Help Put An End to Environmental Injustice

Many of us have been a NIMBY "Not In My Backyard" crusader at one time or another. As Americans we cherish the right to have our voices heard, and so when a dangerous or unpleasant development is proposed in our neighborhood we often stand up and fight. With luck, we run the projects out in hopes that they go somewhere else. But have you ever thought about where those projects do actually end up?

Unfortunately, often times these projects end up in the communities of the voiceless. Poor, underrepresented neighborhoods who lack the resources and political power to fight back against developments that damage quality of life and even pose potential health risks. Take for example the small primarily African-American communities in North Carolina whose air is tinged with the smell of pig excrement from factory farms. Or the parishes of St. James and St. John the Baptist whose factories, in 2014, released more carcinogens than 96% of the rest of the counties in the US.

The lack of equal protection from environmental hazards for poorer - usually minority - communities is called environmental injustice and it negatively affects the lives of millions. Americans - all of them - need tools to be able to fight developments that threaten to poison their water and blacken their lungs.

Luckily, Senator Cory Booker and U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz have introduced the Environmental Justice Act of 2017. The bill will force federal agencies to address these disparities and create legal protections against environmental injustice for vulnerable communities. It is a law that is direly needed in the Trump era when it seems like each day the current administration is weakening environmental protections.

If you believe that all Americans - not just the well off - deserve access to clean air and water, then please join more than 40 public health and environmental justice organizations and tell your representative to support the Environmental Justice Act. Together we can make America healthier for every American. Sign the petition and end environmental injustice.