November 21, 2009
UTNE READER

Environmental Justice For All

(Page 6 of 6)

Mar.-Apr. 2008
by Leyla Kokmen 
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While Jones takes the conversation to a national level, Majora Carter is focusing on empowerment in one community at a time. Her successes at Sustainable South Bronx include the creation of a 10-week program that offers South Bronx and other New York City residents hands-on training in brownfield remediation and ecological restoration. The organization has also raised $30 million for a bicycle and pedestrian greenway along the South Bronx waterfront that will provide both open space and economic development opportunities.

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As a result of those achievements, Carter gets calls from organizations across the country. In December she traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, to speak to residents, environmentalists, businesses, and students. She mentions exciting work being done by Chicago’s Blacks in Green collective, which aims to mobilize the African American community around environmental issues. Naomi Davis, the collective’s founder, told Chicago Public Radio in November that the group plans to develop environmental and economic opportunities—a “green village” with greenways, light re-manufacturing, ecotourism, and energy-efficient affordable housing—in one of Chicago’s most blighted areas.

Carter stresses that framing the environmental debate in terms of opportunities will engage the people who need the most help. It’s about investing in the green economy, creating jobs, and building spaces that aren’t environmentally challenged. It won’t be easy, she says. But it’s essential to dream big.

“It’s about sacrifice,” she says, “for something better and bigger than you could have possibly imagined.”

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