Residents Seek Environmental Justice in GA By Suing City for Decades of Sewage Dumping

from Earthjustice

A group of African-American citizens filed suit today against their city government in Rochelle, GA, for discharging the city’s raw sewage onto their properties.

White residents of Rochelle live on the south side of the city’s railroad track. African-Americans live on the other side. The city has repaired and updated its sewage pipes on the south side of the tracks but has let critically needed repairs lag on the north side. As a result, untreated sewage backs up and overflows into the streets and the yards of residents on the north side of the tracks.

Honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy in the Environmental Justice Movement

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

Environmentalism certainly isn’t the first topic that comes to mind when reflecting on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. It can be said that in the United States, the Civil Rights movement predated the environmental movement by about a decade. Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in addition to his many other achievements, helped “plant the seeds” for what would become our nation’s now-thriving “environmental justice movement.”

Dr. King’s firm stance against militarism and the military industrial complex, the biggest polluters on the planet, was unwavering throughout his years of activism.

Trans & Womyn’s Action Camp (TWAC) South Florida April 3rd-8th, 2013

TWAC is an action camp for folks who identify as female, trans-gender, trans-sexual, gender queer and gender variant. This is an intentional space to share campaign information and direct action skills in a conscientious, supportive, empowering and encouraging environment for voices often marginalized, and then to take collective action together at the end of the camp!  

From the Dine’ women defending their native lands against destructive mining, to the eco-feminists defending forests from logging and developing; from the immigrant and trans women defending their lives from the prison industrial complex, to the mothers and midwifes defending their bodies and babies from the patriarchal medical establishment, women and trans folks have always been powerhouses of political action, and TWAC aims to support this in a safe(r) environment.

Idle No More International Day of Action – January 28, 2013

Thousands have attended round dances and rallies, like this one in Vancouver, B.C., in the month since Idle No More hit the political scene. (Photo by David P. Ball)

Indigenous Resurgence Explodes with Idle No More Day of Action

Idle No More grassroots founders and organizers from across Canada, in solidarity with common causes – a new initiative bringing together social justice, environmental, labour and other Activist Groups…

– UNITED we are planning IDLE NO MORE WORLD DAY OF ACTION on January 28th, 2013 #J28.

This day of action will peacefully protest attacks on Democracy, Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights and Environmental Protections when Canadian MPs return to the House of Commons on January 28th. As a grassroots movement, clearly no political organization speaks for Idle No More. This movement is of the people… For The People! #IDLENOMOREFTP

The Vision of IDLE NO MORE revolves around Indigenous Ways of Knowing rooted in Indigenous Sovereignty to protect water, air, land and all creation for future generations.

The Conservative government bills beginning with Bill C-45 threaten Treaties and this Indigenous Vision of Sovereignty.

The Goal of the movement is education and the revitalization of Indigenous peoples through Awareness and Empowerment.  IDLE NO MORE has successfully encouraged knowledge sharing of Indigenous Sovereignty and Environmental Protections. 

This message has been heard around the world and the world is watching how Canada responds to the message sent by many INM Supporters.

INM urges the government of Canada to repeal all legislation; which violates Treaties, Indigenous Sovereignty and subsequently Environmental Protections of land and water.

INM is grateful to many leaders who have supported this vision and the movement of the grassroots people.

“The Treaties are the last line of defense to protect water and lands from destruction,” stated Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs.

Please watch and share this video of the Idle No More action in Toronto, and organize events in solidarity with Idle No More within your local collectives:

Road to new biotech development in Florida stopped

Occupied gopher tortoise burrow in the path of Hawkeye’s biotech plans, picture taken during Everglades EF! site survey

Last month, activists with the Everglades Earth First! group joined forces with residents of Limestone Creek, a historic Black community, near the city of Jupiter. This week the alliance succeeded in defeating a plan related to Scripps Biotech in Palm Beach County. Following a County Commission hearing on Tuesday, the road proposed by Hawkeye Jupiter LLC to go through a neighborhood leading to 82 acres of endangered species habitat was voted down. 

The plan for plowing through the quiet Limestone Creek neighborhood of Kennedy Estates and paving over the nearby pine flatwoods for more biotech laboratories was the latest in a failing attempt to establish a “biotech hub” in the south Florida region.

The effort to expand biotech venture capitalist investment in the area has been fought since its initial inception in 2004, when then-Governor Jeb Bush unloaded hundreds of millions in corporate welfare to entice the industry. A long journey of agency whistle-blowing, environmental lawsuits, protests and civil disobedience actions has kept their progress at bay. Despite the compromise deals of several Big Green NGOs, grassroots resistance has kept the “biotech hub” from breaking new ground on large undeveloped tracts of land, as initially desired.  

Filthy War Machine: US Military Industrial Complex, World’s Worst Polluter

The United States Military, the Pentagon. Most fossil fuel burned, most greenhouse gases released, biggest source of Mercury released into the environment, biggest source of radiological (Uranium, Plutonium) releases and the biggest amount of HAZMAT materials released into rivers, lakes, oceans and the environment and the biggest discarder of medical waste pollution — worldwide.

Retired professor and prolific author Barry Sanders spent a long time looking closely at the US Military where others hadn’t: he looked at the environmental effects and the sheer devastation that the military leaves in its wake. He compiled a frightening collection of numbers into his book The Green Zone. The Earth First! Journal interviewed him back in 2009. The devastation continues. Tracy Turner relates in today’s OpEdNews article, Army That Poisons Together Metastasizes Together — Cruelly and Unusually, the ecological damage of the world’s most destructive force…

US Military pollution gets little notice, as the Pentagon is exempt from the US EPA-reporting criteria. Lead from firing ranges, Uranium from so-called “Depleted” Uranium munitions pollute land, lakes and streams and oceans both domestically and overseas; but the US military is exempt from US EPA Superfund regulations.