The year that was 2020 seemed to reveal — to a shocking degree — the structural injustices and ecological vulnerabilities that activists, researchers, and ordinary citizens have been trying to bring attention to for generations. 2020 was…a year. Like everyone else we’re still processing what the events of the past 12 months mean. But we […]
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From the Headlines
HAZMAT for Covid relief: A COVID-19 relief bill that passed the Michigan Legislature contains a controversial provision to allow hazardous materials to pass over the Ambassador Bridge, including: “flammable gases,” “poisonous gases,” “spontaneously combustible materials,” “dangerous when wet materials,” “poisonous materials” and “corrosive materials”. State Sen. Stephanie Chang penned an editorial against the measure, noting […]
Posted inSolutions
Solving Detroit’s most intractable environmental justice issues
Activists combine education, pressure, and the law to clean up communities and achieve environmental justice. Here’s a look at the tactics behind some of their wins and ongoing struggles. In July, Michigan regulators approved a nearly ten-fold expansion of a US Ecology hazardous waste storage facility in a largely low income neighborhood with a high […]
Posted inCommunity
These Detroit environmental nonprofits supported the community in a tough year. Now it’s your turn to support them.
While green education and action continued in 2020, priorities shifted to alleviating hunger, housing and job instability, utility burdens, and loss of childcare in environmental justice communities. When the pandemic hit Detroit last spring, environmental organizations pivoted to respond. Many threw away their work plans, they joined in efforts of mutual aid to help their […]
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From the Headlines
Details, please: Following Detroit’s decision to issue a moratorium on water shutoffs through at least 2022, activists continue to suss out precisely what this means moving forward. “We’ll be looking for metrics and demonstrated codification of this commitment,” said Monica Lewis-Patrick, President and CEO of the water rights group We the People of Detroit. And former Detroit Director of Health Abdul El Sayed said […]
Posted inAccountability
Can Detroit’s Joe Louis Greenway avoid gentrification?
Paul Draus was doing a research project comparing Detroit and Berlin when he hit upon the concept of utilizing green spaces to benefit communities that have been impacted by system racism. He began calling the idea ” green reparations.” “I got interested in how former industrial spaces could be turned into publicly accessible green spaces,” […]
Posted inAccountability
PFAS contaminates groundwater, sewage sludge in Metro Detroit. Should we be alarmed?
State regulators have shown little concern for astronomical PFAS measurements in local groundwater and sewage effluent. Activists see it differently. In August of 2018, a video captured a geyser of frothy bubbles pouring out of a manhole and flowing onto the roadway for several days on Schaefer Highway near I-75 — perhaps the first “foam […]
Posted inSolutions
How environmental activists and attorneys – not politicians – beat Detroit’s toxic trash incinerator
After decades of activism, a citizen lawsuit closed the incinerator in a matter of months. The air pollution that made it difficult for residents at Detroit’s Robert Holmes Manor senior home to breathe inspired a poem from Linda Crittle, one of the apartment building’s residents. The fumes from vehicles on nearby Interstate 75 were one […]
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From the Headlines
A stop to shutoffs: Detroit’s moratorium on water shutoffs will extend through the end of 2022, with the ultimate goal of ending them in perpetuity. The city will “work on a permanent water affordability solution at the state and federal levels,” said Gary Brown, director of the city’s water and sewerage department said Tuesday. But Brown noted moratoriums do not […]
Posted inCommunity
Profiles in the fight for environmental justice: Jeremy Orr
Jeremy Orr was working on a paper mill cleanup project as a community activist and organizer when he realized two things: that a person’s environment dictates their physical wellbeing and health, and that a lack of representation in decisions on the environment affecting Black and brown people was pervasive. When Jeremy Orr was in college, […]