New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC)
The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) advocates for safe, secure jobs and a healthy, sustainable environment. To achieve these goals, WEC is organizing an alliance of working people, unions, environmental and community organizations. WEC provides technical assistance and training. WEC also supports and conducts grassroots organizing and political action campaigns.
WEC organizes grassroots campaigns and helps the labor and environmental movements speak with a unified voice. We helped more than 5,000 citizens get vital information about toxic risks on their jobs and in their neighborhoods. We got the state Labor department to notify 200,000 New Jersey employers that they must post notices of employee rights to speak out for safety and a clean environment under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act. We unite community and environmental organizations and unions to prevent hazards, stop pollution, and maintain jobs.
WEC helps the labor and environmental movements to speak with a unified political voice. WEC: Successfully defended our "Right to Know" law from industry attacks. We also worked with the state Health Department to assure that vital information about hazardous chemicals reaches workers, firefighters, and the public. Helped win the nation's first county "Right to Act" law , giving Passaic County workers and neighbors rights to conduct on-site surveys of hazardous facilities. Won an Executive Order (EO) signed by Governor McGreevey requiring greater state agency responsiveness to environmental justice.
PODER
PODER (People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights) is a grassroots, environmental justice organization based in San Francisco’s Mission District. PODER’s mission is to organize with Mission residents to work on local solutions to issues facing low income communities and communities of color. PODER believes that the solutions to community problems depend on the active participation of all people in decision-making processes. Improvements to our neighborhood must be made through collective social action to bring about social, economic and environmental justice.
The People’s Plan Campaign
PODER has been working in coalition with other Mission District-based organizations and with the community to create a neighborhood plan for sustainability and urban justice. The Peoples Plan for just and equitable land use zoning and community development reflects the needs of people not profits. Our vision for our community includes safe and affordable housing, a diverse economy which nurtures light industrial and locally-owned retail, availability and access to community based health & recreational opportunities, and everyday people becoming empowered over the political decision making process.
The Common Roots: Youth Organizer Program
Over the past five years Latino immigrant youth from the Mission and Chinese immigrant youth from Chinatown have gotten together to learn how to organize our communities. Through the Common Roots program, PODER and the Chinese Progressive Association have developed a model for youth leadership development and cross-cultural communication, information exchange and collaboration of activities amongst two neighborhood-based groups working in San Francisco's low-income communities of color
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Founded in 1978, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) is a pioneer organization in the growing environmental health and justice movement. Our mission is to promote environmental justice for low-income people of color by giving community members a meaningful voice in environmental decision-making, improving environmental health through pollution prevention and reduction, and changing policies from the grassroots up. We believe that fundamental change must come from the grassroots and environmental solutions can only be sustained in concert with social and economic justice. CBE provides resources that help urban communities directly affected by exposure to toxic pollution to change the policies and practices that put their health and well-being at risk.
The LA CAUSA Organizing Project was started by CBE in 1994. It is a Southeast Los Angeles-based program which involves residents and workers in addressing issues of concern for environmental health in their own communities. LA CAUSA’s constituency is predominantly low-income communities of color, mostly Latino, with a strong youth component. CBE’s Southeast Los Angeles constituents live in the most densely industrialized areas of Los Angeles County.
Posted by Toussaint at July 19, 2004 01:05 PM