Environmental Justice Is Social Justice

(June 7, 2020) As I write this, tens if not hundreds of thousands are marching in the streets of American cities. It is Day 12 of protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. That was Memorial Day. And, given the enormous and growing response, that holiday might have to be renamed. My job on today’s show is not so much to talk but to listen as our panel talks about social justice and its connection to environmental justice.

Skip to a specific segment in this podcast.
4:53 Veronica Kyle, Mila K. Marshall, Michael Howard
1:02:18 Frank Corrado, Marcia Lautenan-Raleigh, Leslie Cooperband, Beth Osmund
1:23:59 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio

If you don’t think we’re witnessing a profound moment in world history, you’re not paying attention. Climate change is a fundamental and existential threat. We’re still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a “leader” in the White House who is bereft of the most basic desirable human traits–love, empathy, humility, compassion, civility. Yet the reaction of Americans to all of that is to march and say, “enough.” They are literally risking their lives. And not just because of the potential for violence and infection. As Grist reports,

Over the past half-decade, a wave of bills that criminalize civil disobedience has swept state legislatures across the country — particularly those controlled by Republican lawmakers. According to a new report by PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for First Amendment rights, 116 such bills were proposed in state legislatures between 2015 and 2020. Of those, 23 bills in 15 states became law. While there is no comprehensive count of the number of people arrested and prosecuted under these new laws, activists protesting oil and gas activity have been charged with felonies in Houston and Louisiana.

Logan Square ProtestersThe protesters are, for now and for the most part, peaceful. It’s enough to renew one’s faith in our country.

But it’s just a start, and there’s much work to do. Because this is a show that covers the environment, that’s going to be our focus today. It doesn’t mean that we won’t stray because, as I’ve already said, environmental justice is social justice, and there are a lot of side roads to that conversation.

So it was fascinating to watch emails from various environmental groups roll into my inbox this week. Audubon promoted Black Birder’s Week. There was a Statement of Solidarity from Friends of the Forest Preserves. Garden Communicators International (Garden Comm) stated, “Sow the seeds of love and inclusion.” The National Farmers Union sent out a newsletter (unfortunately without a web version) with the subject line, “How to Fight Racism in Agriculture.” Yale Climate Connections, whose reports we run on this show, sent out a newsletter with the subject line, “Black Lives Matter.”

Yes, they do.

Unfortunately, too often they have not mattered enough to be worthy of clean air and water. If you want to do a deep dive into the issue of environmental justice, take a look at this compilation from The New York Times titled “Read Up on the Links Between Racism and the Environment.

Dany Sigwalt, a co-executive director of an umbrella group of activist organizations called Power Shift Network, argued in an essay published on Medium that “the way that we win on mitigating climate change is to enforce government accountability to its citizens and right now, that means fighting for justice for George Floyd.”

The Twitter list called Green Voices of Color, curated by the writer, Mary Annaïse Heglar, is a good place to find writings by people of color.

The marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, writing in the Washington Post this week, urged her white colleagues in the climate movement to challenge the racial inequality intertwined with the climate crisis. “I need you to step up,” she wrote. “Please. Because I am exhausted.”

And that’s just scratching the surface of that one article.

Inside Climate News writes on how traditionally white environmental organizations are becoming woke.

Patrick Houston, climate and inequality campaigns organizer for New York Communities for Change, said he believes the broader climate movement is “becoming much more open to listening and understanding the struggles of the black community” by connecting “overt racism and violence” with “overlooked racism” stemming from proximity to power plants and other fossil fuel infrastructure.

A Daily Kos story echoes that sentiment.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization and co-chair of the national Climate Justice Alliance, told ICN’s reporters that she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence an essential element of her climate crisis activism. Since “big green” eco-organizations have used the climate justice narrative without necessarily making it a priority of their agendas, Yeampierre says they should take direction from Black Lives Matter organizers in this matter. 

