Monday, July 23, 2007
New York Diary Pt. 3 - Green Revolution
My official purpose in New York is a socialist conference, not book-buying (not the same thing, actually.) Solidarity, the U.S. revolutionary socialist group, held a weekend school on ecology and socialism. So I made a hard political argument to my comrades that we should send a political observer, that the observer should be me, and that I needed a few days after the conference to fully absorb its political lessons, preferably in a cafe somewhere.
The conference was very interesting. We started with the usual tale of imminent doom so common to the left these days, but moved quickly on to environmental justice organizing. Poor people of colour, particularly women, are fighting incinerators in their neighbourhoods and hog farms in their counties. It's not out of some bourgeois fixation on 'the natural world' - no tree-hugging here - but because these people are dying from the toxins the industries create.
For example, most bus depos in New York City are in the Bronx, where most people are poor and non-white. The depos hold up to 300 buses each. While the buses sit there, they idle their engines. So you've got thousands of diesel bus engines running non-stop, spewing fumes. Add to that 250,000 trucks a day running through the Bronx to get elsewhere, and childhood asthma rates are among the highest in the nation.
But poor people are forming groups and fighting back. They're demanding environmental assessments, money for cleaner technologies and facilities shutdowns. It was inspiring to hear about the grassroots organizing going on - organizing that brought together issues of racism, sexism and class exploitation. These people are anti-capitalist: they're fighting to stop capital from offloading its costs onto working class communities. The 'environment' isn't just trees and flowers, it's where you live.
The conference was very interesting. We started with the usual tale of imminent doom so common to the left these days, but moved quickly on to environmental justice organizing. Poor people of colour, particularly women, are fighting incinerators in their neighbourhoods and hog farms in their counties. It's not out of some bourgeois fixation on 'the natural world' - no tree-hugging here - but because these people are dying from the toxins the industries create.
For example, most bus depos in New York City are in the Bronx, where most people are poor and non-white. The depos hold up to 300 buses each. While the buses sit there, they idle their engines. So you've got thousands of diesel bus engines running non-stop, spewing fumes. Add to that 250,000 trucks a day running through the Bronx to get elsewhere, and childhood asthma rates are among the highest in the nation.
But poor people are forming groups and fighting back. They're demanding environmental assessments, money for cleaner technologies and facilities shutdowns. It was inspiring to hear about the grassroots organizing going on - organizing that brought together issues of racism, sexism and class exploitation. These people are anti-capitalist: they're fighting to stop capital from offloading its costs onto working class communities. The 'environment' isn't just trees and flowers, it's where you live.
