard" target="_blank">Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06216-7.html" target="_blank">has noted</a> in reference to black <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/bankblack-listing-black-owned-banks-credit-unions-united-states/" target="_blank">credit unions and mutual aid funds</a>, "African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history."</p><p>The nonprofit <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/" target="_blank">Schumacher Center for a New Economics</a> is working to rejuvenate the idea of black commons. In a 2018 statement, the <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/proposal-for-a-black-commons/" target="_blank">center proposed to adopt a community land trust structure</a> "to serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for black Americans hitherto without such access."</p><p>Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops" target="_blank">community land trusts</a> <a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/tracking-growth-evaluating-performance-shared-equity-homeownership" target="_blank">continue to grow</a>, helping black families own property, <a href="https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/how-community-land-trusts-can-advance-racial-and-economic-justice" target="_blank">advance racial and economic justice</a> and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.</p>Digital Commons
<p>The disproportionate effects of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html" target="_blank">coronavirus pandemic</a> and unrest over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/police-violence-pandemic/2020/06/05/e1a2a1b0-a669-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html" target="_blank">police brutality</a> have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the <a href="https://m4bl.org/" target="_blank">Movement for Black Lives</a> are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice's <a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a31860967/dj-dnice-instagram-dance-party-coronavirus-quarantine/" target="_blank">Club Quarantine</a> – a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriennegibbs/2020/03/28/dj-d-nice-just-had-the-best-quarantine-week-ever/#2c57f81c47dc" target="_blank">hugely popular</a> online dance party. Club Quarantine's success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.</p><p>That's what organizations like <a href="http://urbanpatch.org/" target="_blank">Urban Patch</a> are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the black commons of years past.</p><p>The long history of racism in the United States has held back black Americans for generations. But the current soul searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth's sake.</p>From Your Site Articles
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'Black Moms Matter': Increased Heat and Pollution Raise Pregnancy Risks, Especially for Racial Minorities
19 June
Health + Wellness
New research adds to the growing evidence that African American communities are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. electravk / Moment / Getty Images
The evidence is in and it's bleak. More than a decade of research and a robust review of studies found that as air pollution and heat increases so do adverse outcomes in pregnancy, according to a new investigation, as The Guardian reported.
<p>The <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.8243?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=061820" target="_blank">research</a> published on Thursday in the<em> Journal of the American Medical Association</em> looked at 32 million births across 68 studies in the U.S. It found that women who were exposed to air pollution or higher temperatures were more likely to have children who are premature, underweight or stillborn. Like with many health-related outcomes, African Americans were hit disproportionately hard by the increases in air pollution and heat.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/climate/climate-change-pregnancy-study.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> noted, the research adds to the growing evidence that racial minority communities are bearing the brunt of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" target="_self">climate crisis</a> since they are much more likely to be hotter and closer to polluting industries.</p><p>Nathaniel DeNicola, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University's School of Medicine and Health Science and an author on the paper, told <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/503441-research-links-climate-change-to-premature-underweight-or-stillborn" target="_blank">The Hill</a> that while much of the current media coverage is focusing on Black men and police brutality, this paper highlights the systemic disparities for Black women, too.</p><p>"Black moms matter," he said.</p>
<p>"When you talk about climate, people think about severe weather, big storms or huge fires … but we wanted to talk about the impacts that are common and widespread and ongoing and also are rarely attributed to the climate crisis," said Bruce Bekkar, a co-author of the study and a retired obstetrician, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/climate-change-air-pollution-investigation-study" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p><p>"We are already having generations weakened from birth. There's just no way we can allow that to happen, and I would like to see not just mothers and their husbands and kids show up at council meetings, but I'd like to see many more health professionals involved in calling for legislation that reduces the ongoing and really pretty scary health burdens of the climate crisis."</p>