Steve Horn from The Real News Network drops the gloves and confronts the often disturbing history of environmental groups when it comes to America’s “original sin.”

Built on the backs of enslaved people from the African continent and on the conquest of Native lands, this legacy has always been a touchy topic for U.S. climate movements. That’s because the country’s professionally funded environmental movement is overwhelmingly white, and environmental conservation itself in the U.S. has its roots in ugly racism. Yet with thousands of people in the streets protesting, led by a genuine upswell of grassroots fury, professional climate groups have cautiously weighed in.

Yale Environment 360 (not the same as Yale Climate Connections), connects the dots to the COVID-19 pandemic in an interview with

There’s a link between race and class in this country. In many communities of color, industrial developments are seen as economic opportunities. So, you are bringing in these industries that may provide jobs, but what you get instead is the pollution that is produced. And so, there’s a cost/benefit analysis that doesn’t really look at the true costs of, say, bringing a power plant into a community. The true cost-accounting of bringing a highway into a community, or a landfill, a refinery, a factory, a chemical facility, or a paper mill. What happens is you have these environmental externalities, the pollution impacts, from the facility. And then, you have the health impacts. We have a lot of black and brown communities, a lot of Native American communities, a lot of immigrant communities that are basically sacrifice zones because they are the dumping grounds for these pollution-intensive facilities.

One thing that Covid-19 has done, it has made a lot of populations we made invisible, visible. Nursing home populations. The meatpacking industry. Prisons. Communities impacted by environmental injustice. These are communities that we’ve thrown away. We’ve made them invisible, but Covid-19 has made them visible.

To be sure, many other groups and publications have drawn the connection between chronic respiratory illnesses and the coronavirus pandemic. Which brings us to Chicago and today’s show. It has been eight years since the Crawford and Fisk Coal plants were shut down. The Crawford plant was/is adjacent to the Little Village neighborhood. And it was Kim Wasserman and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization who led the fight to get those pollution-spewing operations finally shut down.

But just this spring, like Glenn Close rising from the bathtub in the film Fatal Attraction, the shuttered plant again wreaked havoc on Little Village. The demolition of one of the smokestacks unleashed a cloud of dust that blanketed the neighborhood–in the midst of a respiratory pandemic, no less.

Wasserman, who works to track environmental injustices on the South Side, said she found out the developer planned to blow up the smokestack at 11 p.m. Thursday. It was scheduled for 8 a.m. Saturday; she immediately called on Lightfoot to halt the demolition.

The city’s Department of Public Health and Department of Buildings had quietly issued permits for the demolition to Hilco Redovelopment Partners, the developer that owns the old coal plant. The site being redeveloped into a 1-million-square-foot distribution center.

There was no public meeting to warn neighbors. When Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd) learned about the planned implosion, he asked Hilco to notify neighbors via letters in English and Spanish. Those notices were mailed earlier this week, Hilco spokeswoman Julia Sznewajs said.

Rodriguez did not send his own notice to neighbors.

If you’re wondering if this is environmental justice, it is not. And as recently as Friday, tempers flared at the site as protesters blocked Pulaski Avenue. They are attempting to stop Hilco Redevelopment Partners from building a 1-million square foot warehouse for Target that would bring hundreds of new diesel trucks to the area.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, someone once said. I could write much, much more about environmental justice and injustice, but I don’t have the time or energy. So let’s introduce today’s panel.

Kim Wasserman is the Executive Director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), where she has worked since 1998. Mrs. Wasserman is Chair of the Illinois Commission on Environmental Justice. In 2013, Mrs. Wasserman was the recipient of the Goldman Prize for North America. Her biggest accomplishment to date is raising three-community organizers aged 18, 11, and 8.

