Author Archives: Alison Guzman

“Not in OUR Back Yard!”

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It is the annual Martin Luther King Celebration at South Eugene High School, and Beyond Toxics has been invited to speak.  It’s 9:00 in the morning, and I’m standing in front of the first of three groups that  I will reach out to today.  About 20 expressionless faces gawking up at me. Blank stares. I figured these South Eugene high school students are wondering “What is she going to teach us today I love pressure. I work well under pressure. My best sides come out under pressure. So there I went.

“Environmental Justice! What is Environmental Justice?” I asked. “Mother Earth!” one student shouted. “Justice for the Environment!” another one shouted. “Great start!” I answered, excited that they were going to learn  a new concept. Something to spice up their education.

So what did we do?  We started off with a short and sweet video put together by Beyond Toxics staffer John Jordan-Cascade. It takes you on  the environmental justice bus tour we held in West Eugene last April. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s definitely a “must see” project, involving communities in Eugene and how they’ve been disproportionately exposed to hazardous industrial air emissions. I loved seeing the students’ reactions while playing the video. The scene where students are being dropped off by a school bus looks like an everyday scene of students coming home from school–practically anywhere in the U.S. However, as the narrator, Executive Director Lisa Arkin, describes, kids in West Eugene sometimes encounter a “wall of chemicals” as they try to live normal lives in Eugene’s most concentrated collection of polluting factories. The high school students in the room seemed to lean forward with particular interest. After the video they noted that perhaps we take our air for granted. Who wants to live like that?

I was so proud of the South Eugene high school students today. They got to learn all about. They caught on to the issue of environmental justice, and how it relates to our communities in West Eugene a lot quicker than I thought they would. Teaching them about the term “environmental justice” was so rewarding for me that I found myself imaging a career in teaching. The students went from knowing nothing about the link between environment and injustices facing our community, to becoming social justice advocates and—going further: demanding that something be done for the communities “in their backyard.” Not in our backyard! they said. That made me feel happy, like a proud parent. Particularly knowing that I had planted the seeds of change for over 60 students.  I think Martin Luther King would have thought it was a really good  day for justice.

Eugenians for Clean Air

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Sometimes when I think about our Environmental Justice project, I think about the communities we are working with – West Eugene. And then I think to myself, is it really only West Eugene we are speaking about here? I mean, if you think about it, air certainly doesn’t stay within neighborhood boundaries. Air particulates don’t say to one another “Oh, we’d better stay here.” And yet, people tend to think they are safe if they don’t directly smell, see or experience air pollution.  Perhaps they feel “Well, I don’t live in West Eugene. Why should I care?”

Say for instance you don’t live in West Eugene and you read the story in the paper about how your fellow Eugeneans are suffering from polluted air from train idling or industrial pollution. You take a sniff, and think, “I don’t live there.” And you move on to the sports section.

Or, let’s say you do live in West Eugene. You get days when it is just unbearable to go outside, open your windows, ride a bike or take a walk. But you have no choice because you’ve invested everything in your home and can’t afford to move to a different neighborhood.  And your children probably love their local school, you like your local church and your neighborhood association, and you bought your home with high hopes for a better life.  From what I learned from some West Eugene residents, underlying a sense of community is also a sense of being stuck without a way to change things (think about train idling!). That can feel frustrating.

The same goes with other environmental justice issues, such as wage theft in the Latino immigration community. When an undocumented worker for instance is not getting paid, it not only affects their family, but the state as well. We learned from Ramon Ramirez of PCUN last week that over 8000 wage claims were filed with Oregon’s state labor bureau, totaling $24.5 million in wage theft. According to a study by the Perryman Group, if all undocumented immigrants left the state, Oregon would lose over $3,000,000,000 in revenue from their purchasing power.

Air pollution issues aren’t as concrete as wage theft. However, it has become obvious that disproportionate exposures to air toxics also have a ripple effect through our community. We, as a community united in working for a sustainable and healthy Eugene, could benefit from taking steps to reduce how air pollution harms not only nearby neighbors but everyone in our entire Eugene airshed. We can learn a lot from Northwest Portland Activists such as Neighbors for Clean Air who hammered out a “good neighbor” agreement with ESCO to reduce pollution from the company’s foundries by an estimated 20 percent.  So let’s figure out a way to work together to help out our West Eugene community.  Just because we can’t see it or smell it doesn’t mean that it is not there.

