June 14 2004
On the morning of June 14th, 2004, the delegation of South African Environmental Justice activists arrived at New York City’s JFK airport. groundwork USA’s new coordinator, Toussaint Losier, greeted the delegation and transported them to New Brunswick, New Jersey. After settling in, the delegation met with Valorie Caffee, the director of organizing for the New Jersey Work Environmental Council, a statewide alliance of labor and environmental groups. After describing the NJWEC’s history and organizing philosophy, Valorie Caffee brought the delegation to the Northern New Jersey town of Linden.
(L-R: Nic Nel, Llewellyn Leonard, Sajitha Khan)
Local activist and historian Beatrice Bernzott took the delegation of on a tour of a number of the industrial and waste disposal sites that contribute to the environmental problems that this community faces.
On a road located between the General Motors factory and the power plant, Mrs. Bernzott described the organizing strategies employed by activists to challenge not only local industries but also a municipal government that repeatedly placed the interest of corporate industries over those of the Linden community.
Though shocked by the challenges facing those in Linden, the delegation was impressed that the American communities had only to press industries to meet set regulations and laws.
At the union hall of the United Autoworkers union Local 595, Linden community members shared a meal with the South African activists and discussed the similarities and differences between their respective struggles. Sajida Khan of South Durban was particularly interested in newly created office of environmental justice in the New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency. This office was created by executive order, following a successful campaign led by the NJWEC and other organizations. This order mandates that all sectors of government operate as problem-solvers on EJ issues and charges this office with examining the impact of industrial pollution on community’s like Linden.
Following the meal, the members of the delegation gave a short presentation of their interests and concerns. Sajitha Khan described her efforts to prevent the expansion of a dump site located in a residential area. Nic Nell recounted how lax government regulation allowed a landfill located near his property to grow far beyond its capacity. Llewellyn Leonard discussed his efforts to “green” hospitals by decreasing the incineration of hazardous materials in hospitals in southern Africa. The delegation also heard from representatives from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionist, the Teamsters Union, and Ms. Ann Parker, a resident of a nearby town, who described the various forms of protests used by community members to block the incinerator’s construction.
June 15 2004
(L-R: Lewellyn Leonard, Michelle Garcia, Anna Baptista, Toussaint Losier, Sajitha Khan, Nic Nel)
We visited the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) based in Newark, New Jersey. Since 1969, the ICC has developed as a community-based organization originally helping to connect residents to social services and child care and has recently expanded to engage with environmental justice issues. The delegation was surprised to learn that roughly eighty percent of the Ironbound community’s population is foreign-born, with many immigrants coming from Spain and Porturgal. As the third oldest city in the U.S. and an early hub of industrial activity, this “iron bound” community is burdened both by this history of pollution and present day consequences of poor city planning.
Michelle Garcia, the ICC’s Environmental Justice Coordinator and Anna Baptista led a toxic tour of the Ironbound. They described how the state’s plan to construct a trash incinerator in each county disproportionally affected less affluent counties and communities of color. In the Ironbound, the state constructed the third largest domestic waste incinerator on the Eastern seaboard, which processes up to 70,000 tons of waste a month, some of it as far away as New York City. Because of lax regulations, operators have been able to increase the amount of mercury that this incinerator emits.
The ICC has begun to move towards a more proactive approach in dealing with issues of industrial pollution. By polling residents about how they would like their neighborhood to look, Michelle Garcia, Anna Baptista, and others have been able to develop a community plan that reflects their priorities, including relocation of heavy industries, close proximity of light industries, and expansion of what little green space already exists. Anna Baptista will be working with the ICC to monitor the air quality of the emissions from facilities like this incinerator.
We also visited the Passaic River, a superfund site that Michelle Garcia described as one of the most polluted rivers in the county and no longer navigatable because of sediments from industrial pollution. Agent Orange, produced at a local factory, was one of the contaminants dumped into the river. One of the challenges that the ICC has taken up is educating the local immigrant population not to fish or crab in this river because it is so heavily polluted with dioxins. “We are killing ourselves environmentally much worse than we would from a terrorist attack,” Michelle Garcia noted. She also added that local EPA officials recommend that a middle-aged adult should only eat a crab from this river once every twenty years.
The tour also included the shipping yard of empty cargo containers, a visual representation of how many factories have relocated from Newark in the past quarter century. Michelle Garcia also discussed the difficulty of making polluters pay for what they have done, as Newark has such a long history of industrial pollution that most will claim the pollution was caused by their predecessors. Michelle Garcia noted that developers consider Newark one large brown field because of this legacy. One example of this is an old leather tanning facility that has been closed for decades. With little municipal funding to support a clean-up operation, this symbol of an earlier industrial era has been left adjacent to residential areas.
Following the toxic tour, ICC members treated the South African delegation to a meal at Tony Da Caneca’s, a local Portuguese restaurant.
(L-R: Nic Nel, Toussaint Losier, Joseph Youngblood II, Valorie Caffee, Michael J. Lythcott, Sajitha Khan, Juanita M. Joyner, Theodore Carrington, Llewellyn Leonard)
That evening, the delegates met with members of the Central New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, who were meeting to organize their opposition to legislation before the state assembly that would fast track permits related to a variety of environmentally sensitive projects, greatly limiting government oversight and public scrutiny. They welcomed the South Africans and were struck by the similarities of the struggles on both continents.
June 16 2004
We began the day by attending a press conference that had been called by the NJWEC and their allies to challenge the permit bill that was now before the legislative assembly. Representatives from various community and conservation groups spoke about the likely detrimental consequences of this legislation. They agreed that it would turn back thirty years of environmental progress by making it easier for builders to push through projects with little review or public participation, largely weakening the environmental restrictions protecting poor and middle class neighborhoods.
Following the press conference, the delegates met in the NJWEC office to find out more about how organization works. Sajitha Khan of South Durban suggested that the problems facing New Jersey provides South Africans with a clear example of “what not to do in our countrty.” Nic Nel of Johannesburg remarked that he was “surprised by the number of environmental organizations at the press conference.” Valorie Caffee suggested that this was a reflection of the breadth of the NJWEC’s alliance, describing it as one of “the only organization in this country that has this sustained union-environmental alliance,” bringing together seventy worker, environmental, and community organizations, including fifty-three labor groups.
(L-R: Nic Nel, Sajitha Khan, Linda Selby, Rosemarie, Llewellyn Leonard)
That afternoon, the delegates traveled to South Camden. At Leaven House, a support center for the homeless, they met with members of the Camden Environmental Justice Coalition. Camden faces a variety of pollution problems, and though it has been well studied, both industry and government have been slow to constructively deal with the problems. A key port on the Eastern seaboard, Camden has to contend with both pollution from the transportation of goods and industrial production. The delegates were shocked to find that these many of these pollution sites are located in the midst of residential areas. This included a neglected superfund site and uncovered mountains of concrete located across from a set of row houses.
Posted by Toussaint at July 15, 2004 12:03 PM