Month: May 2021

By: Julia Weil, Community Organizing Intern
As we have seen countless times, hazardous contamination is disproportionately present in areas where more minority and low-income people live. Though this has been both protested at specific sites and researched on a larger scale for many years, it not only continues, but the companies responsible both refuse to take responsibility and even deny the environmental racism that drives their decision-making.
The process of moving potential contaminating facilities out of white neighborhoods and into majority minority neighborhoods can be seen in the case of Southside Recycling, owned by Reserve Management Group, in Chicago.  Formerly General Iron, the scrap metal shredding facility was proposed to move out of Lincoln Park, a wealthier and whiter area of Chicago, and into the already environmentally over-burdened Southeast Side, in an area where the majority of residents are Latino.
In Lincoln Park, before the proposed location change, the General Iron facility was protested by residents due to the noise, smell, and particulate matter, and a notice of violation was issued due to emissions.  The new company name doesn’t change the impact that the metal shredding facility could have on surrounding communities.
Recognizing the sickeningly common narrative continued by the location change, local activists on the Southeast Side conducted several protests and participated in a hunger strike. The Southeast Side of Chicago has a long history of environmental racism and pollution, driven by zoning laws. In fact, over just the past 7 years, as many as 75 facilities in that area were inspected for “allegedly violating the Clean Air Act.”
However, the owners of Southside Recycling continue to defend their actions, asserting that this move isn’t due to environmental racism and the new facility will be “environmentally conscious.” The owners cite the greater area of the plot available on the Southeast Side as being protective, though an elementary school and a high school sit just a half mile from the new site, and the area in which they planned to relocate already suffers from a higher level of contamination.
The planned relocation resulted in a civil rights lawsuit being filed against General Iron, and has attracted the attention of the EPA. Michael Regan, the EPA’s 16^th Administrator, has declared that the Southeast Side of Chicago suffers from environmental injustice, and has asked that the city delay the issuing of a permit for this facility. Hopefully, this is a first step towards halting development of the facility altogether in this location, followed by more protective litigation for over-burdened communities.
Photo Credit: Antonio Lopez

By: Tony Aguilar, Organizing Intern
In constructing his cabinet, President Biden appointed Deb Haaland, a Native American woman and former U.S. representative from New Mexico to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior manages America’s natural resources and Native American relations in Bureaus such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Since Haaland’s confirmation, she has put together a diverse team in the DOI, including other Native American additions like Lawrence Roberts and Heidi Todacheene. Since the colonization of America, Indigenous voices have only been silenced, especially when it came to issues like land management. The appointment of Deb Halaand seems to be a step in the right direction in reversing the contentious history between the American Government and Indigenous communities. 
Before America’s colonization, Indigenous peoples practiced an engagement with nature that was full of reverence and respect for Earth’s natural resources. Many Indigenous cultures view our resources as entities themselves that we have familial relationships with, implying a sense of responsibility to take care of things like water and soil. This attitude toward the natural world is apparent in the way that Indegenous peoples built societies that sustained themselves for generations before Western colonization without depleting the Earth’s resources. Frequent relocation, industrialization, and other land rights infringements have not only kept Indigenous peoples from practicing the same level of sustainability of their ancestors, it has also disproportionately threatened or damaged many of the natural resources that surround or belong to Indigenous lands.  
The United States has yet to achieve a level of sustainability that Indigenous communities once had, but a restructuring of Native American affairs that Deb Haaland is committed to, may allow Indigenous communities the sovereignty and self-determination to keep pollution out of their communities and go back to the practices that built and sustained their communities for so many generations before them. These communities may then even serve as an example to the rest of America of what sustainability really means.
 As a 35th generation New Mexican and member of the Pueblo of Laguna (a Native American tribe in west-central New Mexico), Haaland has spent her career in politics fighting for environmental justice as well as many other Native American Issues. During her time in the House of Representatives, Haaland served as vice chair of the Committee on Natural Resources and also co-sponsored the Environmental Justice for All Act. As the Secretary of the Department of Interior, Haaland understands that Native American communities, along with communities of color more generally, take on most of the burden when it comes to environmental problems and has made it a point to ensure that these communities are being helped. Coming from such a community herself, Haaland serves as a beam of hope to all of the communities that suffer from environmental injustice, especially Native American communities that have not only lost their land, but also much of their culture to colonial industrialization. 
 
Photo credits: United States Department of the Interior