Taking Responsibility for Justice

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Eugene, nationally recognized as a bike city, a community near nature and a place where we value sustainability, would not normally attract attention around environmental human rights and justice issues. Which is why for one day, Beyond Toxics and Centro LatinoAmericano invited city and agency officials, students and community leaders on an environmental justice bus tour to West Eugene where we got the opportunity to see how families live through the lens of “environmental justice”.

To achieve justice, we need to help major decision makers in our community face some of the injustices that unfortunately exists so uncomfortably close to home. To achieve justice, we need to challenge the current structures in place so that other people and certain communities also gain access to political attention and social resources that may not normally be readily available.  Unveiling the hidden discomforts that exists in our society, forces both believers and nonbelievers of environmental injustices to take a second look and determine the action needed.

The truth is that communities, specifically low-income communities, live in areas that are in critical need of public health improvements due to their disproportionate exposures to toxics such as polluted air and contaminated ground water. If we don’t watch out for the health of our children AND acknowledge that communities are disproportionately affected by poverty, then who will? Let us continue to move forward and not resign ourselves to stagnancy and a calcified system- regardless of the privileges you have access to.

As Winona LaDuke put it, “Take responsibility for history. Recognize that sometimes things take a long time to change.” So, what is the lesson for us in Eugene? Don’t be weary of fighting for what is just in Eugene. You never know how many lives you may save or change by your actions in the long run.

Exposures to Air Pollution in Medford, Oregon

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Executive Director Lisa Arkin and I made the three hour drive to Medford, Oregon to give an Asthma Care Workshop. A long trip for us, but well worth it. Last summer, UNETE, a farmworkers’ advocacy organization, invited us to collaborate with them in doing a workshop (see our pictures from the workshop) for the people they serve. Perfect, we thought, since they work a lot with timber and agricultural farmworkers and therefore are heavily exposed to herbicides and pesticides. In fact, many of the participants who attended may have worked for the local herbicide manufacture or timber companies. UNETE provides support to Latinos in the Medford community, including education, legal support, labor rights, etc. In fact, UNETE is the only Latino-led non-profit in the Rogue Valley.

As I gave my Asthma presentation, I saw the participants’ facial expressions change when I mentioned a startling statistic. According to a recent USA Today Report, some schools in Medford ranked in the 2nd percentile in the Nation for poor air quality. Rankings are based on modeled concentration and severity of chemicals known or believed to cause cancer. According to the report, this ranking means that there is a “greater likelihood that toxic chemicals could be present at levels that could threaten children’s health.” For example, if you see a school whose overall toxicity shows up in the second percentile, you’ll know only 1% of the nation’s schools had higher toxicity levels.

I could see expressions of concern, curiosity, disbelief, and concern, cross the faces of the people who came to listen. In the midst of delivering the bad news, I knew I was doing my part by empowering citizens to take action in their own lives to improve the air they breathe. In doing so, individuals end up feeling better about their lives and the health of their families.

Though our presentation was billed as an “Asthma Care Workshop”, much of the information shared could have easily applied to anyone. The people who came had a lot of great questions: Do pesticides cause cancer? How will I know if my husband has asthma if I’ve never taken him to the doctor? Why are children more affected by air toxics than adults?  I later found out that most of these parents had children with disabilities. ‘No wonder they looked so worried,’ I thought. Yet, the feeling of empowerment and content was spread throughout as they learned about tips, guidelines, and tools to reduce their families’ exposures to indoor and outdoor air toxics.

Exposures to air toxins can lead to general respiratory illnesses and/or discomforts. In Medford’s Crossroads School alone, for example, at 97% of overall toxicity, the top polluting chemical is formaldehyde.  As the report indicates, “this is the overall toxicity measure, but includes only those chemicals known or thought to cause cancer.” Not only cancer, but also asthma.

Have you heard that saying, “Knowledge is power”? Well, this was especially true in this case. UNETE and Beyond Toxics are looking forward to tackling environmental health issues together for these and other concerned parents.

But I’ll save those details for my next blog…

Generational Shift and Environmental Justice: Madres para la Salud

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Alison stands next to Josefina Cano, one of the Madres group members, and Sheryl Stohs, of the EPA region 10 Environmental Justice Program

To be honest, I felt like an outsider when we first formed the Mothers for Health groups. After about five meetings I now really feel like one of the women of the Madres para la Salud community. It quickly dawned on me that relating to them was easier than I thought, since they reminded me of my own mother (who is Latina also and from Paraguay- a country in the heart of South America).

