Community interviews have found that many household have members that are gardeners. Research has shown that garndening labor is especially socially vulnerable and hard to protect through organizing. See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M5_McMmsbcb_s2Qn17XtnFQ3HBeC2hcfYSBYrqmDB-0/edit?usp=sharing . Also see Sal Zarate's work: https://www.zotero.org/groups/130725/disastersts/collections/ICRQQ8PM
MPNA-GREEN's Community Research Board is conducting community interviews and learned that there are professional gardeners in many households, which likely comes with significant exposre to pesticides, likely brining them home to their families. See, for example, this recent study: https://www.ehn.org/glyphosate-childrens-health-2659484037.html, and there is always worries about endocrine disrupting chemicals in ag work.
In this essay the authors have highlighted some of the stakeholders in the fight against industrial biomass operations as members of the surrounding community who live with these operations as close as their own backyards, and experience the environmental pollution directly everyday. They highlighted Belinda Joyner, a resident of Northhampton County, and an environmental activist who rose to defend her community and their lands and livelihoods due to expanding hazardous infrastructures such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Enviva power plant. Other stakeholders besides activists and organziers such as Belinda include the people of Northampton County who attend hearings with government officials and take a stance agaisnt pollution, as well as organizations such as the Dogwood Alliance. The county is predominantly Black and working class, one of several in North Carolina that bear the brunt of exploittion and pollution by powerful biomass manufacturers such as Drax and Enviva.
This timeline essay provides more examples from recent years of community responses and collective action for environmental justice.
In an article written in August 2022 details the complaints of residents of Duplin County and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network in response to a general permit for hog farms in Eastern North Carolina that would pollute the ground and water by relaxing regulations on farms with varying numbers of livestock. A quote from Sheri White-Williamson, cofounder of the Community Action Network, says,
“A general permit is a one-size fits all system, regardless of the number of animals you have,” she said. “That doesn’t seem to make good environmental sense. At the very minimum we would like to see the denitrification system that has shown to be better for taking care of the toxins that come out of this process. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.”
Local groups urge the DEQ to set regulations on a case by case basis depending on the size of biogas operations and should require cleaner systems and ways of getting rid of waste.
The article is linked here:https://coastalreview.org/2022/08/groups-challenge-ncs-biogas-general-p…
Homeless shelter and support center: https://www.ocregister.com/2022/07/22/motorcycle-club-brings-hope-and-harleys-to-homeless-shelter.
Is this center considered an asset by residents, or -- as in many places -- did they contest its presence in Santa Ana given so many other stresses there?
I would like to host part of a call to help those interested in working on a rapid COVID-19 Community Case Study in their area, then later host another call to share results.
I’ll teach with the COVID Community Case Study Assignment in a fall lower division undergraduate class, “Environmental Injustice.”
I’ll work with Tim Schütz to build a Zotero bibliography and digital collection of research, news and commentary focused on connections between COVID-19 and environmental injustice -- for use in fall teaching (in a lower division undergraduate class, “Environmental Injustice”). This will support the COVID Community Case Study Assignment in the COVID-19 Ethnographic Portfolio Project.
I’ll also work with Tim to build a digital collection focused on COVID-19 in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana (USA), a COVID-19 and environmental injustice hotspot. This collection will contribute to our set of place essays. It also will be part of a digital tour of St. John the Baptist Parish that we are designing for students, collaborating with the Whitney Plantation, a rare (if not singular) plantation museum focused on and honoring the lives of enslaved people. The chemical plants in St. John the Baptist Parish were built on the foundation of sugar plantations. We hope to build a powerful case demonstrating both compound vulnerabilities and ways racism and injustice are historically produced.
I’m part of the “Higher Education, Grief, and Loss in COVID-19” Working Group associated with the Hazard Research Center’s CONVERGE project. The goal is to bring critical insights from scholarship on loss, grief and collective recovery in varied setting into our highed classrooms. The group is still working out its way of working, with plans to start by building a shared bibliography.