Isella Ramirez and Angelo Logan leading a goods movement toxic tour

The LA Times’ Margot Roosevelt featured East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice in a front page article earlier this week:

Here especially, but also across the country, mainstream foundations, which had long supported environmental groups led by white lawyers and policy wonks, have begun to channel grants to community organizations run by Latinos and blacks who see clean air and water as civil rights.

In the Southland, these environmental justice activists, as they are called, wage war in the dense corridor that runs from the massive ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach through neighborhoods that line the 710 Freeway — Wilmington, Carson, Compton, Huntington Park, Commerce– and on through Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with their vast distribution warehouses.

“There are no buffer zones,” said Gilbert Estrada, a teacher who co-founded the East Yard group with Logan. “We are the buffer zones.” [Full article]

EYCEJ is doing excellent work around goods movement and environmental justice.  GreenRELAY participants have attended a number of EYCEJ events (including a public meeting where the reporter who wrote the above article was interviewing people).  Click here to see greenRELAY’s multimedia coverage of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

A video produced by greenRELAY about EYCEJ’s Goods Movement Toxic Tour:

Members of greenRELAY decided to attend the Goods Movement Toxic Tour led by East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice last week.  The tour, which focused primarily on the cities of Commerce and Bell Gardens, highlighted the environmental justice implications of international trade and the expansion of the Long Beach Freeway, Interstate 710.

[Show as slideshow]