As an intern at the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, I have written several papers on the effects of different chemicals on the environment and on human health. The purpose of these articles is to provide information for chemically impacted communities throughout the country. I am working with community members in East Palestine, Ohio. Their questions led to me writing these papers, however these questions have applications beyond the community in East Palestine, and can be helpful to other chemically impacted communities around the world.
The first of these papers that I wrote was on the burning of lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries, such as those in electric vehicles like Teslas, release several toxic gasses when they catch on fire. In this paper, I discussed what those gasses are, how they affect human health, and what makes them from more common chemicals used in everyday life, such as fluoride in toothpaste. This paper came from questions from residents in East Palestine, however the information shared in this paper represents helpful information for residents in other communities as well. Some communities may live near a facility that produces lithium batteries, where risk from these gasses may be higher during an accident. Some individuals may work with lithium ion batteries on a regular basis, such as car mechanics. These papers serve to help individuals overall, and I’m glad to be making this information available to the public for free.
I’m currently writing about the use of the Affordable Care Act for chemically impacted communities. Within the law of the Affordable Care Act exists Section 1881A, which outlines the use of medicare benefits for individuals exposed to environmental health. I am investigating how this section of the ACA can be utilized for chemically impacted communities, and what the exact process is for utilizing medicare benefits for impacted individuals.
These papers highlight educational health and science information that may benefit communities, especially those working with CHEJ. It is my hope that scientific information can be easily accessible to communities in a digestible manner. Not everyone is a scientist, and for community leaders working to help their communities, they may not be able to read scientific papers. This may be due to not having the capabilities to read papers, since academic research papers are often filled with jargon that can be quite difficult to understand for non-scientists. Another reason is simply time. Reading papers is time consuming, and even if a community leader can read papers, there may be too many tasks that need to be done, limiting the absorption of scientific knowledge, therefore preventing the use of scientific information in helping to benefit communities. This is why it is crucial that we make inclusive science communication, so that community stakeholders can be involved in scientific knowledge without having to be scientists. I write these papers for CHEJ so I can help bridge the gaps between science and the community, and I am grateful for the work of others who do the same.
Environmental justice is in a constant legal battle that, depending on the court’s philosophy, sometimes sees wins for public health safety and but other times faces significant setbacks. March saw a major regression for plastic pollution regulation and the ongoing fight to ban PFAS. On March 21, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – a conservative-leaning court that has obstructed substantial progressive policies over the years – blocked EPA efforts to ban PFAS in plastic containers.
The company behind the lawsuit is Inhance Technology, who specializes in treating plastics. Some of their listed services include “barrier packaging” and “surface technologies,” which they use to make plastics stronger and more durable. Although not explicitly stated on their website, the process by which they treat these plastics includes PFOA, a type of PFAS. PFAS are used in various products for their ability to repel water and oil. These properties allow for the stronger and more durable plastics. However they do not disclose or make it clear to the consumer that they are using a controversial chemical that has been linked in many health studies to various diseases and even death. In fact, Inhance Technologies goes as far as to promote their company as being eco-friendly, stating on their website that they “want to make things better for the world” by reducing plastic. This and other similar statements on the company website make it seem like they are protecting the environment when, in reality, they are contributing to the plastic pollution that endangers everyone’s health – a clear example of greenwashing.
In December 2023, the EPA sent a notice to Inhance Technologies to stop using PFAS in their manufacturing process. In response, they sued the agency. The main debate in the case was if the EPA had the right to put a stop to the process since Inhance had been using PFAS for over 40 years. The EPA argued that it only discovered the usage in 2020 so it should be considered a new process. Ultimately The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Inhance, stating the EPA did not have the right to place a restriction since it was not a new process, even if the EPA just found out about it. However, what if a company never discloses the use of harmful chemicals to the EPA? Using the logic and reasoning of this case, the EPA would be unable to block that process because they didn’t catch it in time. Notedly, the court did not deny the dangers of PFAS to the human body; they only overturned the restriction because the process was not new to Inhance.
What is most frustrating about environmental justice setbacks such as these is that, while the litigation is ongoing, the PFAS, or forever chemicals continue to be manufactured and cause massive pollution. Inhance Technologies argued that they can’t be restricted by the EPA under Section 5 because they have been treating plastics with PFAS for forty years. How much pollution have they added to the environment? How much more will be added by organizations such as these that hide behind a façade of greenwashing and yet contribute to so much of the environmental and human health degradation faced today.
