Poverty and the Environment
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Our Poverty & the Environment series comes to an end, but our concern doesn’t
The sun sets on our poverty series. Photo: Clipart. There’s something a little odd about ending a series on the subject of poverty — as we at Grist are officially doing today — when the issue itself will stubbornly continue to exist. That might seem, at first, like a laughable sentence. Of course poverty will […]
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A virtual walking tour through an L.A. neighborhood with activists from Pacoima Beautiful
The tiny community of Pacoima, at the north end of Los Angeles, suffers from nearly every imaginable obstacle to a healthy urban environment. That means, for starters, lead paint, freeway traffic, airports, landfills, diesel trucks, chemical manufacturing, power plants, heavy industry, and overcrowding. It also means the linguistic and cultural differences that have historically defined […]
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Two eco-leaders — one mainstream, one radical — debate the movement’s past and future
Eric Mann. When Eric Mann first encountered environmentalists, he saw them as a bunch of “arrogant, racist airheads.” When Frances Beinecke first encountered environmentalists, she felt she’d found her cause. Frances Beinecke. Nearly four decades later, both are tireless proponents of environmental sanity, but they work in very different ways. Mann is director of the […]
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In the world’s slums, the worst of poverty and environmental degradation collide
This article was originally published in OrionOnline. Precarious dwellings in North Sulawasi, Indonesia. Photos: iStockphoto. A villa miseria outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, may have the worst feng shui in the world: it is built in a flood zone over a former lake, a toxic dump, and a cemetery. Then there’s the barrio perched precariously on […]
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Will an Atlanta parks and redevelopment project benefit low-income residents?
Atlanta, Ga.: the famous “Hot-lanta” of Southern heat and hospitality, home of “down-home” fried chicken and a growing black middle class, cradle of the largest historically black college community in the world, hotbed of the civil-rights movement, and … the sprawl capital of the South. As Atlanta gets greener, who will benefit? Photo: iStockphoto. As […]
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Jason Edens, rural solar advocate, answers questions
Jason Edens. Where do you work? I work at the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance, a grassroots nonprofit organization whose mission is to make solar power accessible to people of all income levels. What does your organization do? At RREAL, we install solar heating systems onto the homes of low-income families qualifying for energy assistance. In […]
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On Hollywood’s downtrodden eco-chicks, and how they’ve changed
“A working-class hero is something to be,” said John Lennon. But for Hollywood, it’s more likely to be a working-class heroine — at least when environmental issues enter the picture. Charlize Theron in North Country. Photo: 78th Academy Awards® This year, Charlize Theron’s crusading miner-activist in North Country garnered an Oscar nomination, following in the […]
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A virtual walking tour through Wisconsin’s Sokaogon Chippewa community with Tina Van Zile
Like many tribal lands across North America, the Sokaogon Chippewa reservation in Northern Wisconsin faces environmental perils that threaten not only the land, but also the livelihood and culture of the people who live on it. The Sokaogon spent close to three decades battling one of those perils: the proposed reopening of a nearby zinc […]
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An interview with integration advocate Sheryll Cashin
Space is the place where race, poverty, and the environment get sorted out, for better or worse. And the spaces where we live, work, learn, and play are the places where integration succeeds or fails, argues Sheryll Cashin. The Georgetown University law professor wrote 2004’s The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining […]