I FOUND OUT THAT “WE”/”OUR GRANDVIEW” NEIGHBORHOOD, AND “CLOSED DOWN “CARVER TERRACE” NEIGHBORHOOD, AND PORTIONS OF “SUNSET” AND “EYLAU” AND “MACEDONIA” AND “OTHERS” ACROSS THE NATION WERE “BUILT” UPON “TOXIC/NASTY/POISON/CANCER-CAUSING/GENETICALLY-ALTERING-MANY ILLNESSES-CAUSING LANDFILLS AND OR “FACTORIES SPEWING POISONS INTO OUR BREATHING, OUR GROUND SOILS AND OUR WATERS AND WE ATE FISH FROM THESE “TOXIC NASTY PONDS AND CREEKS” AND WE SWAN IN THEM AND BATHED IN THEM!! ANDD SOO: WHEN MEDICAL/HEALTH PROFESSIONSLS SEEM TO ALL SAY THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY “WE”/”U.S.”/”OUR PEOPLE OF COLOR(S) AND POOR” PEOPLE DIE MORE EASILY AND HAVE MORE CRITICAL MEDICAL ISSUES: MAYBE ITS JUST ME: BUT; “Y’ALL, A ROCKET SCIENTIST” MAYBE CAN’T FIGURE THESE THINGS OUT–BUUUTTT, EVEN A “CHILD”, OF “tiny/little/puny/petty” BRAIN LIKE MINE CAN SEE THESE THINGS… ITS “NOT REALLY THAT DIFFICULT/HARD” TO SEE, AND UNDERSTAND”!!! ITS VERY, VERY “LOGICAL” AND WE WON’T EVEN GET INTO THE “POISONS OF LEAD PILES AND LACK OF PROPER WATER SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED STATED OF THE BORG=CALLED USA..WE CAN DISCUSS THOSE IN ANOTHER ARTICLE/STORY…
MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN I DECIDED TO WRITE ABOUT THE “TRUE/TRUTHS/HISTORIES” OF HOW “ALL THE NASTY TOXIC POISONS AND BASICALLY “REAL/TRUE/ALWAYS PUMPING OUT THE DIRTY/NASTY STUFF: AND I DECIDED TO “WRITE AND HIDE STUFF IN PLAIN READING/ILLUSTRATED SIGHT/SITES” WITHIN MY SCI/FI STORIES AND CHILDREN STORIES (AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003VPV7NU)WWEELLL, AS I RESEARCHED AND STUDIED THE “NOT-IN-OUR/MY-NEIGHBORHOOD(S)” AND THE “MAPS” ALL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES…LONG BEFORE MY RESEARCH AND STUDIES: WAS/WERE OTHERS: PLEASE MEET AND LEARN ABOUT Dollie Burwell
NOW; DOLLIE WAS ALREADY FIGHTING THE “FIGHTS THAT I WAS ALSO BY THEN: BUT I DID NOT PROTEST/PUBLICLY AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL AND I’M 64 THESE DAYS. …WHY?? BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT THE “SATANIC/DEMONIC/HATERS/DISCRIMINATORS” SIMPLY “WAIT-OUT PROTESTORS” AND USUALLY ALLOWS THE “PUBLICITY TO JUST DIE DOWN AND OR GET TOO SMALL TO BOTHER THEM” BUT, DOLLIE AND OTHER PROTESTORS, LIKE THE LATE/GREAT DR, M.L. KING, JR. AND “MALCOLM X” AND “ROSA PARKS” AND THE LATE GREAT CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS, AND COUNTLESS OTHERS, TOO MANY FOR THIS ARTICLE… WE ALL HAVE OUR METHODS AND WAYS, AND IT ALL WORKS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY AND PEOPLE OF COLOR(S) WORLD WIDE.
https://sdvoice.info/dollie-burwell-environmental-justice/
As the EPA introduces environmental justice office, the ‘mother of the movement’ remembers the Black women who led the battle
As the EPA introduces the environmental justice office, we take a moment to honor Dollie Burwell, the mother of the U.S. Environmental justice movement.
Sep 29, 2022
Protestors on the road to the Warren County Landfill in Afton, North Carolina, in September 1982 (Photo: UNC LIBRARIES).
By Jessica Kutz, The 19th
When Dollie Burwell, now 74, reflects back on the Warren County protests, she thinks about the Black women who led and supported the protesters.
For six weeks in 1982, Burwell and hundreds of others from her predominantly Black North Carolina community marched to block trucks from bringing in soil contaminated with PCBs, a known carcinogen, to a nearby landfill. Burwell, who was one of the leaders of the protests, had approached her congregation at the Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church about getting involved in the effort and to guide the work in a civil and nonviolent way.
“And so, in the tradition of the Black church, you have a lot of Black women who are leaders,” she said. Black women became very involved in the protests. Many were arrested. Others played a role in supporting the protesters.