Court cases can take years to win. And during those years, PFAS continues to bioaccumulate within our bodies and environment. So, while immense national-level policies, such as the PFAS ban that the EPA tried to put in place, are extremely important, we also need to focus on individual and local-level change. For example, we must educate ourselves and our communities about the dangers of PFAS and become informed consumers of what plastic-containing products we buy. If we know that a company uses PFAS in its manufacturing process or partners with companies that do, then we need to be mindful of that and boycott those products.
Photo credit : Brittany Greeson for The Washington Post
By Stephen Lester.
It is well understood how dangerous lead is to everyone especially children who are still growing and thus more susceptible to its toxic effects. Scientists have continued to find adverse effects from exposure to lower and lower levels of lead, leading some people to say that there is no known safe level of exposure to lead, especially for children. This evidence continued to grow this month when researchers from Princeton University, the University of Michigan and from a private research group in Cambridge, MA reported that children exposed to lead during the Flint (MI) lead crisis “suffered significant negative effects” on their academic outcome. They further reported that “we find compelling evidence that the FWC [Flint Water Crisis] reduced student math achievement and increased the rate of social needs classification.” Students (over the age of 5) with low socioeconomic status experienced the largest effects on math achievement, with boys suffering the largest effects on special needs classification.
Numerous studies referenced in this report have documented the adverse health effects of lead on children including increased behavioral problems, decreased executive functioning, decreased academic achievement, decreased brain volume, higher rates of crime offending, decreased social mobility and increased anxiety. This study adds to this knowledge and understanding by providing strong evidence that the relatively short exposure to lead in drinking water – about a year and a half – during the Flint Water Crisis had a significant impact on the educational outcomes of school-aged children in Flint.
The authors also discussed the many ways that a crisis such as the FWC impacts a community that goes beyond the chemical exposures. Specifically, they discussed persistent psychological distress and trauma referencing the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the DC sniper attacks among others. They made a convincing argument that “one cannot treat these crises as strictly medical phenomena.” It’s much more complex than that.
Lastly, the authors point out that the societal costs of the Flint Water Crisis which have been estimated to range from 50 to 400 million dollars are based on only the effects of lead exposure. They do not take into effect the impact of the psychological distress and trauma that the community goes through. They conclude that “Our results point toward the broad negative effects of the crisis on children and suggest that existing estimates may substantially underestimate the overall societal cost of the crisis.” They expressed hope that understanding the true costs of events such as Flint Water Crisis might help prevent the kind of thinking that led to the Flint crisis in the first place, a decision to switch the source of the city’s drinking water in order to save money – just 5 to 7 million dollars.
1 A. Reuben, M. L. Elliott, W. C. Abraham, J. Broadbent, R. M. Houts, D. Ireland, A. R. Knodt, R. Poulton, S. Ramrakha, A. R. Hariri, A. Caspi, T. E. Moffitt, Association of childhood lead exposure with MRI measurements of structural brain integrity in midlife. JAMA 324, 1970–1979 (2020).
Since working with the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, I have met and worked with Jami Wallace, President of the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment. I have found working with both Stephen Lester and Jami Wallace rewarding and impactful. As I got to learn about Jami, I also learned more about the tragic derailment and the health and policy issues her and her community have been facing, even a year after the event. I had heard about the EP train derailment in the news when it happened. However, after working with Jami, I’ve quickly realized the gravity of the situation and the prevalence of chemically impacted communities.
My interest in environmental health started from another one of my interests: neuroscience. I’m a student at Tufts University studying biopsychology, and the interactions between the brain and the environment are interesting to me. One week while participating in a journal club, I read a paper on Gulf War Illnesses, which are hypothesized to be caused by chemical exposure to sarin nerve gas on U.S. soldiers during the war. This got me interested in environmental causes of neurological disease. This interest was further fueled by Stephen Lester, after a visit to my university, where he talked about his experience working in Love Canal with Louis Gibbs. It’s a pleasure to now work alongside him.
In my work with Stephen, I create digestible science communication papers for residents in East Palestine, based on scientific research I find online. So far I have written about the environmental and health effects of burning lithium ion electric vehicle batteries, and I am currently writing about the effects of burning semolina, a type of wheat used to make pasta, couscous, and sweet puddings. Lithium batteries and semolina were purported to be in some of the train cars that caught on fire after the derailment, so writing these articles has helped answer questions for the residents of East Palestine about the toxic chemicals involved in their exposure.
