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 Liberty
Hill Foundation's motto is change, not charity.
We support grassroots, social change organizing throughout L.A. County.
The Foundation's grant recipients are at the cutting-edge of building
a new Los Angeles by finding innovative, community-based solutions to
a range of social justice issues including poverty, affordable housing,
education reform, environmental justice, and youth violence.
What
is Environmental Justice?
Latino children dying of brain cancer or missing so much school from asthma
attacks that they fall hopelessly behind…
Working-class fathers reduced to tears in public meetings and losing their
hair from worry and anxiety over sick children…
Young women afraid to fall asleep because of nightmares where the cancer
finally shows up, viciously attacking their reproductive organs…
African-American grandmothers not being able to sleep at all because of
jets flying so low over their apartments that they wave to the pilots…
 These
are a few of the faces of environmental injustice - the recognition
that people of color, particularly low-income people - are more
likely to live near hazardous waste sites and factories with dangerous
emissions. The reason? They have less political power to fight back
than their middle-class or wealthy Anglo neighbors.
For years, polluting companies sited toxic
dumps and factories in immigrant and poor communities with no consequences.
But over the past decade, a new movement for "environmental justice"
has sprung up. Initially an angry response by minority leaders to
mainstream environmental groups' lack of attention to urban hazards,
new voices have begun to reshape environmentalism nationally and
internationally.
- From 1970 to 1990, the risk of living
next to a toxic waste facility increased slightly for everyone
in L.A. But for people of color, the risk increased three-fold.
- Lifetime cancer risk is much higher for
Latinos, African-Americans and Asians. Seventy of 100,000 African-Americans
at the lowest income levels will contract cancer, compared to
57 Anglos.
- Of the more than $200 billion given to
charity in 2001, only 3% went to environmental organizations and
only a tenth of that goes to environmental justice work.
- More than 70% of the people involved
in Liberty Hill-funded environmental justice groups had never
participated in their community. Environmental justice builds
strong and informed civic involvement.
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L.A.'s Industrial
History Coming Back to Haunt Us
 Los
Angeles is a global trading and manufacturing center, resulting
in the proliferation of toxic chemicals into the environment. These
compounds vary widely in toxicity, concentration at various times
and places, and effect on human health, but many play a role in
diseases of the respiratory and immune systems, cancer, infertility,
birth defects and many other health problems.
Government regulations and mitigation efforts
have often provided an inadequate response to protect public health,
in part because they tend to treat each hazard individually instead
of considering the reality that people and communities experience
cumulative exposures to many different hazardous pollutants over
time.
- L.A. is the most densely industrial region
of the country with 20,000 factories.
- About 70% of the cancer risk associated
with Southern California air comes from compounds released by
diesel-powered trucks, buses and cars. Diesel engines in large
trucks produce about 24 tons of soot daily in Los Angeles, Orange,
San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.
(Source: "Every Breath You Take…": The Demographics of Toxic Air Releases
in Southern California by James L. Sadd, Manuel Pastor, Jr., J. Thomas
Boer, Lori D. Snyder)
Affecting the Most Vulnerable Among
Us – Children
Because of their smaller body weight and
surface, children are highly vulnerable to carcinogens in their
environment. For example, the National Association of Physicians
for the Environment has stated that children are more vulnerable
to the effects of air pollution than adults. And African-American
children have been found to be four times more likely to die from
asthma compared to Caucasian children (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report, May 3, 1996), an example of how environmental injustice
hurts the most vulnerable among us.
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Disproportionate
Exposure To Toxics
 While
research has demonstrated that long-term chronic exposures to hazardous
pollutants pose health risks for all the residents of Los Angeles
County, the burden of these environmental exposures and associated
health risks falls most heavily on African-Americans, Latinos and
Asian Pacific Islanders, in part due to their residential proximity
to hazardous facilities and transportation emission sources.
- Studies indicate that people of color
in L.A. County are 2-3 times more likely to live near a hazardous
waste facility than Anglos.
- Using census tract data, researchers
have identified a "siting bias." Toxic facilities are usually
located in a neighborhood after it has become predominantly people
of color.
(Source: "Every Breath You Take…": The Demographics
of Toxic Air Releases in Southern California by James L. Sadd, Manuel
Pastor, Jr., J. Thomas Boer, Lori D. Snyder)
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Children Are The Most
Vulnerable  Because
of their smaller body weight and surface, children are highly vulnerable
to carcinogens in their environment. For example, the National Association
of Physicians for the Environment has stated that children are more vulnerable
to the effects of air pollution than adults. And African-American children
have been found to be four timesmore likely to die from asthma compared
to Caucasian children (Source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,
May 3, 1996), an example of how environmental injustice hurts the most
vulnerable among us.
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Environmental Justice
Case Study
More
than 27 children have died of cancer in 10 years. Several teachers
have contracted cancer; many more have miscarried. Neighbors have
asthma, stomach ailments and stillborn children. The common thread?
