Articles by Grist staff

Francisca Porchas, clean-bus campaigner, answers Grist’s questions

The city of Los Angeles has 10 million people, 8 million cars, and a heck of a lot of pollution -- pollution that disproportionately affects low-income communities of color. Francisca Porchas, an organizer with the Clean Air, Clean Lungs, Clean Buses Campaign, is working to change that. As InterActivist this week, Porchas chats about the city's car culture, her trip to New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, why she hearts the people of Tuvalu, and more. Send her a question of your own by noon PST on Wednesday; we'll publish her answers to selected questions on Friday.

Francisca Porchas, clean-bus campaigner, answers questions

Francisca Porchas. What work do you do? I am a lead organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union‘s Clean Air, Clean Lungs, Clean Buses Campaign, based in Los Angeles. How does it relate to the environment? The Strategy Center has engaged in environmental-justice and civil-rights campaigns for the last 17 years, […]

Silly Rabbit, Toxics Aren’t for Kids!

Parents strive to protect kids from everyday chemical hazards There may be no more powerful force for social change in the world than worried parents. And they’re turning their attention to lead in lunchboxes, bisphenol A in plastic, and other eco-nasties in their children’s daily lives, switching to greener-seeming products — like cloth totes and […]

Sand Trap

Cancers, other diseases rising near Alberta oil sands Illnesses including leukemia and lymphomas are cropping up at greater than expected rates in a First Nations community near oil sands in Canada’s Alberta province. Elders at Fort Chipewyan say incidence of disease started rising when the oil industry started extracting and processing hundreds of thousands of […]