For Jami and the residents of East Palestine, I’ve helped gather chemically impacted communities from around the country for the inaugural Chemically Impacted Communities’ Coalition meeting. I did research on chemically impacted communities worldwide, and from my research and reaching out to affected communities, I realized that two things each of these communities had in common was frustration due to a lack of being heard and exhaustion from the work they’ve been doing. After the first successful meeting, Jami, the Unity Council team and I have been working on a mission statement and getting the impacted communities together for a second meeting. However, while Jami seeks the support of other communities, she also fights a battle at home. She’s fighting a battle against corporate greed, which has influenced the government and politics of her area, minimized the real harm done to her community, and acted as a barrier to the work she’s doing for the community. It’s a challenge getting information out to government officials. When President Biden visited 2 weeks ago, even getting a letter out to him proved to be a challenge. But change is being made, even if it is a long process. And Jami and I have learned a lot from each other along the way.
Recently, Toxic Free Future (TFF) released a research report on how much vinyl chloride is transported through the U.S. daily. Vinyl chloride is a carcinogenic chemical used to make PVC plastic products. Over the past year, vinyl chloride has constantly been mentioned in the news, partly due to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February. The toxic burn of vinyl chloride and other hazardous material resulted in the immediate evacuation of residents within a one-mile radius and has plagued the community with fears and uncertainties about their health since then.
Notedly, the Norfolk Southern train derailment was not the only time a vinyl chloride contamination occurred due to a train accident. In 2012, Paulsboro, New Jersey, experienced a similar disaster. In that community, residents also faced exposure to vinyl chloride after a train accident occurred.
TFF set out to quantify how many people live in the vicinity of the trains that carry this toxic material every day. How many people live their day-to-day lives not realizing that the disasters that hit East Palestine and Paulsboro are not some far-away tragedy that couldn’t possibly happen to them but are instead closer to home than they could have ever imagined? TFF’s report highlights the shocking reality that many live near these train tracks where this toxic material is constantly being transported. The study analyzed the train route of OxyVinyls – a company that was involved in both of the train derailments discussed above – because they have the furthest distance between the procurement site, in Texas, and the PVC manufacturing plant, in New Jersey.
Shockingly, TFF’s report found that over three million individuals, of which 670,000 are children, live within a one-mile radius of the train routes carrying this extremely toxic chemical. Over one year, 1.5 billion pounds of the toxic chemical are carried across train tracks. And 36 million pounds of the chemical is being transported at any given point across the entirety of the U.S.
Of course, someone might think to argue, “I don’t live near the train tracks, so this doesn’t affect me.” However, even individuals not directly in the vicinity of the train tracks still experience adverse effects from the production and use of vinyl chloride. The first reason this affects everyone is that vinyl chloride production releases air pollution, which can travel great distances and cause various health issues. The second reason this issue should concern everyone is that vinyl chloride and PVC production releases over three metric tons of greenhouse gas, further exacerbating the climate crisis. Even the extraction process necessary for vinyl chloride is harmful to the environment. Hydrofracking has a variety of environmental contamination concerns and also releases methane – a potent greenhouse gas. Even abandoned fracking wells have been found to emit methane.
So, how do we address this issue? First, advocate your policymakers for stronger railroad regulations so that other accidents like those in East Palestine or Paulsboro do not occur. Second, pressure government action and stronger EPA regulation around vinyl chloride production. And third, vote with your wallet. Do not purchase materials made out of PVC plastic and pressure retail stores, such as the Home Depot, to phase out selling PVC products.
Photo credit: Abigail Bottar / Ideastream Public Media
By Leila Waid.
It’s hard to believe that it has already been one year since the Norfolk Southern train derailed in the small and quiet community of East Palestine, OH. The community members have faced uncertainty and fear of how their health has been impacted by the exposure to toxins, such as vinyl chloride, present at the burn site. Burning vinyl chloride can produce dioxins, a chemical that poses immense danger to human health. Over the year, many residents have spoken out about the health risks they are experiencing, such as increased asthma in their children, skin rashes, bleeding from the ears, and new diagnoses of cancer. Also, residents have pointed out how the train derailment has impacted them financially. One of the residents, Ashley McCollum, talked with ABC News about how she has been displaced from her home for the past year. Unfortunately, Norfolk Southern, who had been paying for her and her family to stay in a hotel, said they would no longer fund her accommodations. Now Ashley and other displaced residents have a hard choice to make – return to the community they believe will make them sick or come up with alternative living arrangements with their own finances.
