Month: September 2020

By: Kayleigh Coughlin, Communications Intern
In an interview on Wednesday, August 12, 2020 for CHEJ’s Living Room Leadership Series, Hilton Kelley, Founder and Director of Community In-Power & Development Association (CIDA), shared his experience taking action against the neighboring chemical manufacturers, refineries and incinerator facilities in his hometown of Port Arthur, TX. CIDA is a non-profit organization that helps organize and educate local residents to fight back against corporate polluters and work together to promote healthy change. CIDA was founded in 2000 with the belief that “polluters should be held accountable for the chronic, systematic poisoning of low-income communities living along the ‘fence line’ of their operations.”
Mr. Kelley is a US Navy Veteran turned environmental activist. While Kelley claims to have always cared deeply about others, his road to activism was not planned. In his interview, Kelley described the moment his brief visit home to Port Arthur, TX turned permanent. “I was thrown aback by what I saw. Our downtown area was dilapidated … I went back to California but I kept thinking about my hometown. Someone needed to do something.” Within three months of his visit, Kelley had moved back home to Port Arthur and immediately got to work on his plan to help rebuild his hometown.
Kelley described the effects of ‘white flight’ in Port Arthur, which depleted the community of its school teachers, policemen, businesses, etc. This phenomenon helped lead to the “dilapidation” Kelley spoke about in his community by 2000. Without much-needed resources like banks, members of Kelley’s community had very little political power. Coupled with environmental health threats, given 30% of Jefferson County oil refineries are located in Port Arthur, local residents were under water. Corporations like Premcor, now Valero, claimed their oil refinery emissions were of “no harm” to residents, but Kelley found Premcor and, and a Saudi Arabian refinery, Motiva,  had been out-of-compliance with the Clean Air Act for years. In 2006, CIDA filed a class action lawsuit against Motiva and other out-of-compliance refineries in the area, which resulted in these refineries eventually implementing the proper controls to reduce emissions. The lawsuit’s settlement resulted in the purchase of a mobile medical van to provide on-the-spot medical care and health vouchers to Port Arthur residents. Despite this win, there was some push-back from locals who feared taking on the power of these corporations.
“It’s a really tough job because you’re not only fighting against these out-of-compliance corporations …. You’re also fighting against some of the very people you’re fighting for because they look at you as the villain. They buy into the rhetoric that you’re going to drive these businesses away, and they rely on these jobs.”
Reaching these residents can be tough, but Kelley described the effectiveness of framing the issue around family. When you tell people that emissions are hurting not only them, but their children and their grandchildren, they begin to see the issue in a new light. The impacts borne by Port Arthur families cannot be ignored. One in five households in Port Arthur is affected by emission-related illnesses, like cancer. And many families in the area lack resources to receive proper medical treatment for their illnesses, said Kelley. “After a while, you just stop counting and start fighting.” 
CIDA’s fight has resulted in numerous wins for Port Arthur, such as negotiating with Premcor for restitutions to community members in 2005, stopping 20,000 tons of PCBs from being shipped to Port Arthur for incineration in 2009, and much more. To learn more about CIDA’s fight in Port Arthur and neighboring communities, visit https://www.cidainc.org.

