Environmental Justice News and Actions

I'm back in Ohio looking forward to a summer of writing, tweaking my History of Health Care course for the Sarah Lawrence College Health Advocacy Program and clearing vast amounts of undergrowth in my woods (my woods! I hadn't thought about it this way until now) as construction continues on my land.  I will also be tracking EJ developments. 

Potential Fracking Areas in OH (ecowatch.org)

As many of you know, Ohio passed one of the most regressive pieces of environmental legislation in it's recent worst in the country Fracking law, allowing health and safety loopholes, the gas industry will pay very little and, according to EcoWatch.org "Doctors will be prevented from talking openly about the sickness they see in their patients, and the gas industry will keep profits flowing out of our communities."

Marie Gunnoe Contemplates A Mountaintop Removal Site (ohvec.org)

Mountaintop Removal is the topic at the Natural Resources  Committee of the House of Representatives.  OVEC's Marie Gunnoe is testifying before a rather hostile Republican committee.  This is in anticipation of the upcoming End Mountaintop Removal Week in DC.  Be prepared to call your Senators and Representatives on June 6. 

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Article - Carried Away - in Obit Magazine

Sunday is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in the Gulf region.  I was a fledging MFA student, a middle aged colored lady going back to school to focus on the one thing I loved but hadn't been able to give myself over to, my writing.  I had obligations you know.  Community organizing, ill and elderly parents, responsibilities that seemed to require my attention before I could attend to my literary life.

So you can imagine my frustration when Katrina hit, when those images of people on rooftops came streaming through.  I wanted to go there, to help.  School again seemed so meaningless. But I stayed at Sarah Lawrence College and began writing about Hurricane Katrina and the dispossession of my people in general.

The very first thing I wrote at SLC, Carried Away, is featured in today's edition of Obit Magazine.  

My classmates wondered if I wrote about any thing other than death and despair. I laughed.  But you can imagine my pleasure to be associated with Obit Magazine where death is a normal part of life.

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Come back in the next few days as I reflect back on Katrina/Rita and meet folks fighting to protect the environment from extractive industries, climate change and general neglect.

The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Department, Part 2

This is what happened next:

We left the Sonic Drive In having lost our appetites.  We went back to the retreat center to find the most aggressive of the cops leaving the parking lot in front of our humble bunk house.  Most of the students seemed fairly upset -- wigged out might be a more apt description.  I knew I had to call the college and I knew we had to leave the retreat center.  It was fairly isolated.  I didn't expect anyone would try to do physical harm to us but remembered all the ways emotional distress could be inflicted when someone had decided a boundary had been crossed.

So we packed a few things and left for the safety of Sulphur and real, adult queen size beds. Mossville folk kept checking in with us, making sure we were ok.  They had tried to mount a rescue mission, complete with video camera to document our treatment.  We were allowed to leave before they could get to us.  Their motives were two fold -- to protect us and to use our treatment for organizing.  And that is how it should be.  We had been invited in, to join Mossville Environmental Action Now in their struggle.  Police harassment comes with the environmental justice organizing territory.  The refineries are an important part of the local, state and regional economy.  Their products are a key indicator in our nation's gross domestic product and cost of living indicator.  Their profits are astronomical.  Grassroots communities from many countries and on every continent have tried to force oil companies to clean up their act (and the air and the water and the soil)  and those companies have successfully resisted most of their efforts. Local officials have a vested interest to aid that resistance.  MEAN knew this, and now we knew it too.

There wasn't time to feel sorry for ourselves but we did take precautions.  No more photography on PPG Road.  We took extra care to make sure our interview teams were structured in ways that would not expose anyone to scrutiny or harassment.  We had to be on our way back to Sulphur before dark.

But no worries.  On our last day two interview teams still managed to get kicked out of a trailer park. 

Affliction to Others, Affliction to Self

I am a full moon cycle behind on the study part of the Integrated Study Practice Program unit on Wisdom.  But that's ok.  I am in Mossville, LA this week, with 8 grad students from Sarah Lawrence College Graduate Health Advocacy Program, and right intention (for the full moon period that began  Feb. 28) seems particularly important.

We are here to assist Mossville Environmental Action Now (MEAN) assess the health care needs of a community made very ill by the toxins spewing from the stacks and "accidental" releases of the 40+ refineries and chemical processing plants within their parish (county).  Thirteen of these plants are within a 1/2 mile of Mossville.  CONOCO, the largest, is right in their backyard, the dangerous and irresponsible neighbor unresponsive to the demands of common decency not to mention justice.

I've written about MEAN before.  You can read about their situation in their own words as well.  But this morning as the sun is just coming up over the bayous and smoke stacks of southwest Louisiana I am conscious of the affliction everyone suffers down here, whether one is an environmentalist or not, whether one is black, white or brown, regardless of income, despite denial and evasion.  The air (and probably the water) and soil are killing people. 

Even though I live in a state and a region where I don't feel the air stinging my eyes, burning my throat, calling up all kinds of alarm in my immune system; even though I get to leave here at the end of the week, this affliction is my permanent affliction as well.  And yours.  Right intention for now is to know the affliction of others is affliction of self.  Engaging in wholesome actions that limit or relieve that affliction -- seeking environmental justice, working compassionately for change -- will yield results that benefit all of us.  If not in our lifetime then in the lives of our children.