Analyze

我訪問到的阿嬤也有在高度人力密集的產業中工作過，如餐飲、紡織等等，反映了當代大環境中原民來到都市的處境。都市原民作為台灣產業發展的推手之一，卻無法擁有安身立命的家，而被迫在各處流浪，直到近代才開啟了與政府溝通的橋樑，卻依然有種種難題需要克服。

The most notable speakers at this event were community members who talked during public comments, city council, and the Mayor.

Many public comments were made on this matter with many written letters sent to the council which were not read during the meeting. The most notable public comments were made by the director of OCEJ, executive director of MPNA, attorney with the environmental law clinic at UCI,

Consensus amongst most commenters was that the city should not be moving forward with the GPU until they conduct better community engagement and address the EIJ in more detail. 

After public comments the mayor started off the council comments by saying he was not prepared to move forward on the city plan. He did however say that he would like to move forward with the general plan by the next meeting. He explained how the council immediately stopped pushing the general plan when they received a letter from the attorney general telling the city they must engage with the community on EIJ concerns. He also pointed to how after this letter the council held hundreds of meetings with EJ groups. After saying these things he said that in all this time there has not been enough movement and at this point the EJ groups are delaying the city plan which has been nearly 7 years in the making. He finished by saying that the EJ groups are hurting the communities that they want to protect and that there will be one more meeting and we are done.

Council-member Bacerra said we need to pass the plan tonight and that two more weeks will not do anything. He said that the EJ groups keep demanding to move the goal post further and are not offering any solutions, all they want is more time.

Council-member Penaloza agreed with Bacerra’s statements and further stressed how the council has held hundreds of meetings. He stated that in all of these meetings all the EJ groups wanted was more time and when given the time they offered no solutions to EIJ.

Council-member Lopez did not want the plan to move forward. She cited lead pollution data sources to show how the city needs to do more in regard to the GPU. She said tha too many of her constituents have concerns over EJ in the city plan so she does not want the GPU to move forward.

Council-member Hernandez did not say a lot other than agreeing that the plan is taking too long and should be moved forward.

Council-member Mendoza agreed with Lopez in saying that the general plan does not cover enough EJ problems and said the plan should not move forward.

After these statements Council-member Penaloza then tried to present a notion to pass the general plan. Bacerra then said he would want to make some amendments first before passing the plan which was done on the spot. Most amendments changed some language in the GPU EJ section. The most notable amendment was the adding of a permanent EJ staffer on the city staff. After these amendments were made Penaloza attempted to pass the notion which failed with a 3-3 vote. Council-members Lopez, Mendoza and Mayor Sarminto voted against the notion. 

The mayor stated the amendments were hastily put on the GPU and that the council needed to wait 30 days before passing the plan. With this the Mayor attempted to pass a notion giving EJ groups 30 days to come up with bullet points on what they wanted passed. This notion also failed with a 3-3 vote. Council-members Hernandez, Bacerra, and Penaloza voted against it.

This resulted in the agenda item to be later discussed at the next town council meeting.

Published in May 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic where in-person community workshops and meetings turned into weekly virtual meetings. 

-> Authors:

Shahir Masri: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine; air pollution scientist.

Alana M. W. LeBrón: Department of Health, Society, and Behavior, University of California, Irvine; Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies; Interests: structural racism and health, health of Latina/o communities, community-based participatory research.

Michael D. Logue: Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, University of California, Irvine

Enrique Valencia: Orange County Environmental Justice, Santa Ana

Abel Ruiz: Jóvenes Cultivando Cambios, Santa Ana; CRECE Urban Farming Cooperative member

Abigail Reyes: Community Resilience, University of California, Irvine

Jun Wu: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine

This article was published in 2022 in England. This is amid the coronavirus pandemic and after the populist influence of Trump’s fake news politics around the world. With populist leaders propagating their own version of post-truths in India, Russia, Turkey, and Brazil. These leaders have incited a new wave of climate change deniers while political conflicts and environmental vulnerabilities worsen worldwide. 

At the time of the article, Trump had defunded environmental protection and pulled the USA from the Paris agreement - although, since then, Biden has proposed other plans on environmental justice, and the US has rejoined the Paris agreement -, Brexit had threatened to derail  environmental regulation - still remains an issue -, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro had opened vast tracts of Amozonian forest for permanent exploitation - still remains an issue. 

Philippe Larochelle, a lawyer that works out of Montreal Canada but has been working on international criminal law cases and class action on environmental matters, which has led to his work now with Nancy Bui on Formosa. 

Larochelle did his best to address a few of the questions posed by the lead organizers in the beginning of the event: 

What are the main injustices happening with Formosa Plastics Corporation?

What do you think should be done?

Out of many of the panelists, I found Larochelle to be one of the few that really attempted to address these questions and answer to best of his expertise on the legal matters surrounding the Formosa case in Vietnam and Taiwan. Many Zoom attendees wanted him to expand on his statement of how Taiwan's stance as "not completely a country" making it challenging to operate in that environment when it comes to international law. Later on, he answered via Zoom chat that there is a disconnect between Taiwan and international law as there is no access to UN special procedures, but it is "very possible to sue Formosa there". 

Kingspan workers: Two workers from Kingspan, Lucas Hernandez and Israel Maldonado, detailed both their unsafe working conditions at Kingspan and the response from the company when they submitted complaints. Note that this conversation was moderated with questions from Ms. Meredith Schafer. 

Dr. Shahir Masri: Dr. Masri oversaw the air pollution monitoring at Kingspan. He used worker-collected pollution data to quantify PM2.5 levels at the plant. 

Rev. Terry LePage: Rev. LePage spoke on behalf of CLUE, a faith-based organization that has helped with Kingspan unionization efforts and written letters to Kingspan re: the pollution and safety hazard complaints.

Jose Rea: Mr. Rea spoke on behalf of MPNA-GREEN, a community group that donated the AtmoTubes used for air pollution data collection. 

Lee argues that EJ practice has long stagnated over an inability to properly define the concept of disproportionate (environmental and public health) impacts, but that national conversations on system racism and the development of EJ mapping tools have improved his outlook on the potential for better application of the concept of disproportionate impact. Lee identifies mapping tools (e.g. CalEnviroScreen) as a pathway for empirically based and analytically rigorous articulation and analysis of disproportionate impacts that are linked to systemic racism.

In describing the scope and nature of application of mapping tools, Baker highlights the concept of cumulative impacts (the concentration of multiple environmental, public health, and social stressors), the importance of public participation (e.g. Hoffman’s community science model), the role of redlining in creating disproportionate vulnerabilities, and the importance of integrating research into decision making processes.

Baker ultimately argues that mapping tools offer a promising opportunity for integrating research into policy decision making as part of a second generation of EJ practice. Key areas that Lee identifies as important to the continued development of more effective EJ practice include: identifying good models for quantitative studies and analysis, assembling a spectrum of different integrative approaches (to fit different contexts), connecting EJ research to policy implications, and being attentive to historical contexts and processes that produce/reproduce structural inequities.

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