By: Leija Helling, Communications Intern
CHEJ had the pleasure of hosting Kaniela Ing, an activist, community organizer and former State Representative in Hawaii, at a Living Room Leadership webinar on August 5, 2020. A Native Hawaiian, Kaniela was first elected to represent South Maui in the Hawaii State House 2012 at the age of 23. After six years in the legislature, he returned to community organizing and now works as the Climate Justice Campaign Director at the People’s Action Institute, a partner organization of CHEJ. 
Kaniela was born and raised in one of the richest, whitest, and most conservative areas of Maui, a Hawaiian island known for its resort hotels and agriculture. Growing up, Kaniela witnessed capitalists using their power to harm native Hawaiians like himself. When he was young, a white business-owner stole land granted to his family, which, combined with the sudden death of his father, put them in financial peril. Kaniela and his brother started working in the pineapple fields, a brutal and hazardous job that paid below minimum wage. Both he and his brother developed serious respiratory problems from pesticide exposure. Kaniela’s experience working alongside undocumented workers, migrants with limited rights, and other marginalized folks for whom pineapple picking was not just a temporary gig left a deep emotional impression.
“Like many of us in impacted communities,” Kaniela says, “you don’t seek out politics. It finds you…I didn’t really have a choice but to get involved.”
As a young adult, Kaniela started to get involved in politics. He worked in native organizing and ran the student council at his university. When a Tea Party Republican was elected on his home island, hoping to dismantle the social security programs and environmental protections Kaniela’s family had relied on in tough times, Kaniela decided to run for office. By mobilizing a base of white liberals and Black, Filipino and Native workers in the hotel district, he was able to overtake an incumbent Republican and win a seat in the Hawaii State House.
During his time as a State Representative, Kaniela pushed for progressive policy changes in areas such as pollution and environmental contamination, education, and social inequities. He challenged corporate power in Hawaii, fighting against Monsanto, the infamous agricultural biotech giant, and Alexander and Baldwin, one of the original “Big Five” sugar cane companies that has dominated Hawaii’s land and politics since the 1800’s. Kaniela was the youngest legislator to hold a leadership role in the House. 
But Kaniela quickly grew alarmed by how his colleagues in office got sucked into an insular political scene. He watched as progressives were pulled toward the center, spending more time with their colleagues than their district: the people they were supposed to represent. He saw firsthand how corporate lobbyists charmed and befriended legislators, while activists and organizers, seen as demanding and disagreeable, were dismissed by people in power.
“A system that relies on appealing to the good nature of politicians is never going to work,” Kaniela says. “We never really learned how to do democracy right.”
Organizing, on the other hand, is about the pluralism of power, about finding pillars to stand on and building movement and community by feeding off of each other’s energy. COVID-19 has made Kaniela’s job harder, he admits, since sharing physical space is such an important part of bringing people together. But Kaniela has noticed that people, now more than ever, have a longing to be part of a movement. He is working hard to make sure the movement he is building centers people who are facing the “triple-pandemic” of pollution, racial injustice and COVID-19.

By: Kayleigh Coughlin, Communications Intern
In an interview on Wednesday, July 15, 2020 for CHEJ’s Living Room Leadership Series, Linda Robles, founder of the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force, shared her experience battling TCE contamination in her neighborhood.
Since the 1940s, military installations in Tucson, AZ have been using and improperly disposing of TCE and other toxic chemicals. These chemicals leaked into the soil and groundwater of surrounding communities, poisoning residents who drank the tap water in their homes. In the 1980s, the EPA asked the city of Tucson to close all TCE-tainted wells in the area, but the city did not fully comply. As a result, a predominantly Mexican-American community, low-income on the Southside of Tucson has been severely affected.
The EPA declared Robles’ community and the surrounding area, including the Tucson International Airport, a Superfund site in 1994 due to its contaminated groundwater and soil. Despite declaring this Superfund site, the government failed to acknowledge the adverse health effects residents in the area were experiencing, such as high rates of cancer, birth defects, lupus and other diseases. Robles said, “We knew the TCE-tainted water was to blame”. Robles stated The Environmental Justice Task Force was created to organize around these health issues and prevent further pollution. In 2014, the group began a series of health assessments among its members through door-knocking, and the data on cancer clusters collected through these assessments increased awareness of the problem among Tucson’s elected officials.
CHEJ helped the Environmental Justice Task Force focus their organizing efforts. In 2018, Lois Gibbs came to town and provided the group with organizing training and strategies that helped Robles’ group grow. With CHEJ’s help, the group convinced the EPA and local officials to conduct a vapor intrusion investigation at six different schools between two districts in the area. While the community has this win to celebrate, Robles admits that organizing is still a challenge for her group due to the large undocumented population in the area. Many undocumented immigrants in the community care about the issue, but are nervous to get involved because they fear deportation, Robles stated. “Their silenced voices lead us all – local officials and the EPA, especially – to underestimate the threat we are facing”.
To learn more about the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force and how you can help, visit https://www.facebook.com/ejtaskforce.
To listen to Linda Robles’ full interview with CHEJ, click here.