environmental justice
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Extreme Heat, Flooding and Public Health Issues: How Climate Change Is an Existential Threat to Black People
We should all be pretty familiar with the term “climate change” by now. But knowing buzzwords isn’t the same as understanding how the phenomenon affects black people on a global scale in more severe ways than other groups. The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Political instability in sub-Saharan Africa. Heatwaves in Chicago. What do these…
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How Ilhan Omar's Daughter Isra Hirsi Is Connecting the Fight Against Climate Change to Black Lives
Teen activists from Johannesburg to Los Angeles are striking today to demand the world take action on climate change. Among the organizers is Isra Hirsi, co-founder of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike and daughter of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. As Vice writes in a recent profile of the 16-year-old organizer, Isra helped launch the U.S.…
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Rihanna Says You’d Be a Fool to Ignore Climate Change
Our world is changing. Weather consistency is a thing of the past and we are clearly dealing with the repercussions of climate change. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and it’s not looking too good for mother earth. Your country’s current “leadership” scoffs at the idea that climate change is crippling our planet and…
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Oglala Sioux Tribe Tells South Dakota Governor ‘You Are Not Welcome’ in Dispute Over Right to Protest Keystone Pipeline
The Oglala Sioux Tribe has yanked the welcome mat right out from under South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s feet, basically telling her to stay off their lawn. In a letter to the Republican governor Thursday, Julian Bear Runner, president of the indigenous nation, told Noem she was no longer welcome on one of the largest…
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Study Finds White Americans Primarily Cause Air Pollution, But Black People and Latinx Are the Ones Who Breathe It
America’s racial gap colors every aspect of its landscape: the places we live, the water we drink, and, as a new study shows, the very air we breathe. According to research published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), black people and non-white Hispanics disproportionately breathe air polluted by non-Hispanic…
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For Decades, a Predominantly Black and Latinx Indiana Town Suffered from Toxic Contamination. Mike Pence Looked the Other Way
While many are still speculating about whether it was Vice President Mike Pence who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times about the “resistance” in the White House, it’s worth remembering who Pence really is—a man who has a pattern of neglecting the lives, issues and well-being of people of color. A new…
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After Standing Her Ground, a Young Mother and Environmental Activist Could Be Forced to Give Birth in Prison
One of Detroit’s foremost environmental activists, a black woman who fought against Southwest Detroit’s Marathon Oil Refinery and the Detroit Renewable Power trash incinerator, developed educational outreach for local mothers and schoolchildren on nutrition and environmental issues, and represented Detroit at the Paris Climate talks may now be forced to give birth behind bars. Last…
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More Than 17,000 Detroit Homes at Risk for Water Shutoff: Report
The Detroit water department will resume its controversial practice of shutting off residents’ water next month, putting around 17,461 households in the city at risk of losing water. According to the Detroit Free Press, Detroit’s water and sewerage director, Gary Brown, said the number is actually an improvement. “When I got here, 50,000 people were…
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The Burgeoning Humanitarian Crisis in Puerto Rico
While the Demented Cheese-Grit-in-Chief’s war against black athletes dominates headlines and social media feeds in the United States, Puerto Rico faces an increasingly desperate situation after Hurricane Maria devastated the island Thursday. Supplies and aid are headed to the island from the U.S. mainland Monday, but without power and the ability to communicate (CNN reports…