Chicago ‘Toxic Tours’ Put Spotlight
on Environmental Justice Issues

By Janet Wilson

On a blistering July afternoon, the links between U.S. communities burdened by industrial pollution were clear. A young Chicago activist pointed angrily at a diesel truck loaded with barrels of chemicals and freight containers stacked on busy railroad tracks, right behind a working-class Latino neighborhood. The barrels were from a few blocks away, and the containers had been shipped from Southern California, where homes are also squeezed next to sooty locomotives and toxic chemical manufacturers.

“What is the zoning that allows this type of hazardous industry next to people’s homes?” asked Samuel Villasenor of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

It was a telling reminder of lessons learned by the Institute for Justice and Journalism’s Environmental Justice Fellows at their Los Angeles conference in early May, with Midwestern twists. Armed with research they heard at the University of Southern California and their own project reporting, the journalists spent five days in Chicago and Northwest Indiana in July putting together the larger picture, asking and answering tough questions.

The IJJ fellowship program, which includes publication and broadcast of Fellows’ projects, is funded by a grant from the Chicago-based McCormick Foundation.

Just as they did in Southern California, the fellows took “toxic tours” of neighborhoods tucked cheek by jowl with heavy industry and heard from dozens of speakers, this time in sessions at Columbia College Chicago. There were differences. There are highly polluting coal plants in Illinois and Indiana, for instance, and a deeper resistance to environmental clean-up if it will mean fewer jobs.

“The attitude here is if you want jobs, you live with the pollution,” said Steven Kozel, president of a community group in Hammond, Ind. The group is battling attempts to turn a small landfill near two public schools into a “regional dumping ground” for hazardous waste from a sludge-filled canal.

“People here have more doubts than L.A.,” said IJJ Fellow Julio Cesar Ortiz, a reporter for KMEX, the Univision television station in Los Angeles. “People in L.A. show up, they pack every meeting…they gear up for a battle. Here there seems to be a fear of knowing.”

Phoebe Connelly, another participant who is web editor for The American Prospect magazine, noted that unlike Southern California, community activists in Chicago and northwestern Indiana face a maze of jurisdictions and state boundaries.

But many of the themes were similar. In Los Angeles, the fellows heard from University of Southern California Professor Manuel Pastor and other academics about research clearly demonstrating that where you live and your skin color are powerful indicators of whether there will be hazardous waste, air pollution and other environmental health problems in your neighborhood.

In Chicago, they learned from Mari Gallagher of the National Center for Public Research about “food deserts” in urban neighborhoods,  places lacking grocery stores with fresh produce and other healthy food. She showed shocking charts of Detroit, where the center’s research found that nearly all food stamp locations classified as grocery stores or mini marts by federal regulators are actually liquor stores. In Chicago, her research found that African Americans are far less likely than whites to have a grocery store within two miles, while Latino shoppers actually fared better than any group.

Echoing environmental justice advocates in Vernon, Commerce and Huntington Park, Calif., Villasenor of Little Village led the fellows on a “toxic tour” of his south Chicago neighborhood. Hot spots here included a massive, open air coal yard, a distribution warehouse, garbage recycling facility and chemical drum hauler. Mothers with strollers dodged diesel trucks on a side street, and the community garden beds in a schoolyard had been raised high to avoid contact with potentially contaminated soil underneath.

Fellows also heard sharp critiques about whether federal stimulus funds, changes in environmental policy under President Obama and even Chicago’s bid to host the Olympics will help or hurt those most affected by urban pollution.  Some speakers worried that, based on a
long history of environmental injustice, the new climate change and Recovery Act policies threaten to create a “green divide,” leaving marginalized communities in the dust once again.

Jacky Grimshaw of the Neighborhood Technology Center explained how a single phrase in U.S. housing law meant that rural areas would receive millions in Recovery Act funding, while urban areas with far greater needs were being shut out so far.

Joel Freehling, manager of Triple Bottom Line Innovations for the Chicago-based financial institution Shore Bank, said proposed climate policies like cap and trade, offsets and renewable energy were “based on capitalism, and in capitalism there are winners and losers. And based on 100 years of experience, I’m worried one color is going to be winners, and one color is going to be losers.”