“That’s what I’ve been reflecting on,” Burwell said. “Those Black women who fed us, who got up early in the morning and came out at the Coley Spring Baptist Church and cooked food to bring to the marches.”
It’s what kept Burwell, a mother of two, and other residents marching. Burwell was arrested five times during that period for her activism. Even her 8-year-old daughter was arrested once while participating in the marches.
While the community lost the fight against the landfill — the Environmental Protection Agency had approved the permit in 1979 and lawsuits filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) failed — the battle helped birth a nationwide movement. Awareness spread around the country that toxic landfills were being placed in predominantly Black and poor communities.
In her years of activism, Burwell became known as the “mother of the movement” — a leading force behind the idea that all communities have a right to a safe and healthy environment. In the succeeding decades, other women — and women of color, in particular — have fought against landfills, petrochemical facilities and fracking operations.
Many of the people who spearheaded the movement saw how far their cries have reached on Saturday, when Michael Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, came to Warren County and announced the creation of a new Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights office at the federal agency.
The new office will include over 200 EPA staff members, both at the agency’s headquarters and in the 10 regional EPA offices across the country. Staff will both bolster Title VI compliance, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, and help communities access the $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act dedicated to a climate and environmental justice block grant program.
“This new elevation of this office will provide the structure that we need internally, not just on the enforcement side,” said EPA administrator Michael Regan in an interview on Friday. ‘[It will provide] the assurance that as we develop all of our regulations, all of our policies, contracts and procurements, [that] every single thing we do at EPA has an infusion of environmental justice, equity and civil rights.”
For Burwell, who attended the announcement, it felt like a full-circle moment.
At the time of the landfill decision, Warren County residents thought the EPA would protect the community from the toxic waste. “A lot of people were disappointed when the EPA allowed the state to put in the landfill,” she said. “And so 40 years later, having the EPA come to Warren County and recognize the birthplace of the environmental justice movement is a big deal to us, it is a really big deal to us.”
Black women like Burwell have played a key role in shaping the fight for environmental justice from a grassroots level all the way up to how federal agencies are addressing the issue.
“I’ve been on the ground with Catherine Flowers in Alabama, spent time with Peggy Shepard in New York and Dr. Beverly Wright in Louisiana,” Regan said. “We learned a lot from the work that they have been doing over the past 30 to 40 years. And that has been integrated into our thinking and while we are able to be where we are today.”
Flowers is known for her fight to bring attention to the lack of wastewater treatment facilities in rural Alabama; Shepard is the co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, which fights for environmental health protections both in New York and nationally; Wright is an environmental justice scholar who has been studying the impacts of petrochemical plants on Louisiana, in a part of the state known as Cancer Alley.
All three of these women also sit on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, created by the Biden administration to provide recommendations on how to enact policies that address environmental injustice.
“We have a very strong leadership team that is demonstrative of those who have been a part of this movement for a long period of time,” Regan said. “I believe that with these strong women leaders at the table, in a position to make decisions, we’re going to have some very strong solutions for our community.”
The announcement is one of several environmental justice initiatives announced by the Biden administration since last year that signal a shift in how the federal government views and addresses concerns of environmental racism, or the disproportionate placement of polluting industries in communities of color.
Eric Jantz, senior staff attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, a law firm that helps environmental justice communities fight industries in New Mexico, called the announcement encouraging. “I have noticed that things are starting to change over the last year [at the EPA]. It’s not dramatic or seismic changes, but there are changes.”
Over the years the EPA has faced criticism for not investigating civil rights complaints in an urgent manner, usually taking years to close an investigation. “The civil rights aspect of EPA has been historically an afterthought at best,” Jantz said. “There’s never really been aggressive enforcement.” But, he added the new office signals a greater commitment to enforcing civil rights protections.
Burwell said she sees the announcement as another stepping stone toward achieving environmental justice.
“I know that we are still in this fight, and that we’ve got a long way to go,” she said. “When you are fighting a war you win a few battles … I am so excited that the EPA has recognized the work and the sacrifice of Warren County and chose it to make this announcement and I recognize that the struggle is not over for environmental justice.”
“I wish that it had been done sooner. I’m thankful that it is being done now.”
Y’ALL SHOULD ALSO READ AND RESEARCH: https://www.energy.gov/lm/services/environmental-justice/environmental-justice-history
Environmental Justice History
Office ofLegacy Management
- Office of Legacy Management
- Environmental Justice History
The exact start of the environmental justice movement in America is not clear. Local groups have complained about unwanted land uses for decades. Prior to the early eighties, these local protests were considered isolated and protesting communities were not associated with other communities in similar situations.
