Environmental justice (EJ) is the idea that all people should have the right to live in healthy communities free of harmful environmental conditions. Environmental justice essentially means that everyone—regardless of race, color, disability, age, national origin, or income—has the right to the same environmental protections and benefits, as well as meaningful involvement in the policies that shape their communities. It’s a form of systemic racism. And it exists largely because of policies and practices that have historically, and to this day, favored the health, well-being, and consumer choices of white communities over those of non-white, low-income communities.
These environmental injustices contribute to significant health disparities in the communities that face them. Experiencing environmental burdens – like exposure to toxins – and a lack of environmental amenities – such as trees that improve air quality – makes marginalized communities more likely to acquire respiratory conditions as well as mental health and developmental issues. In many cases, environmental injustices make these communities more susceptible to illnesses like COVID-19.
Fighting Environmental Justice is Our Own Community
People have been rallying and fighting environmental Inequality in our own community! Residents have been fighting for clean water in Newark and the protesting the building of an another incinerator in "Ironbound" section Newark, NJ. led by the Ironbound Community Corporation.
The Ironbound has historically been both an industrial and a residential community, where factories operate right next to homes. The community is bound on all four sides by the airport, the highways, the rail lines, and the Passaic River, one of country’s most polluted waterways.
Ironbound is home to New Jersey’s largest garbage incinerator, one of the country’s most contaminated land sites — a former Agent Orange dioxin factory — and has both active and abandoned industrial facilities, close flight paths and active truck routes. As a result, The air, land, and water have been severely impacted.
When Superstorm Sandy hit Ironbound, delivering the Passaic River’s toxic waters into the community and drowning one worker, the Ironbound community learned first-hand the ravages that Climate Change can cause.
So, for the people of Ironbound, environmental injustice – the overburdening amount of pollution and other environmental problems significantly impacting public health and quality of life in low income, communities of color – is a real matter. In response, Ironbound Community Corporation and the people of Ironbound organize around and fight for control over their own destiny.
