Green Relief and Reconstruction

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

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."

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

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