With the goal to mobilize students to help fight against environmental racism on Howard's campus, the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), PEAC (Political Educational Action Committee) and Campus Climate Challenge gathered students and organization leaders to open their ears to the fast-growing movement taking place in minority communities.
Former Amnesty International President Chigozie Onyema says PEAC came about after the chapter of Amnesty International on campus was dissolved.
"They simply deal with the human rights aspect," he said. PEAC, on the other hand, does take political standpoints on different issues.
"This is a modern day civil rights issue," said guest speaker Shelia Holt-Orsted, an environmental activist and survivor of environmental racism. "It is up to your generation to confront this issue and to stop it. We cannot depend on our white elected officials to [help]."
Environmental justice, according to the EJCC, is the fair treatment of people of all races and economic groups in the implementation and enforcement of environmental protection laws.
The United States emits one quarter of the world's gases that cause global warming.
About 80 percent of minorities, especially African Americans, live in U.S. regions that have substandard air quality due to increasing climate changes or global warming.
Holt-Orsted, who has been featured in stories by the Washington Post, The New York Times and Essence magazine, told of her experience in Dickson County, Tenn. where a landfill built 57 feet from her family's farm had been poisoning the water that her family used.
After returning to Dickson in 2002 for Christmas, she learned that two of her cousins had cancer as well as her father, Harry Holt, who was diagnosed around the time of her visit. Holt died in January 2003 at age 67.
Worried about her own health, Holt-Orsted scheduled a physical and discovered she had breast cancer and that her cancer had been in remission for four years.
Kari Fulton, an EJCC program associate and Howard student said she invited organizations on campus such as Ubiquity and PEAC, formerly the HU Chapter of Amnesty International. The Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. was invited because of what the fraternity stands for within the black community and also because she hopes they will take a stand in making awareness on the issue of environmental justice.
"A change is here," Fulton said. "As you can see, California is really burning right now."
Very few students showed up for the two-hour long brainstorming and informational session, but members of the audience like human ecologist and public school teacher Tarik A. Oduno fostered a sense of urgency within other audience listeners.
"The key to changing environmental racism is changing environmental policy," Oduno said.
Holt-Orsted and her family filed a lawsuit against Dickson County in 2003 saying that they were victims of discrimination because there water was not inspected for the high levels of trichloroethylene, or TCE - a cancer causing chemical used to degrease metal.
The suit also said Holt-Orsted's family was not properly notified that the water was too toxic to drink or use. "It was not what I was eating," Holt-Orsted said.
Prior to discovering her cancer, she was a personal trainer, taught aerobic classes and helped with basketball leagues. Letters that the Holt-Orsted family received from Dickson County stated that the Holt's well water would not affect their health and that "the water was a good quality."
Holt-Orsted found that the toxicity of TCE in their water was 160 times the limit for drinkable water.
In 2000, the Holt family was warned by Dickson County not to drink the water.
Holt-Orsted had her left breast removed due to the cancer. The defendants from Dickson County denied that there was any negligence or that the Holts were victims of environmental racism.
Oduno says that it will take a team effort to tackle the environmental justice issue efficiently.
"Two roads are better than one," Oduno said. "Allow people to work in the area of their gifting. Individual efforts will grow into a collective level."
Oduno, who gave credit to journalists, sociologists and policy makers for doing their part to push the environmental justice movement, also said that scientists are important to this movement.
"Go after chemists. We have to have people who are knowledgeable, conscientious," Oduno said. "We can fight for our rights, our education and everything. But if you don't have your health, I tell you from experience, nothing else matters," Holt-Orsted said.
"We've had an overwhelming amount of support," Fulton said. "We are asking people to gather their groups together." Fulton made note of Power Shift 2007, the first national conference for youth to address climate change, which will be held at the University of Maryland College Park from Nov. 2 to Nov. 5.
So far, Fulton reports, 3,600 people have registered for the conference.
Onyema says that PEAC is really pushing for students to get involved with the conference.
PEAC plans on having a similar event drawing attention to the issue of environmental racism next semester.
As of now, PEAC has other areas of concerns to focus on. "We have several issues dealing with Africa," Onyema said. Included is the "Scramble For Africa" lecture series.
Also this semester, he says that PEAC will be focusing on forms of structural violence such as hunger, poverty and the health care deficit amongst certain populations of people.
