Air_of_Injustice
Click here to download PDF Air of Injustice: African Americans & Power Plant Pollution
The Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda has played a critical role in bringing together three powerful networks to examine the impact of air pollution from coal-fired power plants upon the African American community. The Black Leadership Forum, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice and Clear the Air share a keen interest in promoting responsible public policies protective of human health and the environment. Toward this end, these three organizations have come together in a collaborative effort to inform, educate and involve the African American community in the quest for comprehensive national solutions limiting excessive air emissions from power plants.
The African American community, including environmental justice advocates, is perceived as less influential when it comes to environmental issues. Mainstream organizations are often reluctant to collaborate, share, acknowledge and integrate the perspectives of People of Color. That all parties would benefit from such collaboration is clear. The current collaboration is unique and timely because it seeks to leverage the collective strength of three influential networks to build an equilateral triangle that includes traditional civil rights, environmental justice and mainstream environmental perspectives.
The environmental justice movement brings together all elements of the social justice movement, espousing a more holistic definition of environment that embraces public health, economic development, housing, energy and transportation as well as preservation of natural resources. Environment is defined as where we live, work, learn and play. As children of the larger civil rights movement, environmental justice advocates organize from the bottom up and seek to cultivate and empower community-based leadership. The African American community has a long history of struggle in pursuit of justice. Research, communication, technical expertise and strategic grassroots organizing fueled by moral imperative have resulted in the movement that transformed America.
With your support, we hope to demonstrate the efficacy of such collaboration in the effort to address air pollution from coal-fired power plants.