Environmental injustice occurs in a number of ways. The fact that, first of all, when you look at the federal level they never addressed soil contami… - Beverly Wright

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Environmental injustice occurs in a number of ways. The fact that, first of all, when you look at the federal level they never addressed soil contamination that exists all over the city. We have extremely high arsenic levels, and PCBs, cause where we live we use a lot of pesticides; we have a lot of pests. From rat poisoning, to pesticides for roaches and mosquitoes, you already have all of that, right, and then you add to that the big mixture that came in all the water from all over, even from the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain, then you add to that human feces and everything from the sewage treatment plants. That water was extremely filthy. And very dangerous. And then it settled. There was a light dust that covered everything when we came back home.

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About Beverly Wright

Beverly Wright is an American environmental justice scholar and the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University. Her research considers the environmental and health inequalities along the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor. Her awards and honours include the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Achievement Award.

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Communities have not been able to recover, to go back home. And gentrification is happening at warp speed in areas where climate change and flooding have caused the displacement of communities. This is a huge problem. Race is at the center of it in terms of fairness. And we have to find a way to make certain that we make up for the harm that’s been done and put things in place so that harm does not continue for racial minorities in this country.

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Racism holds everybody back. So, while people make the decision that people who work in hotels and restaurants really don’t need a livable wage because they’re black, and we don’t have to pay black people a lot, what they are doing is they are robbing themselves of a decent tax base. They are producing citizens who can’t buy health insurance, putting a drain on the city. And so the racism that drives this belief that you can treat some human beings less than others, in the end catches up with all of us because it lowers the standard of living for everybody. And I think that’s what we have been dealing with in the city of New Orleans.

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