This Treehugger.com article entitled “Transition Initiative. Can Communities Tackle Peak Oil and Climate?” discusses a new movement called Transition Initiatives, which guides communities around the world on issues of community sustainability in a world threatened by disturbing physical- and social-environmental problems:

Transition is a process whereby communities work together to significantly increase local resilience or mitigate against the effects of Peak Oil and Climate Change…The reason for the rush of Transition publications (others on local money and local food are due out soon) is that its vision gives cohesive form to many disparate ideas. It brings together in one idea: buying local, organic food, social cohesion, low carbon transport, skills sharing, debt free living, self reliance, community spirit and much more.

This new movement provides individuals and communities with a manageable, though still experimental, solution to the often overwhelming and depressing reality of climate change and the problems surrounding fossil fuels. This movement stood out to me because it touches on a lot of the issues we’ve discussed at greenRELAY that inhibit the socioeconomic success and promote the poor health and high crime rates in low-income and minority communities. Minority communities notably lack access to affordable, fresh, local, organic produce and meats; social cohesion and community spirit, which probably have several definitions, are outshone by high crime rates, heavy participation in underground economies and disproportionate incarceration rates; skills sharing, debt-free living, low-carbon transport and self-reliance become more difficult when local jobs and ammenities are scarce.

I like that the article recognizes these diverse factors as equally important in maintaining resilient communities; if they were better incorporated into minority communities, we might see more empowered and healthier minorities and less environmental racism.

Robbery !

I am still reading my book titled Highway Robbery.  I have read now chapters three and four. Chapter three talks about transportation issues in Atlanta. Chapter three mainly focus on a group called MARTA, which stands for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (or as the authors would say, Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta).  MARTA services and responds to many lower income people of color.

In Chapter four, the authors talk about the details of how the construction of highways , parks, playgrounds, and housing will contribute to the shape of New York. It also talks about a guy named Robert Moses – how he was elected by no one but controlled everything like the parks and housing in New York. He also oversaw the construction of building new things that would have shaped the face of the modern New York. He was the symbol for the word wrong.  But finally the city of New York got rid of Mr. Moses and boy were they happy.

The reason I am still reading this book is because I enjoy learning new things. I also find it interesting that the same problems we face in California many others are facing all around the world. This transportation racism has to end, and we must try to help the activists who are trying to fight it, such as the BRU.

Yesterday, my best friend came back to LA for a week after moving up to Norcal. I have used her visit as an excuse to explore LA in ways that I haven’t before because she, unlike most of my friends, is willing to cross LA’s segregative boundaries, to use public transportation, and to walk places! After discussing American Apartheid and my tendency to leave my neighborhood to get groceries, we decided to walk to the Leimert Park Village Community Farmer’s Market. The Market is set up in the parking lot of a community theatre and hosts vendors from organic and local farms, professional beekeepers who make their own honey, artisans who craft healthful alternatives to conventional beauty products and many more.

One informative sign posted at the market explained how eating more fruits and vegetables combats diabetes and high blood pressure, both of which are most prevalent amongst Blacks. In addition to the higher concentration of toxic industries in minority neighborhoods, another aspect of environmental injustice that negatively impacts minority health is the notable absence of affordable fresh produce and organic goods in our neighborhoods. At greenRELAY, we’ve discussed the harm caused by segregation, and one of those detriments is the relatively low concentration of amenities and, consequently, jobs. I couldn’t help but notice that attendance at this farmer’s market, compared to the one’s I have attended in Culver City, Westwood and Santa Monica, was low. However, the four year old market has stayed in business, which means that people are supporting it. If it becomes more popular, this sustainable market could serve as an important catalyst to the social greening of the Crenshaw area, which is notorious for its troubles. Just by walking to the market, my friend and I were drawn to other community stores and events, such as the reading hour with Griots at Eso Won Books, the Leimert Park Gallery, and AfroCuban drumming in the nearby park. More walking, more fresh produce, more support for locally and organically grown foods and for community artists and artisans will improve the health of urban Blacks, develop a stronger sense of community and social responsibility, and potentially increase awareness of a more sustainable lifestyle, which is understandably not the priority of many residents who find positive opportunities scarce.

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This NBC-LA article entitled “Move Over, Prius: Meet the Raptor” discusses a determined NorCal man who built his own fully electric car when he no longer wanted to pay for gasoline: “I can do what GM couldn’t” (or wouldn’t) – mass produce the electric car. I admire this man’s can-do attitude and his decision to drastically reduce his dependence on oil by converting his car, but his goal concerns me as a resident of a city so dependent on cars.

Were Angelenos to replace conventional gas-guzzlers with gasless cars, many relative benefits would emerge: air quality would improve, mobile and area source pollution by cars and gas stations would decline, drivers would depend significantly less on fossil fuels, and it might even help create sustainable jobs. Despite the magnificence of these prospective situations, I am skeptical because of the thought that popularizing less harmful cars might detract attention from the very serious problems of  structuring cities around these machines, regardless of their pollution potential.

Out of Business Gas Station - Crenshaw Blvd

Those problems include, but are in no way limited to, the continuation of urban sprawl, the ease of maintaining racial-residential segregation, and the preference of freeway construction over clean public transit, all of which have especially bad implications for the working-class, the poor, and urban minorities. While the mass-produced electric car would work wonders for the physical environment of Angelenos who can afford cars, the idea seems a merely novel one in the context of Los Angeles because it still supports an environmentally racist and unjust infrastructure.

I don’t mean to put down Mr. Atkinson’s accomplishment. If anything, I would encourage more people to take his lead by making changes on an individual level that would be accessible and reproducible, especially because I am reprehensibly dependent on my own gas-guzzler. His apparent enthusiasm for larger-scale production simply made me realize how dependent Los Angeles is on a machine that has been successfully used to support environmentally unjust decisions. We budget  more money for crime than for public transit and more for freeways than public education, which says nothing good about the problems and priorities of a car city.