The pandemic of COVID-19 exposed the truth of environmental injustices. People of color have more underlying and serious health conditions, including heart disease, respiratory diseases such as asthma or chronic bronchitis and diabetes. Exacerbating these health vulnerabilities is inequitable access to adequate health care coverage and discrimination when seeking medical treatments. While age is certainly a risk factor, it turns out the biggest determinants of whether a person might die from contracting the virus is living near air pollution emitters and being African American.
Social Change Requires Heart
On this Valentine’s Day of affection, I want to express my gratitude to our members and volunteers. Knowing that you care keeps me traveling back and forth to the State Legislature to talk to elected leaders about pesticide use reduction.
Refusing to be a corporate throw-away community
Our groundbreaking work centers on bringing the voices of Oregonians to the forefront of policy reform. We help people who want to speak “ground-truthing” to power; in other words, using their real experiences to expose corporate financed and secret backroom deals that allow industry polluters to mislead and harm the public.