This harsh abandonment that many residents have experienced feels all the more infuriating when considering how much Norfolk Southern has spent on lobbying. According to Public Citizen, “the company and its subsidiaries spent $2,340,000 lobbying the federal government in 2023 – up 30% from the $1,800,000 it spent the year before.” Interestingly, no new railroad safety legislation was passed by Congress after the Norfolk Southern train derailed. One would imagine that when such a severe accident occurs that threatens the health of thousands of people, the policymakers would immediately work in a bipartisan manner to make sure that such an accident never happens again. Notedly, both the House and the Senate introduced bills to increase railroad safety, but a year later, those bills have not moved forward. House of Representatives member Marcy Kaptur directly connects the lack of action by Congress on the bills to the lobbying being carried out by railroad companies, such as Norfolk Southern.
Without stricter regulation, who knows when and where the next derailment might occur and which American town could be the next East Palestine.
Frustrated by the lack of answers and support, the impacted community in East Palestine created the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment. One of the most recent actions the Council undertook was a “ceremony of solidarity,” an event held on the first anniversary of the train derailment to raise awareness about the suffering the community is still going through. The Council wanted to showcase to the country that what happened in their community could happen anywhere in the country.
The ceremony was conducted in partnership with We Refuse to Die, an environmental justice campaign utilizing art to communicate the message. Artists and activists have a long history of working together effectively to enact change. By moving people emotionally, artists can tap into the feelings and emotions of individuals that motivate them toward change. In this case, the campaign was focused on showcasing that, just because individuals in East Palestine may have been forgotten about by the railroad industry and politicians, they are still here and will continue to fight until they can rebuild what was stolen from them by the explosion.
Planetary health is a term used to define how human activity impacts the environment and, in turn, how those environmental changes impact human health. Utilizing a planetary health framework is essential for environmental health organizing because it uses a holistic approach to understanding the world and our place within it. The Planetary Health approach showcases that protecting our environment is not something we should do because it is simply the right thing, but we need to do it for our preservation and well-being.
The air we breathe is littered with pollution from fossil-fuel industries. Even antibiotic resistance, a major emerging public health threat, has connections to air pollution. For example, a study found that PM2.5 (particulates in the air smaller than a strand of hair) contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Shockingly, the study found that “the magnitude of the contribution of PM2.5 to aggregate antibiotic resistance is greater than that of antibiotic use.”
Our waterways are full of plastics and PFAS, a group of forever chemicals that bioaccumulate in the body. The fish we consume are saturated with methylmercury due to humanmade activity, such as coal mining that dumps excess mercury into the waterways. And we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the environment, which causes warming and a disbalance in our delicate climate system. Interestingly, even the knowledge that we are driving the deterioration of the natural world causes stress and other mental health issues – a phenomenon coined “eco-anxiety.” On the other hand, being in nature does wonders for our mental health, such as decreasing anxiety and depression.
So, what can be done? How can we keep our quality of life, with all our modern conveniences, while understanding that profound changes must be made to preserve the ecological world and our health? Two public health experts, Tong and Bambrick, weigh in on this issue in a peer-reviewed article, in which they provide four suggestions.
According to Tong and Bambrick, we first need to address the root cause of climate change globally and utilize different approaches based on regional and national contexts. Second, we must address environmental justice at all levels, from international to hyper-local. Third, we must understand that the entire world is interconnected, and we live in a “global village.” Our air and waterways do not have national boundaries, and the air pollution on one side of the world can eventually reach your backyard. Nowhere was this more apparent than the summer of 2023 on the east coast of the U.S. when the Canadian wildfire plume traveled south and made the air unbearably smoggy. The fourth, and final, suggestion states that we must take collective action at an international level. After all, these are not issues that one individual or country can tackle. Instead, we need to reimagine our way of life that is focused on being connected to our environment, respecting our limited natural resources, and protecting human health.
Planetary health lays out the vicious cycle that modern humans face. We have built our way of life not in tandem with the natural world but in its exclusion. And as a result, we face the health consequences of those choices.
I’m often asked what it is that I do at CHEJ. As a trained scientist, I provide technical assistance to grassroots community groups. People send me their environmental testing data to review. This data spans chemicals found in their drinking water, the air behind their child’s school or spouse’s factory, or the soil in the park where their children play. They ask me to do this primarily because they want to know what the results mean. But they also believe that if they gather enough information – the “right” information – and put it into the hands of the right decision-makers, they will do the right thing.
