8/6/2008

Minorities Often a Majority of the Population Under 20
Foreshadowing the nation’s changing makeup, one in four American counties have passed or are approaching the tipping point where black, Hispanic and Asian children constitute a majority of the under-20 population, according to analyses of census figures released Thursday. Racial and ethnic minorities now account for 43 percent of Americans under 20. Among people of all ages, minorities make up at least 40 percent of the population in more than one in six of the nation’s 3,141 counties.

8/1/2008

10% of U.S. Counties Now 'Majority-Minority'
Immigration and higher fertility among minorities have put the United States on a path to become "majority-minority," when less than 50 percent of the population will be non-Hispanic white. Racial and ethnic minorities,1 which currently account for one-third of the U.S. population, are projected to reach 50 percent by 2050. But new 2007 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show that about 10 percent (302) of the country's 3,141 counties have already passed that mark. Another 218 counties have reached the "tipping point" toward becoming majority-minority in the next few years: Between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population in those counties are minorities.

7/29/2008

U.S. blacks face harsher climate change impact
American blacks are likely to suffer disproportionately from climate change and they are willing to pay to combat it, a commission aimed at raising awareness about global warming said on Tuesday."There is a fierce urgency regarding climate change effects on the African-American community," said Ralph Everett, the co-chair of the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change said. Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to live in cities where the so-called heat island effect is expected to make temperature increases more severe, the newly formed group said at a briefing. More blacks also will be "fuel poor" as energy demand rises due to higher air-conditioning loads, population growth and urbanization, commission said.

7/24/2008

Global warming more harmful to low-income minorities
Blacks are more likely to be hurt by global warming than other Americans, according to a report issued Thursday. The report was authored by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, a climate justice advocacy group, and Redefining Progress, a nonprofit policy institute. It detailed various aspects of climate change, such as air pollution and rising temperatures, which it said disproportionately affect blacks, minorities and low-income communities in terms of poor health and economic loss. Heat-related deaths among blacks occur at a 150 to 200 percent greater rate than for non-Hispanic whites, the report said. It also reported that asthma, which has a strong correlation to air pollution, affects blacks at a 36 percent higher rate of incidence than whites. To view the full article please click HERE.

3/12/2008

EPA sets tougher air-quality standards
The EPA's new smog limit is 75 parts per billion of ozone, down from the current level of 80.  Because of rounding, the old standard was effectively 84 parts per billion. The EPA failed to head the advice of its independent science advisory panel who unanimously had said the standard should be no higher than 70 parts per billion. In a March 2007 letter to the EPA, panelists said there is "overwhelming scientific evidence" for a reduction of that magnitude.

3/4/2008

Local Citizens, Conservation Group File Suit Seeking Cleanup of Alleged Water Contamination in Dickson County, Tennessee
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and two residents of Dickson, Tennessee, Sheila Holt-Orsted and Beatrice Holt, today filed a lawsuit against the Dickson County and City governments. The Complaint alleges that trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial chemical disposed at the Dickson Landfill that has been linked to neurological and developmental harm and cancer, poses an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment.

11/24/2007

Toxics Tour Planned to Highlight Environmental Racism: National Campaign to Spotlight the Deadly Mix of Toxic Racism and TCE Contamination on an African American Family
On Thursday, November 29, a coalition of national leaders, representing environmental justice, civil rights, scientists, women’s health, academia, faith-based and religious groups, legal, and elected officials, including congressional staffers, from around the country will meet at Nashville’s Fisk University and board a bus for Dickson, a small town located about 35 miles to the west. The national leaders will travel to Dickson and participate in the “Take Back Black Health Toxics Tour” and see for themselves in real time a slam-dunk, in-your-face case of environmental racism. Article by Robert Bullard for OpEdNews.com. 24 November 2007

9/28/2007

Joint Center Forms Partnership to Bring More African American Voices Into Climate Change Debate
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (Joint Center) is launching an effort to engage the African American community on the issue of climate change. The move is being funded by the Bipartisan Policy Center which is providing the Joint Center with a $500,000 grant to expand its capacity to conduct climate change research and outreach.

