Friday, 11 Oct 2002

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.

Wow, what a party! Dozens of friends turned out last night for the launch of the Environmental Justice and Health Union. The unseasonably warm weather we’d been having in the Bay Area came to a sudden end, so rather than hold the event outside as planned, we all squeezed into the offices of the Center for Environmental Health, our fiscal sponsor. It was just as well.

When starting a new group, you have little to show other than an idea. Thus, I extended more invitations to friends than to colleagues. I did, though, have five computers set up in the offices with access to the Environmental Justice and Health Union website and to this diary. Copies of parts of the website and some of the diary pages were also printed up and posted on the wall for people to read. I also showed off the newsletter and gave a short speech about why the Environmental Justice and Health Union is important and what it hopes to achieve.

In my speech, I noted that our nation is in flux. Discrimination based on race, class, and gender continues. The threats to our environment remain real. But, unlike in the last century, mobs no longer lynch people and rivers no longer catch fire. Instead, the burdens on both people and the environment have become more subtle, although the threats are no less real. They are not as easy to see even as the body count continues to rise.

At every income level, people of color are more likely to be poisoned or suffocated; lead, mercury, pesticides, and asthma are just a few of the better-known threats. Low-income people of color carry the heaviest burden of discrimination and environmental degradation. The Environmental Justice and Health Union recognizes that new solutions are needed and will work toward eliminating this problem.

How will we do this? First, we must recognize the players. In just a little over 10 years, the environmental justice cause has become a national movement. Activists from hundreds of low-income communities of color have formed community groups and regional networks to tackle the problem. Concurrently, environmental health professionals have begun to recognize the severe problems such communities face. Research and resources created to remedy similar disparities in other diseases are beginning to be applied to environmental health issues as well.

Second, we must recognize the challenges. Misunderstandings between middle-class white health professionals and low-income activists of color are unsurprising. Such misunderstandings are exacerbated by the mistrust created by medical outrages ranging from forced sterilizations to the hundreds of men used in research without their consent as part of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

Third, we must share information. Activists understand the character of their communities; professionals have technical expertise. Both are necessary to create effective and efficient solutions to environmental illness.

The Environmental Justice and Health Union provides information for solutions through an extensive website with links to more than 50 other organizations as well as a monthly newsletter with up-to-date resource, events, and funding materials. It also builds bridges by reaching out to activists and professionals and, by providing common information, enabling a common dialogue. With equal representation of environmental health professionals and environmental justice activists on our advisory board and among our newsletter contributors, the Environmental Justice and Health Union unites people who did not interact before.

The journey to success will be long, but it will be joyful. For as the Environmental Justice and Health Union helps to eliminate environmental disease in the communities at greatest risk, it will also bring people together.