So what do you think? True or false? Is information power? Can you solve your environmental problem(s) this way? No, you cannot. By itself, information is not power. It’s not the information but rather what you do with it that makes all the difference in the world. Just gathering data and sharing it no matter how important or impactful will likely not change a bureaucrat’s or a politician’s mind. But if you use the information in a thoughtful and strategic way, whether it’s to educate your community or others, and then to target the bureaucrats and politicians with a set of specific demands, you have a much greater chance to succeed.
At CHEJ, we work directly with community leaders to help them become knowledgeable and proficient in understanding the technical, health, statistical and scientific aspects of chemical exposures. We also work with community leaders to help them understand how to use technical information to achieve their goals and win what their community needs to resolve. What we do includes reviewing testing data; cleanup plans; technologies for treating/disposing of hazardous waste and household garbage; reviewing plans to build new facilities; defining a community-based testing plan that includes where to test, what to test (soil, air, water), what to look for; evaluating a health study completed by a government agency or other entity; and so much more. CHEJ also has more than 50 guidebooks and fact-packs on a wide range of topics that you can use to focus your group on what it needs to be successful.
So don’t get trapped into believing you can win by gathering information, or become frozen into inaction until you gather a bit more information. What really matters is what you do with the information you have and how it strategically fits into your organizing plan.
by Kenia French, CHEJ Communications Intern As a college student studying environmental science, I find myself constantly inundated with terrifying news about my future. The world’s collapsing if we don’t make sweeping change to the structures of our lives by 2030? Great. We’re posed to lose an obscene amount of Earth’s biodiversity in this century? Fun. The ice caps in Greenland are melting at unprecedented rates after July 2019 went on record as the hottest month ever recorded? Amazing.
It can be really hard to stay motivated in a field where every fight feels like an uphill battle. However, working at CHEJ this past summer opened my eyes to environmental justice, and with that an entirely new perspective on motivation, uphill battles and the impending end of modern society as we know it. It’s not that the issues we confront at CHEJ are any easier for the soul to process. Charlie Powell and the people of Northern Birmingham have watched friends and family die and have faced every single roadblock imaginable advocating for the right to live in a community that wouldn’t poison them. The people of Minden, West Virginia have suffered for 30 years in a PCB-contaminated town, and only now is the government beginning to take action that may help their situation change.
Spending my summer working at CHEJ, I was struck everyday by how the work we were doing was having a real, tangible impact on people’s lives. Even more striking is that everything CHEJ has achieved and has helped others to achieve is through grassroots community action.
According to CHEJ, community action is the way: overall, the big institutions that govern our country like stability and not doing work. Even if emission standards exist that are meant to protect communities from toxic pollution and hazardous waste, it doesn’t at all mean that people are actually enforcing these standards. Community action, then, is the way forward in our democracy, a way to get your voice heard and get the law enforcers to pay attention to you and fix your situation in order to shut you up.
CHEJ’s community action philosophy is different from any other that I’ve ever come across, and is defined by two main principles. First, community action must run on a community based approach: in order to be successful, you have to go into a community and understand what their specific issues are and what they want to achieve through community action.
CHEJ’s approach to community action has nuance that I had never considered before. This nuance is that in order for community action to be successful, communities themselves have to be willing to do the legwork and fight for their rights. Lois Gibbs is a realist: she will offer her services to any community that needs help. However, if a community isn’t willing to do the work she knows is necessary to be successful, she’s honest and straightforward and doesn’t waste her time and resources trying to convince them to organize because there are others who would benefit more from her time.
This mindset, that especially when it comes to the environment, time is valuable and should not be wasted, is my biggest takeaway from the summer. It’s what makes CHEJ so effective, because if a bureaucracy is trying to waste Lois’s time, she won’t just sit down and take it, she’ll think of a creative, out of the box solution to get what she wants. More often than not, her solutions work: she’s helped countless communities across the United States to get out of toxic situations.
While Lois and CHEJ’s story is unique, the lessons I’ve learned here have given me a new understanding of how to make things happen in the environmental world. I’ve learned that community action is a powerful tool, but that it’s only going to work if the people involved genuinely want to do the work necessary to see success. If they don’t, don’t waste time trying to convince them of something: move onto a different solution.
