May 2000

Days of outrage and action for environmental justice

Memphis, Tenn.--The first weekend in April saw the National Days of Outrage and Action For Environmental Justice as activists and scholars from around the country came to support efforts here to clean up the Defense Depot--a Superfund site that sits in the middle of a Black community--and protest the pollution and planned expansion of the Memphis International Airport.

Sponsored by the Interim National Black Environmental and Economic Justice Coordinating Committee, the weekend was hosted by Defense Depot Memphis, Tennessee-Concerned Citizen's Committee with help from Citizens For Action. Activists from the National People of Color and Disenfranchised Communities Environmental Health Network were also here to show their support. Dr. Robert Bullard, author of DUMPING IN DIXIE came from Atlanta.

Saturday's "Toxic Tour" began at Hamilton High School, built directly over Cane Creek, into which some of the Depot's polluted runoff flows. The tour took us by the tent set up over leaking mustard gas bombs buried at the Depot since World War II. We stopped at many of the drainage ditches flowing from the Depot and saw how they went through people's back yards, under the school, through people's gardens and playgrounds. We saw one very poor neighborhood that the EPA had confirmed as contaminated, yet people still live there on known toxic ground.

Everyone introduced themselves at lunch after the tour and said why they had come. Members of Youth Terminating Pollution spoke, each one telling her or his own story, several reading poems they had written about living in an endangered community.

Sunday was spent at a worship service where a new group of people learned of the pollution in Memphis. Monday morning was a press conference where the participants-almost all African-Americans from groups across the country-told of their struggles against the pollution of their workplaces and neighborhoods. This was held at a church right across the street from the Depot and, when it was over, we went out into the rain to form a protest march.

We went back to Hamilton High School after lunch, and a group of students gathered to hear about the struggle for environmental justice. After the talks the students spontaneously joined the activists and marched through the community. From there we drove to the Federal Building for a "Vigil for Environmental Justice."

Throughout the weekend we carried a coffin to represent the many who had died because of the pollution from the Depot, the airport and other federal facilities around the nation. Often we would put our hands on it; it was in the churches; we followed it through the community; and at the Federal Building we surrounded it for our vigil. It helped us remember who and what we are fighting for.

-Terry Moon

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Memphis, Tenn.--The Crump area has always been an African-American neighborhood. No one else would buy these small lots on river bottom swampland. We are surrounded by chemical companies: Buckeye, Southern Cotton Oil, Penn Union, Velsicol. This community has always borne a disproportionate amount of environmental pollution, and yet none of these companies hire more than 1% of their people from the community.

Our group is called Concerned Citizens of Crump Neighborhood Association. We are concerned now because Velsicol is going through a process to get another ten-year permit to operate their toxic waste incinerator. Last December Velsicol had a meeting about the permit only because it is the law. We couldn't get them to say the word "dioxin." Somebody asked, do the releases cause cancer? The plant manager said, some say they do and some say they don't. I said, who says dioxin doesn't cause cancer? She couldn't tell me.

A few years ago Velsicol had a simulated chlorine release. They said they would test as if the wind went south and east. We said we live northeast; why not test this way? We released helium balloons close to the incinerator. In less than a minute the balloons were in our neighborhood.

Two years ago Velsicol had a toxic waste cleanup on a Superfund site the size of a football field. They had dumped chemical byproducts in a hole for years. The runoff water was running straight onto the street and down the gullies. In a meeting the plant manager said Velsicol was not making chlordane at the time the dump was being used, but a geologist brought in by the government confirmed that heptachlor and clordane were found in that dump.

There is no environmental agenda in Memphis. If they want business here, they don't care what it costs us. Environmental racism is alive and well in this city. I have educated myself on environmental issues. I definitely have grown because of this. When you read a book like DUMPING IN DIXIE you just can't sit there and be quiet. I want people to know we have a right to a clean earth.

-Balinda Moore