<p>The exposures to the climate crisis are exacerbating the problems that African American women already face. According to a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6835a3.htm?s_cid=mm6835a3_w" target="_blank">2019 report</a> from CDC researchers, Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related issues, while Black infants are more than twice as likely to die as white infants, as I<a href="https://www.instyle.com/beauty/health-fitness/climate-change-pregnancy-risks" target="_blank">nStyle</a> reported.</p><p>Catherine Garcia Flowers, a field organizer in Houston for Moms Clean Air Force, an advocacy group, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/climate/climate-change-pregnancy-study.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> the paper was evidence that the federal government needed to increase air pollution regulations. "This is a moment of reckoning for racial injustice and health disparities," she said. "Doing nothing about air pollution, which so clearly has a greater impact on Black Americans, is racism in action."</p>
<p>These new findings are particularly worrying as the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" target="_self">Trump</a> administration has rolled back regulations on car and power plant emissions, tried to prop up the coal industry, and relaxed oversight on industries. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has made traditional summer cooling spots like public pools, movie theaters and shopping malls off-limits due to social distancing guidelines, as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/08/climate-change-emerging-threat-pregnancy-health" target="_blank">Human Rights Watch</a> noted.</p><p>The review found that as heat increased, so did instances of premature birth and low birth weight, both of which can lead to cognitive deficits and physical problems through childhood and later in life.</p>
<p>In addition to looking at pregnancy outcomes as the planet heats up, the researchers zeroed in on two pollutants, smog and fine particulate matter — both are increasing as the climate crisis intensifies. The bulk of the studies reviewed showed that ozone and PM 2.5 are associated with preterm births, low birth weights and stillbirths. One study found that high exposure to air pollution during the final trimester of pregnancy was linked to a 42 percent increase in the risk of stillbirth, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/climate/climate-change-pregnancy-study.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported.</p><p>"Reducing air pollution and fighting climate change is a matter of their children's survival and health," said Bekkar, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/climate-change-air-pollution-investigation-study" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p>
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Trending
People protest the death of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. Warrick Page / Getty Images
By Rachel Ramirez
"I can't breathe." These were among the final words that George Floyd and Eric Garner gasped before their deaths at the hands of white police officers. That plea has become part of the current rallying cry for racial justice and an end to police brutality in the U.S. But for black people living near industrial facilities, the phrase has an additional layer of meaning: a reminder of their disproportionate pollution burden.
<p>"While many in power seemed surprised that COVID-19 is killing twice as many black Americans, those of us in the environmental justice movement know that the health impacts of cumulative and disproportionate levels of pollution in our communities have created underlying health conditions that contribute to our higher COVID-19 mortality rates," said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said at a virtual press conference on Monday.</p><p>Shepard is part of the <a href="https://www.nbejn.com/" target="_blank">National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN)</a>, a national coalition of black environmental justice groups and grassroots activists founded in 1991. Although the network took a hiatus in 2006 after executive director <a href="https://www.nbejn.com/damu-smith" target="_blank">Damu Smith passed away</a>, the network just announced that it's making a comeback against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and renewed calls to fight racial injustice.</p><p>The network's mission sends a clear message: Environmental injustice is not a single issue. Rather, it's a constellation of issues including discrimination in housing, jobs, and healthcare.</p><p>It's impossible to untangle black communities' current risks from America's long history of racist policies and practices. Discriminatory policies such as banks' government-sanctioned refusal to approve home loans and insurance for people in communities of color, also known as redlining, forced black families into neighborhoods more likely to be <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10452037/ns/us_news-environment/t/minorities-suffer-most-industrial-pollution/" target="_blank">exposed to industrial pollution</a> and <a href="https://grist.org/justice/another-legacy-of-redlining-unequal-exposure-to-heat-waves/" target="_blank">extreme heat</a>. Now these same communities face a surge in unemployment and poverty rates as a result of the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, and they are also <a href="https://grist.org/justice/as-coronavirus-ravages-louisiana-cancer-alley-residents-havent-given-up-the-fight-against-polluters/" target="_blank">disproportionately dying</a> from the novel coronavirus as a result of a lack of health insurance, unequal access to test sites, and higher workplace exposure via employment in essential services. As if that wasn't enough, <a href="https://grist.org/justice/study-even-the-tiniest-amount-of-air-pollution-makes-covid-19-more-deadly/" target="_blank">a recent Harvard study</a> also found a link between air pollution and death from COVID-19.</p>