Veronica Kyle is Statewide Outreach Director for Faith in Place. Veronica joined the Faith in Place staff in August 2008. Previously, she lived and worked for twelve years in the Caribbean and Southern Africa for a faith-based organization in the areas of social justice and development. Veronica was a 2013 Audubon/Toyota Green Fellow and a 2014 Northern America Association of Environmental Educators Fellow. She is currently serving a 4th term as an appointed Environmental Justice Commissioner for the State of Illinois.

With more than 10 years of work in the environmental sector, Mila K. Marshall works on sustainable urban food systems and currently teaches cannabis courses at Olive-Harvey Community College. Mila focuses on communicating science with various audiences through working with Environmentalists of Color and her passion project Living Chicago. She is a green entrepreneur and a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Michael Howard is a community leader and CEO of Eden Place Nature Center in Chicago’s Fuller Park neighborhood. Eden Place provides opportunities for south side residents and children to interact with animals and till the soil of vegetable gardens. 20 years after its initial opening, Eden Place remains dedicated to growing opportunities for learning, recreation, health, and employment in areas of nature conservation and urban agriculture. It has received the EPA Native Prairie Award and was designated by Illinois Governor Quinn as the Monarch Butterfly Learning Center for Illinois.

We still want you to Keep Eating Healthy

A short two months ago (which seems like two years ago), we started the Keep Eating Healthy campaign on The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki. The idea was that we wanted to help small farms and food purveyors weather the COVID-19 crisis. We would help them find customers and they, in turn, would pay us what they could.

That first day, we welcomed Jody Osmund from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm CSA. As he explained,

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a mutually beneficial relationship between eaters and farmers. You know where your food is produced and how the animals are cared for. We have a business model that lets us plan for the future. Cedar Valley Sustainable was Chicago’s first Meat CSA and we pride ourselves on being the best.

You can purchase a monthly share of beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. Delivery locations are throughout the city and suburbs have continued during the pandemic with masks and social distancing measures for everyone’s well being. And, they’ve adapted to the new reality by doing some a la carte orders.

We also said hello to Wes Jarrell and Leslie Cooperband from Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery. Here’s their story.

In 2003, they moved from an urban and academic life in Madison, Wisconsin to rural Champaign-Urbana Illinois. That first season, they began to transform their land from cash grain agriculture to perennial production with a lush cover crop of buckwheat. In 2004, they planted over 350 fruit trees and 600 berry plants AND purchased their first four Nubian goats (three does and one buck).

During the spring, we watched them report on their 110 goats on the farm and the relentless rains that have made it difficult to plant.

If you recognize the name Marcia Lautenan-Raleigh, it’s because she was one of the guests on our Virtual Chicago Flower & Garden Show on March 22. Her business called the Backyard Patch Herbs and she features soup, bread and herbal tea mixes. All are locally grown and they’re chemical free. There’s no gluten, no salt, and no preservatives. They even provide recipes and other information on their website.

Marcia obviously knows her stuff. She says that her programs have been listed as a “Best of the Best” in the Northern Illinois Library Association. She is also a regular contributor to The Essential Herbal Magazine since 2008. To find out more about her 20 years of herb gardening experience, check out her blog.

Joe's BluesThe latest addition to the campaign is Joe’s Blues, near South Haven, Michigan. In case you haven’t figured it out, they specialize in blueberries. They bring some of Michigan’s sweetest organic blueberries – frozen and fresh – to customers and markets throughout the Chicago Metro area. Joe’s is one of the few blueberry farms in our area  that uses organic growing practices. It’s a part of Mos Funnel Farms, a farm started ten years ago by Joe Corrado and named for a jazz outfit he belongs to. A father-son – or “son-father,” as Frank put it – operation on old property, filled with 61-year-old Jersey blueberry bushes, it’s a thriving, all-natural blueberry farm. Joe’s Blues also sells zero and low sugar blueberry preserves, pure dried berries, 35% cream ice cream,  moisturizing soap and blueberry vinegar.

Okay, stick a fork in a blueberry and hand it to me. I’m done here.