July
1996
The Satya Interview:
Moving to the Front of the Bus
Julie Sze of the New York City Environmental
Justice Alliance
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Julie Sze has worked for the New York City Environmental
Justice Alliance (NYCEJA) since October 1995. The NYCEJA is one of a
number of groups founded in the wake of the People of Color Environmental
Leadership Summit in held in Washington, DC. in 1991. NYCEJA campaigns
on social justice and environmental issues that affect communities of
color in New York City. Satya talked to Julie about some of
NYCEJA’s current transportation campaigns.
Q: What does NYCEJA see itself as?
A: We work as an umbrella for many different organizations
in the City. Our board and membership consist of community-based organizations,
such as: West Harlem Environmental Action, which works on the North
River sewage treatment plant and other air quality issues in Harlem;
South Bronx Clean Air, that works with the Bronx Lebanon incinerator;
El Puente, which is a peace and justice community development center
in Williamsburg; the Magnolia Tree Earth Center in Bedford Stuyvesant;
the Southern Queens Park Association, and others.
These groups wanted to form a structure so that the groups working on
different issues in different boroughs could find common ground. So
the Alliance is an umbrella organization that works with organizations
from different neighborhoods, different ethnic constituencies, and tries
to find a way to unite, by finding the points of common ground that
these groups can work on in New York City.
Q: How does that happen?
A: We, for example, coordinate certain programs that are relevant
to every organization. Transportation is one of them. The Transportation
and Environmental Justice Program is one in which each organization,
depending on what their local situation is, is involved. We try to find
the places where partnerships on a wider level make sense. That’s
always the criterion: does it make sense? Does it help the Alliance
and does it help the local group? When a project can do both of those
things, our work starts.
Q: Can you give me an example of a specific project that you
have seen from the beginning to fruition?
A: I don’t know about "to fruition"
because a lot of the campaigns are still ongoing. But one of the aspects
of the transportation program is the campaign to pressure the Metropolitan
Transit Authority (MTA) to buy natural gas buses, which is something
that affects many of our constituents and our member organizations.
Seven of the eight bus depots in Manhattan are in Harlem or Washington
Heights, where asthma rates are triple the city average — already
the highest in the country. [See the article, "Breathing Space"]
So, we work very closely with West Harlem Environmental Action on community
forums and community outreach. It makes sense to have the Alliance working
on this because South Bronx Clean Air, El Puente, and East Harlem Woman’s
Environment Program are also interested in the diesel issue since they
work on asthma, health, transportation, and air quality issues. Instead
of getting six different people from every borough to come to a meeting,
we’ll go to a meeting and report back or pass the information
along.
Q: What did you do about the buses?
A: We co-sponsored a community educational forum in
March called, "Diesel Buses = Bad Health." We had 80 people
there from a wide cross-section of the community as well as politicians,
policy makers, and people from within the MTA. Basically, before we
were involved, the dialogue wasn’t really happening as well as
it should. We introduced The Resolution for Clean Air and Clean Buses
for the community boards to pass. We had almost all of the community
boards that were directly affected pass the resolution. This was the
first time that that had happened.
Q: What was the resolution?
A: The resolution was for the MTA to increase its natural
gas fleet and to convert a depot to natural gas. We made presentations
to local community boards in East & Central Harlem, Washington Heights
and lower Manhattan. The Alliance is also on the task force convened
to look at the feasibility of converting to natural gas. This task force
is headed by Natural Resources Defense Council, but there are a lot
of players working on this — such as the American Lung Association,
Environmental Advocates, and others. There are so many reasons why the
buses should be natural gas; but the main reason is because diesel and
particulates are directly linked to increased rates of respiratory diseases
like asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, and emphysema. If you compare
New York City to most other major transit systems around the country,
New York City is far behind. Many transit authorities no longer buy
diesel. All that information was in the resolution. The MTA, many environmental
groups, the utilities that would be supplying the natural gas, and the
Alliance worked on a task force that produced a report that came out
in April and made concrete, specific policy recommendations on natural
gas purchases and depot conversions.
Q: I wonder if you see the Alliance as a group that makes sure
local people’s voices don’t get lost amidst all the larger
national and city-wide groups.
A: Yes. We talk to schools, community groups, people
we know and people we don’t know about different aspects of the
issue. A lot of these community boards and community groups —
and people who were living right next to the depot — had no idea
that this had any health impact at all. They never made the connection
between ridiculously high asthma rates and the exhaust from cars, buses
and trucks. We help connect it for people.