<p>Given the systemic conditions that disproportionately expose black people to the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and other worsening crises, NBEJN members — including the network's co-chairs, environmental justice pioneers Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright — say they are now looking to bring in black lawyers, engineers, leaders, and other experts to join forces to help create an equitable green stimulus package, take on the fossil fuel industry, and fight the Trump administration's seemingly endless orders to <a href="https://grist.org/justice/nepa-trump-executive-order-weakens-communities-defense-against-dirty-infrastructure/" target="_blank">weaken environmental protections</a>.</p><p>"We see these environmental rollbacks as not just fast-tracking project permits, but as a fast-track to the emergency room and cemeteries," said Bullard, an author and professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. "The NBEJN is about dismantling systemic racism, and we're talking about turning the dominant paradigm on its head."</p><p>Network leaders say COVID-19 recovery legislation could be an opportunity for lawmakers to pass a robust <a href="https://grist.org/politics/how-a-coronavirus-stimulus-package-could-bolster-the-economy-and-save-the-planet/" target="_blank">green stimulus package</a> that would focus on environmental justice. Such a green stimulus package, the coalition said, needs to address core issues of systemic racism by, for example, providing green jobs to communities of color.</p>
<p>"Green stimulus packages often only look at protecting the world, but not protecting people like us," said Wright, executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. "Any stimulus package dealing with transportation to housing or whatever they're talking about doing will have to include us and need to be viewed with equity and justice lenses."</p><p>Even if an equitable green stimulus package makes it through Congress and the White House, there will still be a lot more work to be done. Bullard said that even if the Democratic party wins the presidential election or takes control of the Senate, it will take time to reverse Trump-era environmental policy damages, including the country's withdrawal from the 2016 Paris Agreement. Even then, he added, policymakers will need to take additional steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions and center frontline communities. And NBEJN leaders say the network will stick around to make sure those steps are taken.</p><p>"Racism is baked into America's DNA," Bullard said. "NBEJN is needed today to fight these conversing threats and underlying conditions that are denying black people the right to breathe and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness enjoyed by white America."</p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://grist.org/" target="_blank">Grist</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice Peggy Shepard attends New Yorkers For Clean Power Campaign Launch at Solar 1 on May 2, 2016 in New York City. Roy Rochlin / Getty Images
By Jeff Berardelli
In recent weeks, our nation has been forced to come to grips with the variety of ways in which inequality harms minority communities, from the death of George Floyd at the hands of police to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19. A recent Harvard study concluded that air pollution — which is typically worse in areas with larger minority populations — is linked to higher coronavirus death rates, along with a slew of other health problems.
<p>This is just one form of environmental injustice, which Peggy Shepard has dedicated the better part of her life to combating. Shepard is the co-founder of <a href="https://www.weact.org/" target="_blank">WE ACT for Environmental Justice</a>, a New York City nonprofit organization that's been working to improve the environment of local communities since 1988. The mission of WE ACT is to "build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices."</p><p>Environmental justice has become a mainstream topic recently as awareness grows of the worsening <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/un-climate-change-report-world-meteorological-organization/" target="_blank">impacts of climate change</a> and the proposal for a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-introduces-2020-policy-test/" target="_blank">Green New Deal</a>. So this week CBS News asked Peggy Shepard to discuss how environmental issues disproportionately impact minority communities and what needs to be done to fix that. Here is a portion of that conversation.</p>
<p><strong><em>Jeff Berardelli: </em>Social justice is front and center in the news, but you've been fighting what your website calls "environmental racism" for decades. Can you explain the term environmental racism?</strong></p><p><em>Peggy Shepard:</em> Environmental racism is the intentional targeting of pollution in communities of color and low-income communities because they are less informed and they vote less. They have less political clout and often land is cheaper in those communities as well. As a result, industrial pollution tends to get located inside in those communities because there is more industry, government-run facilities like sewage treatment plants and bus depots. </p><p><strong>How do environmental issues fuel racial inequality?</strong></p><p>One thing we know is that environmental enforcement does not happen the way it needs to happen in communities of color and low-income communities. I work with groups in Florida that are small Southern communities surrounded by 19 waste sites. All throughout the country and in the South there aren't zoning laws, so you can have a chemical facility right next to a small community. Out in California there's no zoning so you can have a cement factory or an oil refinery right down the street from a school. When you look at the issues around the country they play out very differently. But the one commonality is that pollution is in communities of color and low-income. Environmental enforcement is very lax and those people who are most affected by that pollution are not a part of the environmental decision-making in that city, state or the nation. </p>