He urged the IJJ Fellows and other journalists to “make sure this other population doesn’t get lost...with big oil and big corporate interests fighting about something that people concerned about economic justice and environmental justice need to figure out.”

The fellows had tough questions themselves.

“I’m not hearing a lot about solutions,” said Fellow Devin Robins, a producer for public radio, after a day spent touring flaring refineries and belching steel blast plants on the banks of the ethereal blue Lake Michigan, along with faded, mostly empty public housing projects. Even
the founder of God’s Gang, a revolutionary backyard garden program started in the shadow of the infamous Robert Taylor housing projects, seemed weary after years spent battling city and federal bureaucracies.

“It’s a cool little program, but she seemed so sad,” said Warren Vieth, a University of Oklahoma journalism professor and newly appointed IJJ project director for an upcoming immigration fellowship program.  “It raises questions about the life cycle and sustainability of social activism.”

There were success stories. Bessie Dent of the Calumet Project in Hammond spoke with quiet pride about forcing the Army Corps of Engineers and local officials to abandon plans to truck hazardous waste around the clock through city streets.

Grimshaw explained her organization’s pioneering work in persuading banks and federal lenders to include “location efficiency” criteria in mortgage lending. The center has produced mapping that clearly shows how residents in core, urban areas with access to public transit and shorter commutes deserve lower interest mortgages, because they pollute less and spend less than would-be buyers in far-flung suburbs.

One particular bright spot for the fellows was talking with 16-year-old youth leaders from Umoja Community Builders summer program. The teens had questions for everyone, from how to better
conduct interviews with unwilling participants to whether Fellow Edwin Buggage of New Orleans, an accomplished musician, could put them in touch with major rap stars. The teens played a rough cut of their summer video on food justice.

In one segment, a teen interviewed in July was asked when he had his last home-cooked meal. “Thanksgiving,” he replied.

From an explication of tar sands to a critique of U.S. environmental pollution as an international human rights issue, the Chicago segment of the environmental justice fellowship allowed fellows to dig deeper into the complexities surrounding the vital issues of how we eat, breathe, travel and live.

Career development sessions included the use of social media, investigative reporting techniques and ethics, and a lively discussion with Phoebe Connelly and other editors on how to best pitch freelance ideas.

All the fellows are on track to finish in-depth projects on environmental justice topics this fall. By improving news coverage about social justice issues, IJJ is informing the public and policymakers about vital local and national topics, said founding director Steve Montiel, now serving as board president of the newly independent Institute for Justice and Journalism.

On the last day, Mark Hallett, senior program officer for the McCormick Foundation, led a funders’ forum delineating the sweeping changes facing the journalism industry and the important role foundations can play.  Those challenges were evident among the IJJ Fellows, all of whom work for ethnic media organizations or regularly cover ethnic communities and issues of racial justice. In three short months, several saw their newspapers or magazines face layoffs or
suspend publication because of financial losses.

The McCormick Foundation is committed to strong environmental and ethnic media reporting, Hallett said. In 2008, the Chicago-based foundation funded similar IJJ fellowships on immigration.

Created with Ford Foundation funding, IJJ was established at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in 2000 to strengthen journalism about issues involving justice and injustice. This summer the institute became independent and continues operations from Oakland, Calif., as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

IJJ Fellows participating in the Chicago-based program were:

• Edwin Buggage, editor-in-chief of The New Orleans Data News Weekly
• Phoebe Connelly, Web editor for The American Prospect
• Kari Lydersen, an environmental and science writer based in Chicago
• Brentin Mock, a contributor to The American Prospect magazine
• Julio César Ortiz, a news reporter at Univision’s KMEX television in Los Angeles
• Devin Robins, a public radio producer
• Huáscar Robles, a freelance journalist who formerly reported for Metro San Juan magazine in Puerto Rico
• Talia Whyte, a freelance journalist and blogger based in Boston

Two other IJJ Fellows – Lori Edmo-Suppah, editor of the Sho-Ban News in Fort Hall, Idaho, and Los Angeles freelance journalist Nadra Kareem – participated in Los Angeles, but not in Chicago.

Janet Wilson is IJJ’s Senior Fellow for Environmental Justice.