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.

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I have been interning with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), an Environmental Justice Organization in Huntington Park, since June. I drive through South LA and Vernon to get there, and once I get into Vernon, the traffic pattern changes immediately. I suddenly have to compete with enormous trucks for road space. Because the behemoths drive in the left lane of two lane streets, cars desperately try to pass them, speeding up and changing lines, usually with little notice, making for dangerous driving conditions. Vernon wreaks from the excess diesel and factory pollution. I can tell that I’ve entered Vernon by the smells and by the absence of single family homes, which are normally a staple in Southern California.

The city boasts on its website that the Los Angeles Economic Development Company named it the most business friendly in 2008. No company could have awarded the city a more apt prize – the city has over 1,200 businesses and only 90 residents. Their website explains that their “city services are tailored to the industrial needs of the community.” I’m not sure how they have chosen to define ‘community’, but I’m guessing it differs from how CBE and other EJ organizations understand it.

CBE has been campaigning against the construction of the Vernon Power Plant since 2006, which they’re researchers have determined will emit at least 1.7 million pounds of pollution annually, adding to the poor air quality and disproportionate asthma and cancer rates in surrounding neighborhoods. They have seen some success, but recent legislation SB 696 could make it easier for the plant to win the battle.

Big Business, Corporate America, Dirty industry – they all have a disproportionate amount of say in our city infrastructure and our health. Please take the time to support EJ organizations throughout LA and the US that try to make these polluters more accountable to the public. CBE, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, The Labor and Community Strategy Center and the Bus Rider’s Union, The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, are a few examples in LA. Check them out!

Check out these campaign posters courtesy of the CBE office:

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