7/26/2007

More than 100 Groups Call on U.S. Senate to Address Environmental Justice
On Wednesday, professor Robert D. Bullard (Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University) presented the Senate Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health “Oversight of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Programs" hearing, chaired by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with a copy of a letter signed by more than one hundred environmental justice networks, civil rights and human rights organizations, faith based groups, and health allies, representing millions of Americans from New York to Alaska, endorsing the 2007 United Church of Christ Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007 report findings and recommendations.

7/13/2007

NBEJN Leaders Seek NAACP Help in "Burying" Toxic Racism. Representatives from the National Black Environmental Justice Network traveled to Detroit as part of a delegation calling on NAACP leaders attending the 2007 convention to take on environmental racism as a national campaign. The group conducted a “toxics tour” that took delegates past chemical plants, steel mills, automotive factories, abandoned industrial sites, and waste incinerators.

6/6/2007

EJ Scholars to Present 2007 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty Report at USSF.  The principal authors (Robert D. Bullard, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha, and Beverly Wright) of Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty 1987—2007 and Sheila Holt Orsted (whose Dickson, Tennessee community is profiled as the "poster child" for environmental racism in the report) will present the report findings and policy recommendations at the United States Social Forum (USSF) scheduled in Atlanta, GA June 27 thru July 1, 2007.

5/30/2007

No Black Plan for the Cities, Despite the Lessons of Katrina. The Katrina catastrophe indisputably revealed the corporate plan for America's cities. No sooner had the waters receded than corporate planners devised elaborate schemes for a "new" New Orleans - a "better" city in which Blacks would never again be allowed to become majorities. African American "leadership" should have understood that, with Katrina, corporate America had shown its hand: dramatic reduction of Black populations is at the core of the corporate urban "renaissance" model. Nevertheless, African Americans have failed to tackle the job of comprehensive urban planning that serves existing populations, and conserves Black political power for the future. By blackagendareport.com

5/29/2007

25th Anniversary of the Warren County PCB Landfill Protests. It has now been twenty-five years since the 1982 protests against a controversial toxic waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina gave birth to the national environmental justice movement.  The protests also put environmental racism on the map. 

5/18/2007

Joaquin Sapien, Life in Poison: An Alabama Town’s Long Struggle to Survive by The Center for Public Integrity

5/8/2007

Citizens File Suit to Stop Shipment of VX Waste across 8 States to be Burned in Texas by CWWG

5/4/2007

The Color of Environmental Deception by The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF)

5/2/2007

5/1/2007

4/16/2007

Ten Best Cities for African Americans BLACK ENTERPRISE Magazine revealed its most recent list of top cities for African Americans as featured in its May 2007 issue. The top picks were culled from more than 2,000 interactive surveys completed on Black Enterprise and by editorial staff evaluation. By Black Enterprise Magazine.

4/10/2007

Toxic Waste and Race: Report Confirms No Progress Made in 20 Years: Response to Katrina Catastrophe Is Not an Anomaly, Researchers Say

10/27/2006

National Public Radio's Living on Earth Air Date: Week of October 27, 2006, Post Katrina Injustice
Host Steve Curwood talks with social scientists Beverly Wright and Robert Bullard about the issues of environmental justice and discrimination that the poor and black people in New Orleans are facing in the rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Katrina
To listen to the show click HERE

10/23/2006

Rand Gulf States Policy Institute, 'From Flood Control to Integrated Water Resource Management. Lessons for the Gulf Coast from Flooding in Other Places in the Last Sixty Years'. To view article click HERE

EPA budget reduction could expose more minorities, poor to pollution To view article click HERE

Emergency Evacuation Report Card 2006: 25 Urban Areas Could Face Greater Challenges than New Orleans Experienced after Hurricane Katrina New research findings by the American Highway Users Alliance. To view article click HERE