| A recent article in The Economist describes several environmental organizations' efforts to expose children to nature, as they worry about, "Who will love nature and advocate for nature, 30 years from now?" The concern is that without a connection to nature, the next generation won't know the desire to preserve and protect nature. As the population demographics are shifting in the country, the same question includes populations that have traditionally not been connected to mainstream environmental protection efforts. This last statement is especially important as it suggests that non-White communities' connections to the environment and related activism may just be different from what is conventionally viewed as environmental issues. This article seeks to introduce an ongoing discussion on these two topics, focusing on Dane County and the State of Wisconsin: 1) what are non-White communities' connections and concerns related to the environment, and 2) how can non-White and White communities find common points of discussion and action to collectively and complementarily protect and enjoy this earth that they all share. Non-White communities' connections and concerns related to the environment Non-White communities tend to experience greater levels of environmental inequalities due to a number of factors, a primary one being their greater disconnect from decision-making processes when pollution burdens and environmental benefits are distributed. (For more information on the causes of that disconnect, please check the Wisconsin Environmental Justice Coalition page, at http://www.midwestadvocates.org/advocacy/EJ/index.htm. Although there are unique issues and perspectives related to each community, there are also shared environmental justice challenges found at the intersection of race/poverty/disenfranchisement. The following brief overviews of issues specific to each community are by no means comprehensive lists of all issues. Native American connection to and preservation of the environment are intrinsically tied together. When to be of a people is to be of the land, there is no disconnect between understanding that what is good for the land is also good for the people. Furthermore, when the culture/religion/lifestyle of a people is tied to the life of the land, there is no disconnect between understanding that to preserve the land means to preserve one's way of life. Native American environmental protection work has centered around recovery of sacred sites; recovery and protection of traditional foods and ecologically-friendly food production; recovery of land that has traditionally been under their stewardship and that produces the natural bounties essential to the preservation of their way of life; protection of land from hazardous waste; and enforcement of sovereignty rights that would enable them to effectively pursue all of the above. If one goes back to the history of many African Americans, there appears to be complex issues related to their connection to the environment. For example, African American slaves were forced to work the land. Later, they encountered tremendous challenges in gaining the right to own and enjoy land or safe environments. African American environmental protection issues have involved core civil and human rights, such as clean-up of polluted neighborhoods and housing complexes, resistance to environmentally-hazardous facility siting, resistance to community-breaking transit routes, environmental health advocacy stemming from dismal health risks and mortality numbers, and so on. One of the most visible environmental justice topics associated with the Hispanic community relates to migrant farm work and unsafe working conditions with high risks of toxic poisoning. However, the Hispanic migrant workers' environmental protection issues encompass complex civil and human rights issues related to immigration policies and the rights of documented and undocumented workers. Thus, Hispanic migrant workers' environmental justice issues straddle moral and legal dilemmas, which tread fragile lines of support, especially in economically- or patriotically-stressed times. Recent reframing of immigration law violations as national security risks makes it especially hard to effectively advocate for undocumented workers' rights, including environmental justice. In other parts of the country, Asian American environmental issues tend to deal with safe working conditions (such as sweatshops that provide hazardous working environments) or pollution in low-income and non-White neighborhoods. However, in the past two years, Wisconsin has twice made national headlines as the place in the country where two fatal incidents involving Hmong and White hunters occurred. This has raised many debates around historical racial tensions in the hunting world and has opened up the door to exploring whether environmental justice would include addressing potential civil rights crimes as they relate to access and enjoyment of the great outdoors. In a similar vein, the Madison Environmental Justice Organization (MEJO) has reported that African Americans from Milwaukee come to fish in Madison, as Madison is their outdoors option when they experience harassment if they stop to fish in the lakes and rivers between Milwaukee and Madison. Attempting to find common ground Aside from the work of MEJO on non-White communities' subsistence consumption of polluted fish, Madison has seen some recent environmental justice activities taking place. Parallel to the work of MEJO, Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), a statewide public law firm focusing on environmental litigation, and the Sierra Club are currently seeking to stop pollution flowing through stormwaters from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Charter Street Coal Plant. The black water run-off spills directly into Monona Bay, where many inner-city low-income residents from diverse communities can be seen fishing on a regular basis. As per the anecdotal information gathered from MEJO's community meetings, the fishermen and their families consume the pollution-laden fish. MEA and MEJO are now coordinating efforts on the matter. The City of Madison's current large-scale effort totransform Allied Drive, a distressed neighborhood where race, poverty and crime have concentrated, into a sustainable and livable community, opens up the door to environmental justice explorations as low-income (primarily African American) residents, city officials and community development professionals are collaborating to address hazardous housing conditions, access to parks and amenities, and other holistic quality of life issues. Activists and professionals from different fields as varied as geology, natural resources management, law, environmental protection and civil rights protection, have formed the Wisconsin Environmental Justice Coalition to more effectively exchange information and coordinate efforts to address the multiple causes of environmental inequalities with corresponding multi-disciplinary approaches. For more information, visit the web page previously mentioned, for the Wisconsin Environmental Justice Coalition. Conclusion A fundamental principle of environmental protection is the Public Trust Doctrine, which basically provides that natural resources are public goods that the broad public should have the right to enjoy and that the people's government is entrusted with managing and protecting for the greater public's benefit. Each year, Wisconsin's environmental organizations choose environmental protection priorities that will be collectively and intensively pursued at the state legislature. (For more information on those priorities, please visit the League of Conservation Voters' web site at http: //www,conservationvoters.org/WLCVI/Public/index.php?custID=4.) How specifically do people from the diverse communities in Wisconsin feel connected to these issues and how would they want to contribute to making them happen? This would be one of the environmental justice topics to pursue, if readers were interested. Another question that should be explored would be what other environmental justice issues would non-White communities in Madison and Dane County like to put on the table and see addressed. There are probably many other questions and concerns that readers would like to raise. Maybe you're wondering about eating the fish that was caught in Monona Lake or Bay. Maybe you're wondering about the white stuff that clings to your dishes when you use the tap water. Maybe you'e wondering about the awful smell in your apartment. Maybe you're wondering about the awful smell that comes from the lake when you walk there. Maybe you have other things related to the environment that you wonder about. I am inviting you all to start a dialogue and who knows, there might even be some action. Community Information and Discussion Invitation: If this article has sparked your interest or curiosity, a community information and discussion meeting related to environmental justice concerns and action will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 5 p.m., at Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc., 551 W. Main Street, Ste. 200, Madison. Your rsvps and/or comments are welcome and can be sent to: plyfoung@midwestadvocates.org or 608-251-5047 x 4. Author background: Pacyinz Lyfoung is a French-born and -raised Hmong American woman, who is now working as a Managing Director for Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc, and a founding member of the Wisconsin Environmental Justice Coalition. For more info on that organization or the coalition, please visit www.midwestadvocates.org. |
| Starting a dialogue on environmental justice by Pacyinz Lyfoung |
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