A colonial mentality exists in the South, where local governments and big business take advantage of people who are politically and economically powe… - Beverly Wright

My thing was, if you’re not going to protect the citizens at least tell them what they need to do to protect themselves. So we started the Safeway Back Home campaign, where people remediated their own properties and planted new grass, and so on.

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.

it is important to recognize that governments seldom initiate action to address environmental problems. Governments generally respond to outside pressure, and this pressure must be applied over an extended period of time to achieve lasting results.