This isolated protesting all changed in the early 1980’s and the environmental justice movement became a national social and racial protest that galvanized communities across the country seeking social justice and environmental protection. The initial environmental justice spark sprang from a Warren County, North Carolina, protest. In 1982, a small, predominately African-American community was designated to host a hazardous waste landfill. This landfill would accept PCB-contaminated soil that resulted from illegal dumping of toxic waste along roadways. After removing the contaminated soil, the state of North Carolina considered a number of potential sites to host the landfill, but ultimately settled on this small African-American community.
In response to the state’s decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others staged a massive protest. More than 500 protesters were arrested, including Dr. Benjamin F, Chavis, Jr., from the United Church of Christ, and Delegate Walter Fauntroy, then a member of the United States House of Representatives from the District of Columbia. While the Warren County protest failed to prevent the siting of the disposal facility, it did provide a national start to the environmental justice movement.
Following the Warren County protest, people in poor minority communities created groups to fight environmental burdens they claimed:
- Resulted from being targeted by industry for activities that threaten the environment (e.g., use, storage, and disposal of toxic chemicals); and,
- Produced high rates of environmental illness.
While local protests decreased such threats to some communities, the groups realized another effective way to prevent harmful environmental impacts was to develop a loose, national, multicultural coalition of such community groups to collectively speak out for environmental justice and to challenge others with similar interests to also speak out.
The Warren county residents presented feelings similar to many other residents in small, low-income, and minority communities across the country. The common feeling was that these communities were targeted based on their demographics. They all felt that but for their race and economic status, their communities would not have been designated to host a hazardous waste disposal facility. Furthermore, they felt a lack of power to defeat siting decisions and would be constant repositories for waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities.
The Warren County protest and the emerging environmental justice movement served as the impetus for a number of studies designed to measure the connection between race and hazardous waste-siting decisions. Delegate Fauntroy asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to review hazardous waste siting decisions in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 4. This region includes the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee—states with a high proportion of minority residents. The GAO conducted a study and found that there are four hazardous waste landfills in Region VI’s eight states. Blacks make up the majority of the population in three of the communities where the landfills are located. At least 26 percent of the population in all four communities have incomes below the poverty level and most of the population is Black.
Another study that sprang from the Warren County protest is Toxic Waste and Race, a 1987 United Church of Christ study that examined the relationship between waste siting decisions in the United States and race. That study concluded that race was the most significant factor in siting hazardous waste facilities, and that three out of every five African Americans and Hispanics live in a community housing toxic waste sites.
Critics to both studies have presented arguments supporting different conclusions for waste siting decisions. Some argue that the cost of land and favorable business climates are greater predictors of waste siting decisions. Others have argued that minority and low-income residents have moved into neighborhoods hosting a waste facility due to the cheap cost of land. Regardless to the reason, a clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little, if any, power to remedy their dilemma. Correct or incorrect, this is the position from which many environmental justice activists make their environmental justice decisions.
Another key event in the history of environmental justice is the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991. Representatives from hundreds of communities across the country came together in Washington, DC, to focus national attention on what they perceived as a national problem—targeting minority communities for hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. While many of the representatives had by now become familiar with struggles similar to their own in other communities, this summit was the first attempt to convene a large number of communities together to discuss their common interests and to seek a common solution.
One of the outcomes of the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Summit was a consensus document called the Principles of Environmental Justice. This set of principles is the product of a 4-day effort to get hundreds of delegates from various parts of the country, with different and sometimes competing interests, to reach common agreement on a number of issues. The Principles and the Summit laid out a process for maintaining communication and growing this new environmental justice movement as a national matter.
The Federal Government Responds
In 1992, the environmental justice activities around the country led to a call by President George Bush Sr. for the establishment of an Environmental Equity Working Group, headed by EPA Administrator William Reilly, and the initiation of federally sponsored meetings on environmental justice with community leaders to seek solutions.
In 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. The executive order directed the federal government to make environmental justice a part of the federal decision-making process. In addition, it focused attention on the health and environmental conditions in minority, tribal, and low-income communities with the goal of achieving environmental justice and fostering nondiscrimination in programs that substantially affect human health or the environment. Under this Order, federal agencies were directed to make environmental justice an integral part of their missions and to establish an environmental justice strategy. Specifically the Order directed the federal agencies to:
- Make achieving environmental justice part of its mission to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, by identifying and addressing, as appropriate high and adverse human health of environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on minority, low-income and tribal communities.
- Develop an environmental justice strategy that lists programs, policies, planning and public participation processes, enforcement and/or rulemakings related to human health or the environment that should be revised to (1) promote enforcement of all health and environmental statutes in areas with minority populations and low-income populations; (2) ensure greater public participation; (3) improve research and data collection relating to the health of and environment of minority populations and low-income populations; and (4) identify differential patterns of consumption of natural resources among minority populations.
- Include in the Strategy, where appropriate, a timetable for undertaking identified revisions and consideration of economic and social implications of the revisions.
THAT’S MY STORY, AND I’M STICKING TO IT, SO HELP ME GOD!
