Black History Month 2024: Climate Edition
This digital campaign featured the topics: health and wellness, climate injustice, community engagement and education, urban development, green jobs and so many other issues that the Black community faces within environmental racism and climate change.
For those who are interested in learning more, in finding accessible factual information, the resource hub listed below is a great first step.
Black Environmental Leaders
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A community-led coalition (formed following the murder of George Floyd + in recognition of environmental injustice used as another tool of oppression on Black community) exposing and rectifying the harms caused by the Brookhaven Landfill and other harmful environmental injustices inflicted on the primarily Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous community of North Bellport, on Long Island, New York.
Core members: Abena Ansare, Monique Fitzgerald, Michelle Mendez, and Dennis Nix, Dr. Kerim Odekon, and Hannah Thomas.
Brookhaven Landfill to stay open for 2 more years
50 acre landfill (content visualization of 50 acres)
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Dr. Robert Bullard is the father of Environmental Justice. In the 1970s Dr. Robert D. Bullard, a sociologist, began collecting data on the impact of people’s surrounding environment + their health research grounds our current understanding of environmental racism.
Bullard’s documentation for a 1979 lawsuit [challenging environmental racism using civil rights law] linked race and exposure to pollution. He was the first scientist to do so.
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Concerned Citizens of St. John is an environmental justice organization based in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Their advocacy and action has prompted research and further investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
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Catherine Coleman Flowers is the founding director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ)
An environmental and climate justice activist bringing attention to inadequate waste and water infrastructure in low-income rural communities in the United States, especially in her home state of Alabama.
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Jerome Foster II is a Plastic Pollution Coalition Youth Ambassador, climate activist, and the youngest member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, at 20 years old.
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Tonya Gayle is an environmental justice advocate and executive director of Green City Force, an organization creating a model corps in New York City that enlists and trains people from low-income housing communities to help build a more just and equitable economy.
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Jacqueline Peterson is the founder and executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership, “connecting Black communities facing climate injustice with resources to realize their visions for change.”
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Peggy Shepherd is the executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, New York City’s first environmental justice organization, which she co-founded in 1988 with two other advocates—Vernice Miller-Travis and Chuck Sutton—who realized that their West Harlem neighborhood was a target for toxic pollution.
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Beverly L. Wright, PhD is the founder and Executive Director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and Member, White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council
Climate Injustice
US Ends Critical Investigation in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley | Human Rights Watch
Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina Principles of Environmental Justice
How 600 Years of Environmental Violence Is Still Harming Black Communities - Earthjustice
A Terrible Thing to Waste by Harriet A. Washington | Hachette Book Group
Community Engagement and Education
Support These Intersectional Environmental Organizations for Black History Month
National
Chicago
New York
SF/ Oakland
Food Security and Justice
Black Hemp Farmers, Cannabis Justice, and Demanding Reparations
Farming While Black - Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land
Freedom Farmers | Monica M. White | University of North Carolina Press
In 2022, Black farmers were persistently left behind from the USDA's loan system
‘Gaining Ground’ highlights Black farmers’ efforts to reclaim lost land | PBS News Weekend
Soil | Book by Camille T Dungy | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster
Urban Development
A history of redlining and the effects on green space allocation
“The term climate gentrification was coined by Harvard University researchers Jesse Keenan, Thomas Hill, and Anurag Gumber, who studied how elevation in neighborhoods in Miami was affecting property values due to sea level rise and flooding. The 2018 study found that the value of higher elevation property rose from 1971 to 2017 while that of lower elevation property declined.”
HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure Of Segregation And Economic Inequality
Racism has shaped public transit, and it’s riddled with inequities
Health and Climate
Racial Disparities in Climate Change-Related Health Effects in the United States - PMC
Climate Change and Health Equity: Key Questions and Answers | KFF
“Black people are 40% and 34% more likely than all other demographic groups to live in areas with the highest projected increases in extreme temperature-related deaths and the highest projected increases in childhood asthma diagnoses, respectively.”
“Black people are also 41 to 60% more likely than non-Black people to live in areas with the highest projected increases in premature death due to exposure to harmful particulate matter. The disproportionate exposure to extreme heat and poor air quality increases their risk of premature mortality.”
The Climate Gap and the Color Line — Racial Health Inequities and Climate Change
Low Lung Cancer Screening Rates in Black Communities Highlighted - The Washington Informer
Heart Disease facts CDC (African American with highest percentage)