I think for many community organizers, the initial phases of reaching out to new people can be tricky. It is quite easy to fall into the trap of perceiving oneself as an outsider and in turn, being perceived by the group as an outsider. Yet, once you find common ground by relating as a person and not just the issues- whether it be language, culture, personal experiences- it becomes easier to merge as a member of the group.

Focusing on the bonds helps. I think one of the bonds that have emerged between myself and the Latina mothers is that to a certain extent, I am representing the kind of woman their daughters could be someday: Latina, educated in a US university, speaks English with an American accent, bi-cultural and bi-lingual, and with more Western traditions than their mothers (not necessarily a good or bad thing, just a fact). I believe this bond provides hope in the sense that the mothers wish every possible positive opportunity for their daughters in America- including living and growing up in a safe environment free from disproportionate environmental health risks.

The Bethel area, a Northwest Eugene working class neighborhood, is next door to many polluting smokestackes like this one.

Madres para la Salud met again last Friday. Though it was a small turnout (as it always is when it comes to cold, Friday evenings in Eugene), I felt it was a great outcome. Initially I began working with the mothers in the idea that I would be providing them with new information and knowledge about environmental health and toxics, but I quickly learned that the learning process is quite the opposite of the way I thought. I’ve learned that the topics and goals must come from the mothers themselves to truly motivate them! I can’t help but ask community-participatory questions like: What are they interested in learning? Why? How does it fit into their daily lives? Will this be of use to them? What information can I bring to them next time we meet? Every meeting is a fresh new beginning with new concepts and ideas to discuss and meanwhile, I hope the Madres para la Salud group helps raise the bar on what it means to educate ourselves on toxic exposures and to determine what actions we can take to protect our health and the health of future generations.

Next meeting time:
Wednesday, January 18th – 6:00 pm
Location:
Centro LatinoAmericano
944 W.5th Avenue, Eugene OR 97402

 

“Living Downstream” in Deadwood, OR

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Michelle Holman, Beyond Toxics Board member and Lisa Arkin, Exec. Director

In late August our organization hosted an event in Deadwood, OR at their community center where we showed the film “Living Dowstream”, a documentary based on the book written by Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and author, whom you may recall came to Eugene earlier this year to speak about environmental health, pesticides, and human rights.

On the way there, Lisa Arkin (Executive Director) and I were discussing our role in pesticide reform along Highway 36 (the highway on the way to Deadwood) and her recent ODOT report. We stopped at various places to take pictures of areas sprayed with pesticides. I was taken in by the beauty of the area–such a mystical place–in full awareness that there were a patchwork quilt of clear-cuts patched in the valley, and pesticide runoff into the lake, streams and well water. Such a beautiful place, as if from a scene from “Lord of the Rings,” and yet faced with so many environmental problems that affect all life including the people who live and work there.

Once we got to the community center, we were greeted by a fellow community resident and board member, Michelle Holman, and an OTA supporter to help us set up. I was immediately struck by a sense of the strong community there and as residents began to stream in, the place soon became packed! People were standing in the back since there were no more seats left. During the film, volunteers were rushing to and from the kitchen to stack plates, cups, napkins and coffee on the food table. The table itself was fit for a king, as community members joyously baked for the event, picked blueberries and tomatoes from their gardens, and brought homemade pies fresh from the oven. As I looked at the faces gazing up at the wall (we forgot the screen) where the movie was showing, I realized how special this community was. As the film showed, expressions of concern, awe, sadness, admiration were scattered throughout the audience which consisted of young and old, farmers and foresters, seasoned and “newbies” to environmental issues. Yet they all appeared to be on a mission.

After the movie, Tom Kerns, a human rights advocate, professor and OTA board member led a discussion on environmental health, human rights and pesticides, and strategies to move forward. I’m not sure whether it was the inspiring movie, Tom’s speech, or Lisa’s encouragement, but in those 30 minutes, the group debriefed the concerns of the residents, updated each other on recent relevant issues, determined possible solutions, and strategized next steps. So efficient were we, in fact, that people left with a stronger sense of mission and a determined focus to accomplish what was discussed. I thought, ‘as an OTA representative, I better meet their expectations!’

Knowing that OTA is supported by such a strong community, filled with hope and determination, with a strong sense of values and a powerful willingness to fight for what is right, I felt honored to be part of this organization. At the same time, I felt challenged to ensure that our organization do our part in building leadership and justice for all in Oregon.