I go to official meetings where everyone there is in a suit. And these
people talk about the depots as an abstract thing and have never gone
there. When we did our forum, we went to the depots, postered all around
the depots, and postered in Spanish. It makes perfect sense, because
in East Harlem or Washington Heights it doesn’t make sense to
do anything if you don’t translate it. A lot of the stuff we do
is common sense, but it’s not being done by either mainstream
environmental groups or policy makers who are making decisions that
impact people’s lives.
Q: Do you think it’s a deliberate policy of exclusion?
A: I think the public participation angle of policy
is very weak. Policy makers’ idea of public notification is to
put a hearing out in one paper and then expect that to satisfy the rules.
The way it’s structured is not to consult with the public: you
come out with your plan, wait for attacks, ignore them, and go ahead
and do what you do. There’s a real hatred of public participation
that I’ve noticed since I’ve been working on these issues.
Q: Is it a hatred of general public participation or that of those who
might be adversely affected by it?
A: I think both, but particularly for people who make
people in suits uncomfortable.
Q: Do the communities you serve feel they can do anything about
it? Or do they feel that nobody’s ever listened before and so
they can’t make a difference?
A: I think that a lot of people I know just don’t
trust the agencies that are supposed to serve them. For instance, the
MTA. The MTA is structured weirdly. It’s not like a public agency
with exactly the same accountability as a lot of other public agencies
— not that they’re all that more accountable — but
it’s insulated because it has this board that’s supposed
to be separate from politics, yet Pataki packs it with his people. We’re
working on the Franklin Avenue shuttle, which is a shuttle line in Brooklyn
between the A and C and D and Q lines. It’s this little line in
the middle of Crown Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Flatbush, like
the 42nd Street shuttle, with only four stops. It is used by predominantly
African- and Caribbean-American people. The MTA has neglected this line,
waiting for it to fall apart, so they can shut it down.
There’s been a coalition of community groups which has been working
for 20 years to force the MTA to fix it. In the last capital rehabilitation
program, there was money to fix it and then the MTA took the money away.
They treated the community in ways you would never treat a wealthier,
white community.
Q: What did the Alliance do?
A: We were a leader in the Coalition to Save the Shuttle.We
were on the shuttle, passing out articles, asking people to sign petitions.
We had a town hall meeting that got a lot of people’s attention
along with a lot of press and a lot of politicians, and the money was
restored. So people on one level believe that change can happen but,
on the other hand, this should never have happened in the first place.
Q: Could you reflect broadly on the link between transportation
and social justice?
A: The executive director, Michelle Depass, always
starts by talking about Rosa Parks, and how the Montgomery bus boycott
40 years ago was the beginning of transportation and social justice.
The boycott was about equal access to resources. Transportation is a
social justice issue because the lack of transportation limits your
opportunities to work, to go places. If you go to a lot of communities
of color, those are the communities that have the huge highways going
through them. They’re the ones right next to bridges, where all
the commuters are going through and emitting all this pollution. Those
are the communities that were totally displaced for these highway projects,
and then have to live near them everyday — in the Bronx, in Brooklyn,
and elsewhere. And it’s also like this in other cities. It looks
exactly the same.
It’s an equity issue because defunding transportation has the
highest impact on people of color and poor people. There’s a huge
case in Los Angeles that’s going to go to trial. It’s basically
poor people, people of color, and women who use buses in L.A. and their
bus trip is vastly undersubsidized in comparison with the commuter rail
that is servicing the upper income, majority white business people.
They’re actually taking money from the bus system and sinking
it in to a commuter system that no one is sure is going to work. The
Labor Community Strategy Center,the Bus Riders Union and the NAACP are
suing under Title VI of The Civil Rights Act which looks at the disproportionate
impact on people of color from any program that receives federal money.
The same strategy was used in New York with the fare hike lawsuit. A
lot of social justice advocates are using civil rights law in transportation
decision making.
Q: Are you hopeful that method will achieve some kind of breakthrough?
A: I’m hopeful and yet I’m like the people
I work with: okay about it and distrusting of it. Because you can’t
achieve social change through litigation alone. At some level it’s
important and you need that there. But it can only work in conjunction
with other types of social action. Take the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
You needed that law, but you couldn’t get that law unless there
was a whole other kind of mobilization going on. So you can’t
just start or end with the lawsuit. You have to build on a lot of different
levels. So I’m optimistic, but I wouldn’t go for only one
strategy. It doesn’t make sense.
The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance
is based at 271 West 125th Street, Suite 303, New York, NY 10027. Tel.:
212-866-4120. Fax: 212-866-4511. E-mail: nyceja@undp.org
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