<p><strong>Would it be correct to say that the pollution, the flooding, and all the climate and environmental issues that are more common in these communities exacerbate the racial inequalities?</strong><br> <br>Absolutely. If you're living in a community filled with transfer stations where trucks are coming daily to dump garbage; if you're living in a community with buses up and down the street idling outside of schools; if you're living in a community where the oil refinery is emitting air pollutants that are making people sick and have horrible odors; then you're probably living in a community with low property values, with trash, where people don't feel respected. They're living in a community that's environmentally degraded. You also add to that the stress of racism and unequal schools and you have an environmental system that is making people sick and stressing people out. </p><p>You will find that some of those communities are the same ones that don't have access to open space and parks. There may be a waterfront but you'll find that half the kids don't even know because they've never had access to that. One of our projects was creating access to the incredible Hudson River in our community so the families could go there and have recreation and have aesthetics.</p>
<p><strong>This is a little deeper, but can you trace the roots of environmental inequality in the United States back to their beginnings?</strong></p><p>There are books written on this. ... Urban planning is a good example, which has planned for some of these situations that poor communities find themselves in… and we understand that that has been systemic. For instance, one of the issues that got us started was the siting of the North River sewage treatment plant, which was mandated by the Clean Water Act because it used to be if you flushed a toilet on the west side of Manhattan, it went directly into the Hudson River. So the federal government said, you've got to clean up the river, you've got to have a sewage treatment plant. Well, the best place that the engineers felt was in the [affluent] West 70s on the west side of Manhattan. But developers, seeing that that land was much more profitable and wanting to develop that land, managed to get the City Planning Commission to move it uptown to Harlem. So as a result, we have one of the largest sewage treatment plants in the city that's literally right across the street from Riverside Drive, right across from people. The emissions and the odors were making people sick. So we had to begin to hold the city accountable and that was our first real campaign.</p>
<p><strong>What are some examples of how communities of color are disproportionately impacted by environmental issues like pollution, disease and climate change?</strong></p><p>Extreme heat events right now are killing more African Americans than any other people. Air pollution creates something like 200,000 premature deaths around the country every year. I think a lot of people have been stunned to understand that air pollution has increased the risk of more severe impacts from COVID-19 for people living in polluted communities. And so the link of environmental exposure to health outcomes is a very strong link, and I think the <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/2020/04/linking-air-pollution-to-higher-coronavirus-death-rates/" target="_blank">Harvard study</a> that came out last month or so certainly bears that out.</p><p>A number of studies show that the primary predictor of where toxic waste sites will be sited is a community of color, and secondarily, a low-income community. You can also see that the refineries — the chemical companies — are all in communities that are low income and of color. We can look at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley" target="_blank">cancer alley</a> [in Louisiana] as a prime example of that. </p><p>We can also look at many of the communities in the South, along the Gulf Coast, that are impacted by hurricanes and extreme weather events. We know those communities are going to be hit by extreme weather, yet the investment by those municipalities and states are not going into the communities that are most vulnerable. For example, New Orleans' Ninth Ward was the most impacted [by Hurricane Katrina] yet communities that are most impacted by sea level rise and hurricanes have not been invested in.</p><p>There are many of the Gulf Coast states and communities that have still not been restored from the last hurricanes. You've got black communities in Alabama and Mississippi that are still waiting for their roads to be repaved. That investment that came from the federal government did not go to the most impacted communities. </p><p><span></span>We're also seeing the issue of <span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-refugees-united-nations-rules/" target="_blank">climate migrants</a></span>. People had to leave New Orleans because their homes were gone, so they moved to other states. When many of them tried to return they found that all the public housing had been torn down and they could no longer afford the new housing that was there. This is called <span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-miami-affordable-housing-gentrification-cbsn-originals-documentary/" target="_blank">climate gentrification</a></span> in which communities are being cleared out because of climate impacts and then <span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-miami-little-haiti-gentrification-cbsn-originals-documentary/" target="_blank">more affluent people buy up the property</a></span> and rebuild the city. So you really have total civic disruption and you do not have the civil society that you once had. </p><p>I think we'll see that in Puerto Rico, as well, with so many <span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/puerto-rico-exodus-after-hurricane-maria-cbsn-originals/" target="_blank">people having to leave the island</a></span> [because of Hurricane Maria] with no electricity, no services. Yet affluent people can go back, buy up those properties, and put the infrastructure investments in place that are needed to have a healthy society.</p><p>Another example is wildlife exploration in Alaska. What's the equity issue with that? Well, if you're allowing exploration in the Arctic… that's going to hurt the animals that the indigenous people depend on for food. It's going to pollute the ocean and that means it pollutes the fish that they depend on.</p>
