This is Part III of a three-part series on the working conditions and treatment of Oregon's immigrant forestry workers.
Chilling … public health ignored
Over the past year, the issue of exposure to toxic soups of herbicides and other chemicals from aerial helicopter sprays has spurred an outpouring of public indignation! Cases of outright poisoning or suspected harm have been reported in Lane, Curry, Tillamook and Douglas counties.
Toxic Trespass Knows No Barriers
As an Environmental Studies major I’ve gotten very used to discussing issues of injustice and land degradation through a scholarly/objective lens, however I had never drawn these connections back to myself and how they affect me as an Oregonian. Never would I have imagined that a trip out to interview a community affected by pesticide drift – a predominantly middle class, white conservative community in Gold Beach – would connect directly to the working-class Latino-immigrant farmer community I grew up with in the Rogue Valley.
What’s Up with Brownfields and Environmental Justice?
The City of Eugene, the City of Springfield, and Lane County are looking for public input in the process of finding, cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields. Brownfields are abandoned properties that are not being re-purposed because of the likely presence of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. Brownfield result in neighborhood “blight;” they make people feel unsafe and they drag down property values.
Stopping coal: A renewed moral imperative
I want to be clear: I am not against trains (I often travel by passenger train)! I am, however, critical about using our rail system to haul coal to coastal ports and then load the coal and ship it off to Asian destinations.
The economics of exporting coal through Oregon
The Port of Coos Bay is planning to build a terminal to export coal delivered via rail by trains that would snake through the Columbia Gorge and Willamette Valley before switching tracks at Eugene onto the Coos Bay Rail Link. Many other communities in the Northwest are threatened with severe health hazards as coal gets transported through communities in Oregon and Washington by rail, barge, or shipped through the Columbia River Gorge, Portland and towns north.
Taking Responsibility for Justice
Eugene, nationally recognized as a bike city, a community near nature and a place where we value sustainability, would not normally attract attention around environmental human rights and justice issues. Which is why for one day, Beyond Toxics and Centro LatinoAmericano invited city and agency officials, students and community leaders on an environmental justice bus tour to West Eugene where we got the opportunity to see how families live through the lens of “environmental justice”.
As if a wall of chemical gas is enveloping us...
Last week, Beyond Toxics hosted dozens of people who boarded two school buses and journeyed out to visit several key toxic hot spots, like Lark City Park, where air and ground water pollution harms Eugene families every day.
Exposures to Air Pollution in Medford, Oregon
Executive Director Lisa Arkin and I made the three hour drive to Medford, Oregon to give an Asthma Care Workshop. A long trip for us, but well worth it. Last summer, UNETE, a farmworkers’ advocacy organization, invited us to collaborate with them in doing a workshop (see our pictures from the workshop) for the people they serve.
Generational Shift and Environmental Justice: Madres para la Salud
To be honest, I felt like an outsider when we first formed the Mothers for Health groups. After about five meetings I now really feel like one of the women of the Madres para la Salud community. It quickly dawned on me that relating to them was easier than I thought, since they reminded me of my own mother.
