Thirty-five years after the United States first celebrated Earth Day in 1970, the reality is that most of America's urban and working poor still struggle with harmful environmental dangers. Those threats, the result of social and economic neglect, have created new and frightening environmental, health and social problems -- especially for people of color, urban dwellers For example, asthma is now the leading chronic illness among children. Many cities in Ohio, Michigan and other industrial states continually fail to meet new federal clean air standards. Low-income urban area dwellers are much more at risk of developing asthma and other respiratory diseases. Pollutants and other toxins are more common in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.U.S. public schools on average are 42 years old, and six out of 10 report at least one serious maintenance problem. Many are in such desperate need of repair they are a threat to children's health.
Many deprived communities are affected by their poor environment: The family that cannot find safe, affordable housing; the single mother who lives in a neighborhood without parks for her children to enjoy; the chronically unemployed young man who needs better public transportation to travel to the suburbs for work because manufacturing jobs are no longer located in the inner-city.
Here are a few things that we can all do to elevate these and other environmental-justice issues:
• The environmental-justice community needs to do more to reach out to the urban poor and communities of color by engaging them in actions that demand changes in our environmental policy. They must create coalitions that include a diverse range of groups and individuals committed to working for safer schools, cleaner neighborhoods, more parks, affordable housing, living-wage jobs and sufficient public transportation.
• People in environmentally neglected neighborhoods want to know what policymakers and negligent property owners are doing about abandoned lots and buildings that are magnets for drug dealers and rodents. The environmental community needs to help resolve these issues in concert with community residents.
• Gentrification must not be the prerequisite for cleaning up abandoned neighborhoods. Fines and penalties should be imposed and enforced against neglectful landlords with the full backing of local governments and the environmental community.
• Many communities have more abandoned lots than public parks; the lack of green space for our children contributes to crime and threatens the public safety of the entire community. More should be done with schools and churches to make them partners in helping to make their neighborhoods a more pleasant and less harmful prospect.
Last year, the NAACP National Voter Fund and our partners, Earth Day Network, and a consortium of nonenvironmental partners launched ''Campaign for Communities,'' a groundbreaking initiative that is focused on broadening the environmental movement. One of our first projects was to educate voters in the November 2004 election on environmental-justice issues and help people make the connection between their community's environment and the quality-of-life issues that affect their lives on an immediate basis.
Our message was heard. We were able to register and mobilize one million voters. And these communities will continue to be a significant voting bloc that is willing to back officials who have the courage the vision to join us in this fight.
Earth Day's 35th anniversary provides us with an opportunity to redefine the environmental movement as one founded on the belief that everyone deserves the same opportunity to live in healthy communities and that all of us are entitled to the same basic human rights, regardless of geography, income, race and gender.
Julian Bond is chair of the NAACP.
© 2005 Miami Herald
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