<p><strong>That brings us to climate change. It is fast becoming the most pressing of all environmental issues worldwide. As a result, "climate justice" is a term that I hear often. What are your main concerns for the future as climate change continues to get worse?</strong></p><p>Well, the term climate justice, I think, is being used by a lot of people as a cool term. Climate justice has a very specific meaning: it is about the studies, it's about the initiatives, it's about the interventions that are needed in communities of color and low-income communities that will be the first and worst hit by climate extreme events. Even though it seems to be a newer consciousness, the environmental justice community has been working on climate issues integrated with environmental justice for many many years. It goes hand in hand. You cannot have climate justice without environmental justice. </p><p>We understand that the investment has got to go to those communities that we know are in the flood zones that will be the worst hit and don't have the resilience to come back without strong support by the government.</p><p>We need changes and reform of FEMA. We need advisory committees made up of people of color and the most affected people informing the committees about the kind of initiatives and interventions needed to become whole again when there is an extreme event. All of us need to be part of the climate solutions. We cannot just have mainstream green groups working on climate, national climate legislation, because they are not generally living in the communities that are the first and worst hit. </p><p>So when we talk about environmental racism and environmental injustice, we're also talking about being engaged in environmental decision-making. If people of color and low-income people who are most affected by the issues are never in the rooms where the decisions are being made and the solutions are being recommended, we are going to continue to have two different worlds, two different realities, like we're seeing right now today. Two different realities do not make a unified country. </p>
<p><strong>Let's talk about the Green New Deal. I think a lot of people don't understand why the Green New Deal addresses sustainable energy and at the same time addresses social programs. Can you explain how these two are interconnected and why they both need to be addressed?</strong></p><p>Climate is more than simply reducing greenhouse gases. The communication to the public has got to be for them to understand how it impacts every facet of their lives, whether it's energy security or whether it's a "<a href="https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/" target="_blank">just transition</a>" from fossil fuels to a green economy. If we are not all part of those solutions, we are going to continue the divisions that we currently have. </p><p>I have heard some people say <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/climate-change" target="_blank">climate change</a> is about greenhouse gas reduction, what does equity have to do with it? Well, the solutions are going to affect our economy and our energy security. Right now 30 million households in this country are energy insecure. They cannot pay their energy bill and put food on the table, yet many of our climate initiatives may increase our energy costs. So how do we begin to distribute those costs fairly, especially when we're talking about communities of color and low income who consume less and produce less carbon emissions than more affluent communities? So, how do we begin to equalize the benefits in a new green economy? You really have to come together. </p><p>Also, there's no requirement for community involvement in what kinds of jobs will be created or what kind of businesses will receive tax incentives. That's economic development. What does economic development have to do with climate or environmental quality? Well, of course, it has everything to do with environmental quality. It can create more density, bringing in more pedestrians and more commuters, which has an environmental impact and contributes to health disparities. </p>
<p><strong>How can both the impacted communities and also society as a whole create positive change and get us off this track of environmental Injustice?</strong></p><p><strong></strong>I think we have to understand that all of our communities need to be respected. The benefits that society has given so many of the residents in our country have not gone equally to all of the residents here. We've got to understand our shared values. I think we're seeing today... we have a shared value that the police should treat everyone equally, that our community should be invested in equally, that without transformative economic development that the workers who are now in the fossil fuel industry will not have family-sustaining jobs in the new green economy.</p><p>I believe there's now a consensus that we have got to unify. The environmental community and the mainstream green groups have been coming together over the past year and a half to up climate solutions together. So you might know about the <a href="https://ajustclimate.org/" target="_blank">Equitable and Just National Climate Platform</a> that about six green groups and 12 environmental justice organizations have worked on for the past couple of years. We are now working to develop policies to implement.</p><p>We cannot continue to perpetuate the divisions that have gotten us to where we are today, which is in a crisis. We're in a COVID-19 pandemic and we're in a climate crisis and without coming together with unity, consensus and common ground, we are not going to get ourselves out of these crises. </p>
<p><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/environmental-justice-movement-climate-change-racism-peggy-shepard/#app" target="_blank">CBS News</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>
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Anti-racism protests in Brooklyn, New York. Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
In the wake of nationwide protests sparked by police and vigilante murders of African Americans, as well as a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Black and Hispanic communities, cities, counties and states across the country are moving to declare racism a public health emergency.
