| Special Section: Lantern
Essay Competition Winners |
June/July
2006
A Green Belt Movement
of Its Own Flavor
By Elena Conte
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It is early summer, in the late afternoon, and the air is stagnant
and humid. Four older men are gathered around a cherry tree, with shiny
bark, pointed lush green leaves and a few remaining pink flowers from
spring’s rebirth. One man is holding the trunk, leaning in for
support as he gestures to the others, who, sweating in the sweltering
heat, are laughing and loudly encouraging his story in exuberant Puerto
Rican Spanish. The men are dressed in the work clothes of building
porters and contractors, and the scene takes place on a block in the
Hunts Point neighborhood in the South Bronx of New York City. Taking
place is friendship, camaraderie, and an expression of culture—the
stuff of life.
In either direction of the small tree around which these neighbors have gathered,
concrete extends, sometimes cracked, and often strewn with wrappers from potato
chip bags, as there is no garbage can in sight. At a great distance, the sprawling
concrete is briefly interrupted by a pit filled with a scrawny tree trying to
survive. The dominant physical feature of this street is human-made: harsh, grey
and unyielding, concrete reflects the heat of the sun onto brick buildings that
project it back, in oven-like waves, an assault onto the street’s passers-by.
The pink-blossomed meeting point provides a bit of shade and a dose of beauty
after a hard day’s work on a block situated in brutal conditions. In this
neighborhood, noxious infrastructure and industry that serve the city and region
are concentrated, to the detriment of the health of the poor, black and brown
people that live there. African American, Latina/o, immigrant and working class,
they are targeted to receive the deadly impacts of sewage sludge treatment facilities,
power plants, waste transfer stations and diesel traffic. This concentration
allows wealthier and whiter city residents not to think about how food gets to
their table or where all the waste goes afterward. It also engenders a health
crisis in the communities where these facilities are housed. In the South Bronx,
one in four young people suffer from asthma. Cancer rates exceed the city’s
average, and obesity and diabetes are full-fledged epidemics, at 27 percent and
13 percent respectively.
Here, the “environment” has nothing to do with spotted owls or Arctic
drilling. Instead, it has to do with the most important thing in the world: the
quality of daily life. It is about the conditions where people live, where people
work, play and worship. It is also about the health crises that interfere with
basic tasks of daily life and the struggle to access relief and how that alters
the power structures that lead to these glaring inequities in the first place.
The populace speaks of the legacy of environmental racism and movement for environmental
justice.
The men gathering around the healthiest tree on the block are seeking relief.
They know that it is cooler in its shade, that cool city air is more breathable
and that leaves have the power to filter and purify air. The people who have
formed a local association called Greening for Breathing have taken that same
knowledge and, with it, they are taking control of their daily experience and
serving a larger cause at the same time. When they counted their trees and found
just one per acre in the community, they were called to action. Greening for
Breathing’s mission is to realize the residents’ vision of a forested
neighborhood that will combat the air pollution that chokes poorer and darker-complexioned
areas by asserting that the life-supporting so-called “benefits” that
wealthier, leafier neighborhoods receive, are in fact rights to which they will
no longer be denied. Refuting the notion, “that’s just the way things
are” in order to smash the often unspoken corollary “for some people,” the
South Bronx embarked on a Green Belt movement of its own flavor.
In the service of their local goal, Greening for Breathing partnered with a city
agency, the Department of Parks and Recreation, to create a planning document
that is reflective of the community vision but that also speaks the language
of urban forestry and government institutions. Through a multi-pronged approach,
Greening for Breathing is implementing this plan, also known as “The Green
Buffer,” with neighborhood-wide programming, tree planting, protection
and community stewardship. Although most low-income communities of color shamefully
share the proliferation of environmental burdens, lack of access to open space
and natural relief systems, and have long fought for equity, Greening for Breathing
and the Hunts Point community have made explicit the specificity of their mission
to use forestry as one way to redress these toxic conditions and to address health
issues. In doing so, they are pushing the public policy agenda in New York City
to embrace an interdisciplinary approach to health and the environment. The example
of their forestry plan has already spawned similar efforts within the Parks Department
in communities with comparable health issues around the city, and has drawn national
attention through the Forest Service.
And yet, while it is quite noteworthy that a community-based planning notion
is approaching acceptance within a governmental structure, what is of even greater
significance is that community-based planning itself has been able to take a
stride forward. In a year when it has been asked, “Is Environmentalism
Dead?” it is crucial to examine who is asking and which voices have thus
far proclaimed to define what environmentalism is. Insomuch as the environmental
movement within the United States has been dominated by white, upper-middle class
people, and its power concentrated in male-dominated mainstream organizations
that are national in scope, the grassroots voices of everyday people—who
hold the power to highlight the relevance of environmentalism to everyday people—have
been muffled if not entirely lost. Spotted owls and Arctic drilling are not unconnected
to the issues being raised in these communities, but the way they are framed
makes them irrelevant. The example of Greening for Breathing speaks to the knowledge
and concern inherent in these communities. But, that knowledge cannot be accessed
for the greater good without overhauling the notions of who gets to decide what’s
important, who is “qualified” to do the planning, and—necessarily—creating
and strengthening the mechanisms that make a broader notion possible.
As such, the failures of the environmental movement to penetrate both governmental
policies and the minds of the average citizen are directly tied to the failures
in democracy and public participation. So long as the decisions that will affect
a community and the daily lives of its members are being made by those who lie
outside of that community, environmental injustice and the attendant health,
economic and social problems will continue. If “opportunities” for
public participation are nothing more than charades to support the illusion of
democracy, that is to say, if they provide opportunities for people to speak
but not be heard in a way that alters the outcome, of course participation levels
will be low. The knowledge held inside the community will not be unleashed to
push government forward. If the environmental movement attempts to engage people
without addressing their immediate conditions, without affirming the wisdom of
local communities to assess their own needs, and without seeking to build the
power of communities to determine their own futures, very few people will identify
the environment as a concern worthy of their time.
Despite the largely continued disconnect between Environmentalism and the Environmental
Justice movement, the work on the ground and in the grassroots pushes forward
and is being led by those on the frontlines in low-income communities of color.
So long as the South Bronx reeks of sewage sludge treatment facilities and massive
tailpipes blow plumes of black exhaust past schoolyards, lone cherry trees have
a lot of work to do. The people will work to protect that tree, to help it grow
and maximize its potential. Greening for Breathing will work to multiply that
tree into a bona fide urban forest. In the process, Greening for Breathing will
support community members in maximizing their potential, because participation
is as transformative on the personal level as it is on the political one. Environmental
justice communities will work to insert their voices—carrying homegrown
solutions steeped in the stuff of life—and democratize this country from
the bottom up. The sooner the powers that be and allies in other national movements
take their cue from the 2004 Nobel committee, and recognize that the environment
and the people’s daily experience of it are central to peace, the better
off we all will be.
Elena Conte is a native New Yorker who gets excited when trees and flowers
bloom in springtime. She works with Greening for Breathing. For more about the
organization
or to donate, call (718) 617-4668 x 27 or search “Greening Hunts Point” on
the web.
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