Breast cancer rates are skyrocketing in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood. Asthma inhalers are more common than schoolbooks in West Oakland schools. Toxic factories are poisoning the skies of Oakland’s Chinatown. In the Bay Area, communities of color have paid the price for polluters’ excesses. Around the globe, it’s the same story.
But last month in San Francisco, we launched a new vision for our cities and communities — a vision that highlights the powerful environmental solutions that are blossoming from the urban grassroots. The occasion was North America’s first-ever United Nations World Environment Day hosted by SF last month. This year’s theme was “Green Cities: Where the Future Lives.” But you can’t speak about green cities without talking about the large numbers of brown folks who live in them. The UN and mayors from the world’s 50 biggest cities attending this year’s conference are catching up to what we’ve been saying for years — environmentalism includes everyone. And our cities are ground zero for both the steep costs of pollution and a visionary hope for the future.
To put the spotlight on our communities, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBCHR) volunteered to coordinate a Social Equity Track, a series of events that highlighted environmental problems and solutions for low-income people. This year’s World Environment Day was a call to action for the creation of green cities all over the globe.
It was also a forum for asking some hard questions. As the new green economy springs to life, will we live in eco-equity or eco-apartheid? Will clean and green business flourish only in the rich, white parts of town? Will our kids be left to deal with the toxic wastes of polluting industries, the life-threatening diseases that decimate polluted communities, and the crushing lack of economic opportunity as the old polluting economy goes bust?
Not on our watch. We dream of cities in which our children can grow and thrive in clean, economically strong, healthy environments. We see a future in which ecological equity and sustainable development strengthen communities of color in the Bay Area and around the world.
To turn that dream into reality, EBCHR is helping to weave together solutions to the challenges that urban communities face. At the World Environmental Day, the Center launched Reclaim The Future (RTF), a bold new initiative to build a constituency that can transform urban America by creating jobs, reducing violence and honoring the Earth. RTF will engage grassroots leaders, environmental activists, labor unions and socially responsible business leaders. It will include youth, artists and faith leaders.
Our founding slogan is: “Green Jobs, Not Jails.” The path to peaceful streets and true community safety is not more prisons, but ecologically sound economic development. RTF will push for the creation of public-private-community partnerships that promote healthy communities. We envision eco-industrial parks on once blighted land. We envision nonprofit “Solution Centers” training young urban workers in new technologies and ancient wisdom. We envision those Centers sprouting up everywhere and driving down crime in every police precinct.
We dream of seeing urban youth creating zero-pollution products, healing the land and harvesting the sun. We dream of a day when struggling cities like Oakland, Watts, Detroit and Newark blossom as Silicon Valleys of green capital. RTF will help build the pathway from the present “grey economy” to the future “green economy.” We want California and the United States — the world leaders in locking people up — to become the world leaders in lifting people up.
Our key partners in the Social Equity Track included leading environmental justice organizations such as the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Bayview Hunter’s Point Advocates, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, Communities for a Better Environment, Urban Habitat, and many more, joining with groups like Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange and Amazon Watch. We are proud to be working with such stalwart groups. A crucial milestone at UN World Environment Day was the support and collaboration received from the Mayor’s office, SF Board of Supervisors and SF Dept. of the Environment. Collectively, we will help create peaceful, healthy communities in the new Millennium. And, together, we’ve put environmental justice on the world stage at UN World Environment Day.
—Van Jones is Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Letters to the Editor
Thanks so much for installing the “Nonprofit News” section into Common Ground. This will be a great resource for Bay Area nonprofits. I’m planning to find out more about the Family Support Services tutoring program, just because I didn’t realize there was such a program available for kids. —Tracy Held, Bay Nature Magazine, Berkeley
I really enjoyed the “Dark Was the Night” article written by Marc Silber in the April 2005 issue. It was well written and deeply insightful. Such articles are indeed relevant to CG’s mission to help us live healthier lives and create a sustainable society by supporting and giving voice to individuals, such as Marc Silber, and organizations who truly embody the ideals of conscious, socially and environmentally aware living. —Thomas Bertka, San Jose