They all attended, worked at or lived near SUVA Elementary School
in Bell Gardens…Click here
to read more.
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A Regional Approach That
Works  In
1998 The California
Endowment funded a unique multi-year environmental justice collaborative
through Liberty Hill that marries academics with activism and seed funding.
The collaborative has pushed the fast-forward button on the credibility
of the environmental justice movement.
Seed
funding fuels the movement
Liberty Hill was the first funder of environmental justice work
in Los Angeles, helping jump-start Communities
for a Better Environment's (CBE) work in L.A. to bring environmental
organizing into communities of color. Since that time, dozens of
local groups have sprung up to take on incinerators, toxic dumps
and polluting factories in their neighborhoods. And Liberty Hill
has kept pace, nurturing and empowering these groups with a total
of $1.5 million through our Environmental
Justice Fund.
Technical
assistance connects activists
Liberty Hill also has a technical
assistance program dedicated to environmental groups that not
only provides needed legal and scientific expertise to local activists,
but has brought them together to take on regional and statewide
policies and laws. Together they have won a 75% reduction of the
allowable cancer risk from toxic emissions, changed the criteria
for measuring the impacts of multiple pollutants and put the brakes
on storing nuclear waste in municipal dumps.
 Sophisticated
research makes the case
Through rigorous scholarship, UC
Santa Cruz and Occidental
professors Manuel Pastor and Jim Sadd have squarely debunked the argument
that there is no correlation between race and toxic siting. Working hand-in-hand
with Liberty Hill and CBE's legal advocacy, community organizing and public
education, they have gotten the truth out - that communities of color
are purposely targeted for toxic sites.
Community
organizing builds power in low-income communities
Communities for
a Better Environment provides community organizing expertise
to dozens of local environmental justice struggles, helping them
to win victories that add up to regional impact. For example, televangelist
Pat Robertson's plans to open an oil refinery in south L.A. were
foiled by committed members of CBE. Robertson had convinced politicians
and regulators that his refinery wouldn't contribute to the bad
air quality in an already over-polluted area. But when he ran up
against a smart, organized community, his plan went to pieces and
the plan was abandoned.
The
collaborative has changed public perception and won substantive public
policy victories:
The watershed years of 1987 to 1993 first surfaced many environmental
justice issues. But as late as 1997, when the Southern California
Air Quality Management District was asked how they were dealing
with environmental justice issues, the agency said the problem didn't
exist.
 In
2002 the most influential agencies have all adopted environmental justice
policies. Activists warn that these policies are merely procedural and
the challenge is to make sure that procedure filters down to real policies.
According to Carlos Porras from Communities
for a Better Environment, "The potential for the future is the recognition
by public agencies of the special vulnerabilities of low-income people
and communities of color."
He continues, "L.A. is
a model for the rest of the country." For example, the California
EPA held its first EJ meetings in L.A. specifically because of the
strength of organizing going on here.
Joe Lyou, from the California
League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, is also looking
forward to the future: "It's inevitable that locally based campaigns
will lead to larger policy issues - the problems and frustrations
with government agencies in L.A. are shared across the state. The
refineries, factories and freeways just have different names." Common
problems and shared "opponents" - it sounds like a social movement
to us!
 Environmental
Protection Agency Rules 1401/1402
How many cancer deaths per million people due to toxic air contaminants
are you willing to accept? You probably would say zero, so environmental
activists thought they were being reasonable when they asked the
South Coast Air Quality Management District to set the acceptable
level at one per million.
What they got was 25 per
million. While that might feel like a defeat it's a whole lot better
than 100 per million. That's been the level since 1994, when activists
first tried to lower the acceptable risk.
What's the difference between
1994 and now? More than 500 educated and mobilized people from a
broad cross-section of community groups who came to the meeting
and testified. According to Carlos Porras, getting to 25 per million
is one of the most groundbreaking policy victories in recent years
because it reduced the risk of cancer by 75% and, "We forced an
agency to go back and change its rules and that almost never happens."
Click here
for background on the "Building a Regional Community-Based
Voice for Environmental Health Collaborative" between Liberty
Hill Foundation, Communities
for a Better Environment and Occidental
College, and generously funded by The
California Endowment.
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Solutions From The
Grassroots Up
Los Angeles is home to many environmental justice heroes. Read
about Cynthia
Babich, who has saved her neighbors from DDT, Deborah
Milligan, who is cleaning up her Athens Park neighborhood, or
Carlos
Porras, one of the most respected environmental justice leaders
in the nation.
Some Organizations Contributing to
the Environmental Justice Movement
Communities for a Better Environment
Environmental
Justice Resource Center
Environmental
and Land Use Law Center
Environment Now
Or read more about grant recipients of Liberty Hill’s Environmental
Justice Fund.
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