Environmental consortium relaunches in pursuit of social justice
20th July 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
As a lifelong resident of St. John the Baptist Parish, Robert Taylor watched as the demographics of his hometown changed once the massive, powerful DuPont chemical company opened a chloroprene production plant in the parish in 1969.
As soon as news broke more than a half-century ago that the DuPont plant was in the works, Taylor said, the white residents of St. John gradually picked up their stakes and left, as if they knew something very bad was about to happen.
“We saw white flight before we even really knew what white flight was,” Taylor told The Louisiana Weekly. “[White residents] had been forewarned about the implications of the plant. A few years later, we realized what white flight was and what environmental racism was.” Today, the Japanese company Denka owns the chloroprene plant, and now the swath of land along the Mississippi River in which the facility sits – including St. John Parish, Robert Taylor’s hometown – is known as Cancer Alley, a region with the highest cancer risk in the country.
Over the last half-century, dozens of chemical production facilities have sprung up in the River Parishes, and many of the Black residents of the region are left to deal with the devastating health and economic results of the industrial proliferation.
The last decade has seen grass-roots activist groups grow in the River Parishes region as a way to combat both the environmental pollution and the political apathy that have resulted in the horrible reality of Cancer Alley.
Taylor leads one such community empowerment organization, Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish. He said that when it comes to environmental justice, African Americans need to start banding together to become stronger and self-empowered to affect change.
“The Black community is still in a reactive mode,” he said. “It wasn’t until 2016 when we formed a concerted effort on the part of the community to do something about [environmental issues].”
Taylor isn’t alone when it comes to placing environmental racism as part of the country’s recent wave of support for achieving social justice. Environmental groups in Louisiana and across the nation are beginning to urge those pursuing racial equality and fairness to include environmental issues as part of the overall picture.
Last month, the National Black Environmental Justice Network announced its relaunch, an effort that brings together several regional and national organizations like the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program and the Green Door Initiative.
The NBEJN was first created in 1999 but became rejuvenated over the last several years as a reaction to what the organization says is a startling backsliding of environmental protection, a process of weakened enforcement that is disproportionately hurting communities of color. The disproportionate effect the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Black Americans was also a factor in the NBEJN’s reformation.
“[A]s we have seen the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on our community and the continued assaults on our environment by the Trump administration, there has been a groundswell among members, a resurgence of energy and purpose, that has brought us back together to protect Black America and put an end to these injustices,” Dr. Beverly Wright, executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network said in a June press release.
The release also included thoughts by Dr. Robert Bullard, often called the father of environmental justice. “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.”
Another organization that has voiced support for the fight against white supremacy and systemic racism in America is the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute, which in early June denounced the murder of George Floyd and the institutional mindset that allowed for the death of Floyd and other people of color.
Then, earlier this month, the EJI released its survey of the Trump administration’s wholesale remaking of federal environment law and enforcement and the way that corrupt deregulation has hurt people of color and other vulnerable populations.
The report, titled “Environment 2021: Where Do We Go From Here?,” stated that a healthy environment should be a human right, “but the mechanisms for making that right an enforceable reality in the United States are far from well-developed. As states and the federal government begin to confront, at least legislatively, their records of disparate treatment and perpetuation of unjust systems of legal protection and institutionalized racism, perhaps there is an opportune moment to place environmental justice in the foreground of legal reform.”
In comments to The Louisiana Weekly, ELI President Scott Fulton further called for environmental justice.
“Institutionalized racism in the environmental context is a modern symptom of our country’s difficult history with race and is very closely connected to racism more broadly,” Fulton said. “Institutionalized racism in this context has several faces, including disproportionate exposure by people of color to environmental contamination, as well as inferior access to environmental resources and benefits.
“Because freedom from environmental harm and access to environmental quality are key ingredients to quality of life, environmental justice must be seen as central to the broader pursuit of a just society where benefits and burdens are shared without regard to race or economic status.”
Fulton said that in the pursuit of environmental and social justice, average citizens often find themselves pitted against huge corporations with an almost limitless amount of financial resources and an often-cozy relationship with political and governmental officials that, when combined, results in a seemingly overwhelming emphasis on economic and industrial development over public health, fairness and openness.
He said citizens must realize the power and potential they hold in the battle for clean air, water and ground – a battle that often disproportionately involves poorer communities and communities of color.
“Throughout the modern environmental period, citizens have served as an important check on the processes of government and on private sector activity,” he said. “Citizens do this by availing themselves of the many participation rights created by our environmental laws, from the opportunity to comment on proposed permits and development plans, to holding government accountable in court for rational and principled decisions, to bringing citizen suits against those who violate their permits. All of these tools will be vitally important in the pursuit of environmental justice.
“Of course, as we live in democratic system,” he added, “citizens unhappy with what they see and are experiencing should lift their voices in ways that help shape the understanding of the citizenry more broadly and then, along with their fellow citizens, exercise their right to vote in favor of leadership aligned with the changes they seek.”
In Louisiana, one of the most prominent in the fight against environmental racism is the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, a New Orleans-based advocacy and legal support apparatus that supports communities throughout the Gulf Coast region.
The executive director of the DSCEJ is Dr. Wright, the head of the relaunched National Black Environmental Justice Network, and Monique Harden is the DSCEJ’s assistant director for public policy.
Harden told The Louisiana Weekly that systemic racism includes the environmental pollution and destruction of communities that leads to both physical health problems and a draining of community unity, pride and hope – the same effects caused by police brutality and other more overt forms of racial oppression.
“It takes people’s lives,” Harden said of environmental racism. “It cuts off the people’s ability to live to their fullest potential. It dooms communities when a community is targeted [for hazardous industry] because nothing else grows there, even the ability to sustain themselves. We’re talking about dooming Black communities.”
Harden said that often, governmental agencies such as law enforcement are used to protect polluting businesses by intimidating protestors who are trying to defend themselves, their families and their communities from environmental harm.
Often, the police agencies that murder innocent civilians like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are the same ones arresting people of color who are peacefully protesting at chemical plants and industrial sites.
“They want to silence Americans who are speaking up for their health,” Harden said of the symbiosis between politicians and industrial polluters. “Law enforcement is used in a way to antagonize freedom of expression in service to the chemical companies.”
Harden added that systemic environmental racism can be seen in the laxity and corruption of the governmental permitting process, in which potential corporate polluters have more influence in average citizens when it comes to allowing chemical plants to be approved and given the go-ahead to break ground.
Harden said that’s why the election coming up in November is so vital in terms of protecting the environment in general and vulnerable communities specifically. And the process of reclaiming a clean environment must not stop at enforcing the laughable bare minimums of existing regulation, but extend to enacting newer, bolder, more progressive environmental laws that take the considerations of public health and environmental justice seriously.
“The solution is so clear,” she said. “It’s really about people staying strong and organizing and strengthening their efforts. We need to stay the course to provide access [into the regulatory process] for all races.” Because as it is now, she added, “If you think you have freedom in this country, just try organizing a protest against a petrochemical company.”
That’s a lesson that Robert Taylor and the residents of Cancer Alley in the River Parishes know all too well.
“In St. John, when our [protest] group was formed, we were immediately attacked by the establishment,” Taylor said. He added that “the problem I see us running into is a mindset in our larger community that it’s hopeless to fight the company. They feel the company is too powerful for us to put up a creditable fight.”
That, however, is hopefully changing, and as the country pursues social justice, the environmental issues are being addressed head-on.
This article originally published in the July 20, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