I’ve found these lessons immensely comforting as we round the corner into our action deadline for the climate. Yes, it’s an uphill battle, and yes, we need to make revolutionary change to our lifestyles, and no it’s probably not something that can be achieved in a mere decade.
However, we also can’t be afraid to think outside of the box and think of new approaches to the environmental challenges we face, and we can’t be afraid to stray from a conventional approach to change. If people aren’t hearing us, maybe we shouldn’t just yell louder, but we should change the way the message is being delivered.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Reverend Charles Utley in his Office, Augusta, Georgia (Photo by Rev. Utley).
Reverend Charles Utley, born in Waynesboro, GA, is the Associate Director and Environmental Justice Campaign Director at BREDL (Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League). He spent all of his childhood and young adult life in the Hyde Park Community, set next to a toxic waste site in an industrial area of Augusta, GA. When he left for Vietnam in 1966, his parents started organizing their community to improve their neighborhood with The Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee, the oldest organized community according to IRS records. They fought for public water and sewer systems, paved streets and streetlights, spearheaded by Mary L. Utley, Charles Utley‘s mother.
‘It would be years later after all of these necessary things were achieved and my parents were deceased, I succeeded my mother’s role as community president. It was in the mid-1970. We found out that there was contamination in our community from a wood treatment plant (Southern Wood Piedmont Company). From this point on we were faced with cleaning up our community’, Utley writes in our interview.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted many studies in the area that resulted in seeking ways to get the community relocated. After approximately 25 years of community organizing, the Hyde Park Community is now finally being relocated. Reverend Utley helped organizing his community around this very topic.
Any movement has to deal with setbacks from time to time. The Hyde Park Community around Rev. Utley had to fight with constant disagreements of the commissioner concerning the severity of the contamination – even though it had been proven to be contaminated by Brownfield Projects by the EPA. Officials refused to take action for over 30 years. The community had not been notified about any environmental issues in their homes, so they decided to do their own investigation.
‘The local officials did very little in our fight to provide assistance with our efforts; however, the community was able to receive two Brownfields Pilot projects without the assistance of the city of Augusta. Additional assistance came from EPA and ATSDR (Agency of Toxic Substance and Disease Registrar) who provided us with a health study that was conducted by our local health department.
The city engineering department needed a place for a retention pond for water runoff and to assist the residents by using Hyde Park for the project’.
Since the community did not receive any help from the city and has been exposed to contamination for decades, there are many community members who are sick, mainly with cancer related issues and respiratory problems. Even 40 years after Utley took over as community president, issues are found among Hyde Park residents.
‘Our fight is a continuous fight because we have not reached full fruition. There are many residents who have not been compensated for their property who are homeowners. Therefore, the community has not given up but has continued to fight until all of our rights as citizens are received, which also includes long term health care’.
[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Charles Utley talks about what he says is the unfair treatment he has received from the city regarding the purchase of his Hyde Park properties during a news conference in September. Utley was a major player in a decades-long fight to clean up contamination from area industries at the site. (MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE, 09/13/16)
Media coverage was one of the primary ways the community was able to get their story out to the public. The response to the community has been one of the things that caused the relocation to take place. They have received help from local and regional organizations for their plight, which includes the book Polluted Promises by Dr. Melissa Checker, and two documentaries.
Charles Utley is the Associate Director and Environmental Justice Campaign Director at BREDL. He says that BREDL has been a supporter for his community from the beginning of their struggle. They provided assistance with their staff, community programs and workshops. They are involved until the whole community has received the justice it deserves.
For people who want to help their community, he recommends staying focused on the major issue(s) and to understand that if you do nothing, then nothing will be done for your cause. Therefore, each individual in the community must be committed to the cause. The Hyde Park Community needed assistance in getting the word out to other organizations, to tell them that the struggle is not over and that their assistance is still needed. They sent letters to The Richmond County Commissions and Mayor Harry Davis, urging that the issues still needed to be addressed. But the fight goes on as homeowners have yet to receive the just compensation that was promised by officials.
At the end of our interview, Rev. Utley said that the vision that his parents had for the Hyde Park Community was what formed his organizing ground. Community organizing has taught him that success may not come immediately but that being persistent in your work will pay off eventually.
‘Above all, you must put your trust in Jesus Christ’.
Look up BREDL at http://www.bredl.org/ and see if there is a Chapter in your area. Get the help you and your community deserve with organizations like BREDL and CHEJ!