<div class="redactor-editor" dir="ltr" placeholder="Start writing..."><div class="redactor-editor" dir="ltr" placeholder="Start writing..."><p><br/></p><p>Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/milwaukee-wisconsin-declares-racism-a-public-health-crisis/#app" target="_blank">first U.S. city</a> to make such a declaration in 2019, and more than 20 other counties and cities have followed suit, according to <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/06/15/racism-is-a-public-health-crisis-say-cities-and-counties" target="_blank">PEW</a>. Legislation is pending on the state level in Ohio and Michigan, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/12/racism-public-health-black-brown-coronavirus" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>. The movement is gaining momentum in response to the new <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coronavirus" target="_self">coronavirus</a> and weeks of racial justice protests, but builds on decades of evidence that racism harms the health of African Americans.</p>
<p>"Racism is a pandemic just like Covid-19 is a pandemic," pastor Samuel Casey, a community activist who helped pass a declaration in San Bernardino, California, told The Guardian. "But we've been dealing with the coronavirus for, what, four months? We've had systematic oppression for 400-plus years."</p>
<p>The statistics prompting the declarations are alarming, PEW pointed out. The life expectancy of African Americans is four years below the U.S. average. Black women are up to four times more likely than white women to die in complications related to pregnancy and Black men are more than two times more likely than white men to be killed by police. These disparities have been driven home by the spread of COVID-19, which is killing African Americans at 2.3 times the rate it kills Asian and white Americans, according to the most recent figures from the <a href="https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race" target="_blank">APM Research Lab</a>.</p>
<p>Racism drives these different outcomes in a number of ways. One major factor is <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/environmental-racism" target="_self">environmental racism</a>: housing discrimination means minority communities are more likely to be exposed to toxic or carcinogenic chemicals in their air and water, The Guardian pointed out. But the experience of racism itself can also deteriorate the health of those targeted by it, as FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard director Mary Bassett told The Guardian. Discrimination-induced stress has been linked to more rapid development of heart disease generally and to chronic low-grade inflammation in Black women. Some scientists think the lifelong experience of racism speeds up aging through a process called "weathering."</p><p>"Of course, the answer to all this is not sending everyone on a yoga retreat – though that wouldn't be so bad. We still need to address the structural issues," Bassett said.</p><p>While these issues long predate recent events, the disease and the protests have opened a window for action.</p><p>In Cleveland, Ohio for example, city officials introduced the resolution in early March.</p><p>"Getting support for this sort of legislation isn't easy … Now, everybody is on board," Cleveland council member Basheer Jones, who introduced the legislation, told The Guardian.</p>
<p>One politician recently moved to action was Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who declared racism a public health crisis Friday, as <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/12/876327158/boston-mayor-declares-racism-a-public-health-crisis" target="_blank">NPR reported</a>. He pledged to transfer $3 million from the city police department's overtime budget to public health.</p><p>"We're determined to accelerate our work towards systemic change," Walsh said in a press conference. "What I'm announcing today is the beginning."</p><p>The money being transferred is less than one percent of the Boston police's annual $414 million budget, and Brock Satter of Mass Action Against Police Brutality called it a "pittance," but said it was a step in the right direction.</p><p>"Keep it coming," he told NPR.</p>
<p>Generally, some activists have challenged the public health crisis declarations for being largely symbolic.</p><p>Such a declaration passed by the Indianapolis City-County Council in June was criticized by community groups for having "no true depth," <a href="https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/06/08/indianapolis-declares-racism-public-health-crisis/5323769002/" target="_blank">the Indianapolis Star reported</a>.</p><p>"Rather than direct resources to address the [food] deserts that have existed for years, city leadership hides behind resolutions and meaningless actions with no real city commitment to addressing the systemic racism that has created the deserts," the Baptist Minister's Alliance, the National Action Network of Indiana and the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis said in a joint statement. "There are no economic commitments to positively impacting the black community."</p><p>However, others say the resolutions can create the conditions to facilitate more concrete actions.</p><p>"If you declare something an emergency, you're also saying it's imperative to address the problem,"Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and infectious disease expert Dr. Allison Agwu told The Guardian.</p>
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