On July 5, 2006, with the support of the County Sheriff’s department, workers began bulldozing the South Central Urban Farm in Los Angeles. The 14-acre plot was the largest urban farm in the United States: an immaculate accomplishment by 347 mostly-Latino families who had tilled the land from its former post-L.A. riot condition — a place of tire fires and sleeping drunks — to a place of agricultural opportunity for poor families.
According to developer Ralph Horowitz and District 9 Councilwoman Jan Perry, the farm was bulldozed because it wasn’t what the “community” needed. Instead, they argued the community needed soccer fields and storage warehouses. In cooperation with Juanita Tate, leader of the Concerned Citizens of South Central, they had raised $2.3 million in 2004 for a soccer field. Today, the former plant paradise is a clay field with white lines, with a Porta Potty for park users.
It must be a top-notch clay field if it cost $2.3 million. Right?
Wrong. Juanita Tate’s son was paid more than $250,000 for “real-estate expertise” for his “input” on the project, and it continues to remain in development more than six years after the farmers’ eviction.
So how’d such a special place of economic opportunity get bulldozed in what was
supposedly solidarity?
Horowitz sold the plot of land for $5,000,000 in 1993 to the city of Los Angeles. However, despite court rulings, he bought it back from the city for the same price 10 years later, well under market value. The farmers had used the land on loan, and when it was purchased back, illegally, they offered to purchase the land they had cleared and tilled.
Horowitz demanded $16.3 million from the farmers. With all odds against the low-income community, they raised the money in less than 60 days. But Horowitz then refused to budge.
“I wouldn’t care if they raised $100,000,000 for this property,” he raged in a telephone interview. “I don’t like these people, I don’t like their cause, and I don’t like their conduct!”
The farmers were evicted without due process.
No warehouse has been built. Dust from the $2.3-million clay field whistles in the wind where farmers once fed their families in downtown Los Angeles.
A lot of Americans don’t know the implications behind environmental racism. Adrien Wilkie, co-president of the UO Coalition Against Environmental Racism (CAER) remarked, “People often come up to us and ask ‘How can you be racist against the environment?’”
Environmental justice is based around the premise that everyone deserves the right to clean air, clean water and fresh food — regardless of ethnicity. Many Caucasian communities with political clout have no problem securing such basic rights to life. I recall a time in Connecticut when airlines wanted to reroute air travel above southeast suburbs. The petition was shut down in a few months.
For high-minority, low-income neighborhoods like the West Eugene “Trainsong” community, it is often nearly impossible to stop toxic pollution projects in their neighborhoods with their lack of political franchise.
Currently in West Eugene, the Seneca Hardwood Lumber Company is constructing a biomass plant. While many praise Seneca for being “green,” the reality remains that burning wood for “green” energy releases dangerous carcinogens into the air. The Oregon Toxics Alliance, a local non-profit, has filed an appeal against Seneca, but construction continues.
When the OTA went to gather support from the neighborhood, residents hadn’t received any notice that their air would soon be smog.
“Companies don’t need to inform affected citizens of their actions,” said Marilyn Sanchez of CAER. “One paradox I’ve struggled with is how people and companies claim to be against racism in the things they say, but not in the things they do.”
It certainly is a paradox that efforts claiming to be “sustainable” by Seneca actually threaten the environmental quality of our communities.
Even if the “Trainsong” community doesn’t concern you as a college student in South Eugene, consider this: By 2012, the clean air standards of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality will no longer be met. Why? Because by 2012, air pollution from happy-go-lucky-for-coal-burning China will make its way to the western United States.
West Eugene is a bit closer than China. Concerned yet?
Our toxic waste has to go somewhere. But too often companies claim coincidence is the reason for pollution facilities being built in low-income, high minority communities.
The working class has always been exploited economically. Wage slavery is an unfortunate product of the global economy. But forcing the working class to live in pollution is large-scale murder.
Many environmentalists claim justice for poor communities is a public policy issue, and little can be done about the corrupt political battles between corporate and low-income America.
I think this apathetic belief among so-called “progressives” should not be tolerated. If you attend the CAER conference this Saturday in the EMU at 9:30 a.m., you’ll hear from 14 prominent speakers about how we can bring environmental justice to America. In an economy where American consumer choices affect virtually every nook and cranny of the earth, we have a responsibility to hold our companies accountable for their actions.
Everyone deserves fresh air, food, and water. Are your choices supporting this basic right to life?
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