As movements for racial and environmental justice escalate across the US, these struggles – which, as groups like the National Black Environmental Justice Network point out, must be seen as one – have a common foe: the fossil fuel industry. The same companies that drive environmental racism in Black and Brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution also fund police power in cities that stretch from Houston and Detroit to New Orleans and Salt Lake City. Read more.
Creative Commons Photos: Shell Gas Station (Mike Mozart); Chase (longislandwins); Chevron (Roo Reynolds); Wells Fargo (Mike Mozart); BlackRock (Thomas Hawk)
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Ms. Bradshaw, an environmental justice advocate, is the first Black woman to be nominated for the Senate by a major party in Tennessee. “Working people showed that my viability was different,” she said. Read more.
Photo from Associated Press
The 2019 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) preliminary dataset contains data about chemical releases, waste management and pollution prevention activities that took place during 2019 at more than 20,000 federal and industrial facilities across the country. Read more.
Photo: EPA
“Liberty Utilities says it will not build the proposed Granite Bridge natural gas pipeline in Southern New Hampshire, after finding a cheaper way to serve new customers by using existing infrastructure.” Read more.
Photo credit: 350 NEW HAMPSHIRE
“The fossil fuel industry has really dug in and is using its enormous financial clout and its influence in the federal courts to resist and openly attack this citizens’ movement and the advocates and lawyers who are on the frontlines.” Read more.
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What Racism Smells Like
“People are realizing that there is intentional siting of these massive industrial edifices in communities that are predominantly Black and brown and an intentional disregard for community needs wrapped up in the tax exemptions.” Read more.
Photo: Brian W. Fraser for The Intercept
“The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the challenges caused by racial disparities within Nevada’s communities, especially in the form of virus and environmental exposure risks, and through all major stages of health care.” Read more.
Photo courtesy of the Governor’s Office
Survivors of the world’s first atomic bombing gathered in diminished numbers near an iconic, blasted dome Thursday to mark the attack’s 75th anniversary, many of them urging the world, and their own government, to do more to ban nuclear weapons. Read more.
Michigan officials were frustrated waiting on the federal government to adopt health-protecting standards for the nonstick, so-called “forever chemicals” that have become a leading emerging contaminant in the state and across the country. So they made their own. Michigan’s new standards for seven per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) compounds in drinking water — some of the toughest, most comprehensive standards on the chemicals anywhere in the country — took effect Monday. The new rules “are practical, science-driven and, most importantly, protective of public health.” Read more.
Photo by: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press
Pollution is disproportionately killing Black Americans. Hazardous waste facilities are 75% more likely to be in close proximity to the homes of African-Americans than other racial groups. Grassroots environmental justice groups are taking a stand against these issues of pollution and environmental racism and are making a huge impact. Read More
Photo by: Matt Rourke—AP