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Environmental Health

Commentary: From the Ground Up: Solutions for Health Equity

How a New Partnership Can Overcome COVID-19 Racial Disparities

By James Head

From the early days of the pandemic, as stark disparities in low-income Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities in hospitalization, infection, and death rates began to emerge, we knew that this unprecedented health crisis called for an unprecedented solution. Now, more than 18 months later, the crisis has not only persisted, but became even more complex. For example, compulsory vaccination in schools, universities and indoor public spaces remains a contested issue, despite the highly contagious Delta variants making a case for the vaccine. Vaccine equity is also proving to be a serious racial justice issue, even as the pandemic spirals with these new ever-morphing variants. A look at the numbers makes that crystal clear.

The Earth Is the Only One Telling the Truth

"The Kingdom of Heaven in a Single Blade of Grass. 
An excerpt from The Earth Is the Only One Telling the Truth by Kelly Curry

...the apocalypse has already happened then that means that we are living in the beginning...
THIS is the beginning.  We are standing in the Garden of Eden... again...

“Kelly, everything with you is just so intense...there are problems in the world...there have always been problems in the world, you can’t force anyone to change and you can’t fix everything.”

He is full of frustration. His brow is furrowed almost in disbelief...there is a profound sense of worry, concern and loss.

“Where is my Kelly the one who told me not to worry so much...that my joy was all the world needed?”

Right now I’m seeing his pure love and I’m seeing myself through his eyes.

I can’t push back because… he’s right.

For the first time ever I can feel the tension and  the weight of the burden of being who I have been my entire life... someone who sees what’s broken in our society and feels a need to fix it. The weight of that, the sorrow is unsustainable, and that deep sorrow is not good for me and I know it.

As he looks at me I can hear my mother’s voice—from when i was a kid.—when she started worrying about me. ”Baby, you gotta to learn how to work with joy…”

Earth Day Is Here. Mother Earth Is Pissed. We Need to Get Busy.

by Jess Clarke

It’s tempting to blame Donald Trump for the fact that the US was woefully underprepared for this pandemic, but getting caught up in a manufactured made-for-TV surreality show could kill us. Our most urgent task is to reimagine our social order, our economic policies and our relationship to planet earth.

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Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River Fire — 50 Years Later

By Laife Janovyak

©2018 Lisa Meranti. Yoga at the mouth of the river on lake Erie.50 years ago, the Cuyahoga River suffered its final industrial river fire, and the nation read about it in Time Magazine. Out of this depiction, a deeply negative regional identity was born, one that stubbornly clings to Cleveland regardless of its historical half-truthfulness. Despite the reality that the same thing happens on industrial rivers elsewhere then and now, and that the blaze was nowhere near the first or even the largest fire to burn on the Cuyahoga, Cleveland became known as “the mistake on the lake.”

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Amazon Delivers Low-Paying Jobs and Dirty Air to California

By Jess Clarke

Bloomington residents and environmental advocates gather outside the San Bernardino County Government Center in February 2018 to protest warehouse development plans. ©2018 Anthony Victoria

Amazon, long known for its low pay and bad labor practices at the company’s fulfillment centers, is starting to feel some heat. One of the largest trade unions in the United Kingdom, GMB, is staging ongoing protests, the SEIU has launched a “Warehouse Workers Stand Up” campaign in New Jersey and Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced the Stop BEZOS Act. The legislation would recapture the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars provided by the US Treasury for health coverage, food stamps and other government payments to Amazon workers.

Solidarity to Solutions: San Bernardino Groups Take on Warehouse Pollution

Graciela Larios ©2018 Anthony Victoria

"These diesel trucks are going to go in our neighborhoods, regardless if you're in Bloomington, Jurupa Valley, Fontana. These warehouses are going everywhere.... The beauty of this environmental justice struggle that we’re all fighting is that we’re not alone.... the beauty of it is getting the people together. We don't got money, but we got that people power." Chela Larios

Transcript

Jess Clarke: Please welcome Chela from the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice from the Inland Empire. Coming at you from San Francisco Sol2Sol convening in the face of Jerry Brown’s West Coast world summit of climate inaction. Chela, what’s your full name?

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