Our Position on Environmental Justice and the Environmental Community
As a member of North Carolina's "environmental community," the Concerned Citizens of Tillery (CCT) is wholeheartedly in support of the efforts of those working to unify and strengthen our influence. CCT has been actively and directly involved in environmental issues for many years through its member group the Halifax Environmental Loss Prevention (HELP) and coalitions including the Southeast Halifax Environmental Reawakening (SHER) Project and the Hog Roundtable.
CCT has also partnered with U.S. PIRG, the National Environmental Justice Action Committee (NEJAC) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the African American Environmental Justice Action Network (AAEJAN) of the Southern Organizing Committee (SOC). Although extremely busy, we look forward to any efforts which will make ALL of our communities more healthy, clean and safe.
However we are disillusioned by the refusal of the "environmental community" and those affiliated with it to recognize environmental racism and environmental injustice issues. The obvious absence of adequate representation of communities of color, as well as no mention of justice issues in mission statements, directly evidence our concerns. Mainstream and grassroots environmental groups alike fall into the trap of neglecting any issues other than their specific "environmental" concerns.
CCT will not to be a part of any present or newly forming coalitions that refuses to address issues of justice. For twenty years CCT has been about true positive social change; achieving environmental justice is an important goal but it is just one symptom of the sickness that plagues all of white America: racism.
Why have hogs and other hazardous pollutants come into communities? Because there are Blacks and Latinos and Native Americans living in these communities. As the business and government leaders of this country map out our future, they have seen the need to integrate industries, especially agriculture, under the auspice of "economies of scale." There is no surprise that Black family farmers are the first to go as the agriculture industry continues to vertically integrate itself; no mystery in the fact that rural and predominantly people of color school systems remain at the bottom of the totem pole, insuring a sub-class to supply labor for America's most privileged.
Further, because we have become a society based on consumption and materialism, the inevitable environmental degradation begins in the "backyards" of African Americans (the avenue of least resistance), other people of color and yes, poor whites who could not "flight" to urban America. When the Black farmers and Black communities have perished, history has taught us that the small family farmers and poor white communities are next in line. As the ship sinks, Blacks may be the first to go but we will all get to the bottom.
While environmental groups capitalize on how "diverse" the environmental community in North Carolina and across the nation is, or state how "diverse" the boards and memberships of their groups and coalitions are, let it be known that we will not allow them to play that game any longer. We will not allow people of color to be taken for granted, patronized, excluded, or used by traditional environmental groups who refuse to expand their agendas.