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Green Relief and Reconstruction

By Jim Vallette, AlterNet. Posted September 26, 2005.


Contrary to the Bush Administration's plans, a network of social justice and environmental groups is working to build a green Gulf Coast.
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Decades of environmental injustice are on global display in the Gulf Coast's toxic floodwaters, but a more hopeful vision is coming together. A network of community leaders and academics -- which has long demanded a change in the region's political and industrial fabric -- is finding a more receptive audience.

The environmental justice movement is rising to the occasion. It is demonstrating the expertise, capacity and power to implement our common dreams.

Eco-friendly companies, social justice groups and concerned professionals are forging a nascent "Green Relief" movement that is already delivering results on the ground, working to replace today's snapshots of oil-soaked abandon with visions of locally-crafted communities bustling with bike paths, sidewalks, lots of green space, healthy housing, and powered by clean energy.

Organic root crop growers in Maine are gathering a truckload of beets and potatoes. Organic cereal makers are shipping hundreds of thousands of boxes to shelters. On the ground right now is the Veggie Van organization, which is delivering biodiesel fuel and generators in the impact zone, and organizing a fleet for ship-borne relief. Others are compiling data on the sweep of toxic pollution that is accompanying Katrina's floodwaters, and monitoring what the EPA is and is not doing.

Alongside this emergency response, top writers, speakers and politicians have poured their hearts into visionary expressions of ecology and justice. Organizations like the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus are joining forces with environmentalists and social justice organizations to present an alternative to the federal government's business-as-usual approach.

But ideas can turn into more hot air unless we abandon our tendency for competitive segmentation and duplication. The environmental justice movement provides us with principles behind which the rest of us can gather, and then implement our collective expertise.

Through unity and resolve, we can help the dislocated people of the Gulf Coast reconnect with their home communities, with inspiration, empowerment and a healthy future.

A framework of environmentally friendly and safe communities designed by today's evacuees stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration's grim response. The federal government's delayed and paltry response to Katrina harmed tens of thousands of victims and now promises a Halliburton-laden, heavy-handed reconstruction, perhaps with some token millions tossed in the direction of those organizations with whom the government is most comfortable.

As green organizations move from rhetoric to implementation they can choose to either join the Bush money train, go it alone, or work with the "Green Relief" coalition. They can either be party to a system that rewards corruption with pork, or to a movement and process that comes from the people of New Orleans, Bay St. Louis, Pascagoula, Venice, in their choices and their needs.

Business-as-usual ineptitude and callousness compounded this disaster. Long before Hurricane Katrina tore through the heart and soul of this region, deeply rooted communities bore witness to other seemingly intractable foes. State and federal collusion between government officials and petrochemical corporations covered the state with a toxic gumbo during a century of intense oil-fueled industrialization.

Local organizations, many of them faith-based, banded together and sparked a powerful global movement for environmental justice in the 1980s. Now many of these battle-tested leaders are evacuees of the worst human-made disaster since 1984, when Union Carbide's methyl isocynate gas cloud killed over 18,000 people in Bhopal, India.

The movement's spirit and resolve is one of the shining lights over the post-Katrina landscape. Leaders from New Orleans, like Dr. Beverley Wright, whose resource center at Dillard University fell victim to nine feet of floodwater, are now organizers for environmentally friendly and equitable relief and reconstruction.

Donele Wilkins, an environmental justice leader from Detroit who worked with evacuees in Houston, says her community is finding a more receptive audience. "We've been marginalized and ignored at best for speaking out about these issues for years. I don't think people thought we were nuts, but maybe that we were just crying in the wind, maybe that we were a little extreme. This is our time to stand up and be counted."

The environmental justice framework for sustainable relief and development is supported by several pillars:

  • Unity. "This is a time to work together," Wilkins says. "Let's make this right. We can share ideas, resources, and labor, and together, really restore our community. If we don't, then shame on us."

Digg!

Jim Vallette is research director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

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An Opportunity
Posted by: Urstrly on Sep 27, 2005 4:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This would seem to be the time for the environmental movement to prove it is more than an elitist white cabal, capable of getting out of its head and into the lives of the poor and people of color. With all due respect, posts like this reinforce my stereotype of lifeless wonkiness.

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Protest the environment and everything else.
Posted by: Lincoln fan on Sep 27, 2005 5:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The reason that it is almost impossible to move forward on environmental improvements is that it is bad for business. Good for people is not as important as bad for business. The reason that the health of business comes before the health of people is that business owns the government lock, stock, and barrel. Until the voters sieze control our elected officials of both parties will do the bidding of campaign contributors. Why are both parties moving to the right? Because business wants to take us back to the good old days before Roosevelt. Let's get rid of the unions - Done. Let's get rid of the forty hour week - Done. Let's get rid of Social Security - Working on it. How about dumping the child labor laws - Maybe next year. If you really want to take back the government - join the revolution

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agitator church and state
Posted by: eileenflmng on Sep 27, 2005 6:34 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
UNITY and RESOLVE coupled with THE WILL to DO SOMETHING will change the world as we now know it.

Bush's promise to reimburse faith based organizations that offered comfort, food, water and shelter which is exactly what they are suppose to do is another idiotic and illogical response to the facts on the ground.
To reimburse a church for doing its very job: caring for the poor and oppressed is anathema to the gospel.

American Christianity at this moment is flabby and irrelevant because it lacks Unity, Resolve and The Will to Do Something!
But opportunity is a knockin'...
Why don't those who claim to be Christians: DO IT!

By unifying the churches in those communities that now have evacuees to build Habitat for Humanity homes we, who claim to be Christian can change many things:
1. make real Christ's promise: "Blessed are the poor: They shall be comforted"
2. put the evacuees to work immediately in building their own homes
3. with volunteers who get in the 'dirt' with the poor and with donations of materials we do not pass this particular debt onto the next generation.
4. Christianity will be visible, for Christianity is about the right ACTION and has been corrupted by those who claim to follow Christ, but have chosen instead to judge others and cast blame.

Real Christianity seeks not to find fault or judge any other, but responds by DOING SOMETHING with love when we are faced with the pain of any other.

May God Bless America indeed with real Christianity

www.wearewideawake.org

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A Brief note Re; another site
Posted by: placid on Sep 27, 2005 11:36 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This insensitive administration seems to care little for people unless you are well connected,wealthy and reactionary. Another site to check in with is http;//www.communitylaborunited.net It truly seems for New Orleans and the the other Gulf areas to rebuild, and not shove people out that are not in the economic "Bush -approved" social strata "grassroots organizations are going to need to connect to make anything happen. There is a wonderful story at the site about a woman named momma D and a link to an article in the Times-Picayune. Check it out. Mary Basombrio

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