Home About Us Press Releases Publications Contact Us Links

EJ Happenings

Links to More Information on Environmental Justice

• Environmental Justice and Chemical Weapons Disposal: A Fact Sheet
• "Complaint of Discrimination" against Incinerator in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
• "Complaint of Discrimination" against Proposed CW Incinerator in Anniston, Alabama
• Letter to Carol Browner in Support of EJ Complaint
• Chemical Weapons Disposal and Environmental Justice--A KEF Publication

• PR--June 29, 1999 Pine Bluff Citizens File EJ Complaint
• PR--Dec. 18, 1997 CWWG, et al. File EJ Complaint in Alabama

Environmental Justice Happenings...

(Excerpted from the May 2000 issue of CWWG's newsletter "Common Sense")

The CWWG's efforts around environmental justice have grown in the last six months. Pine Bluff for Safe Disposal's Evelyn Yates, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has been particularly busy bringing the message of "safe disposal of chemical weapons" to regional and national environmental justice fora (thanks, Evelyn!). A list of recent activities follows.

• In December 1999, KEF staff member Elizabeth Crowe attended the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) meeting in Virginia to raise the chemical weapons issue to this national group, which gives input to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on environmental justice policy issues. A draft resolution on chemical weapons disposal was circulated at the December meeting and will also be presented at the May 2000 NEJAC meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Later in December 1999, Evelyn participated in a National Emergency Gathering of Black Community Advocates for Environmental and Economic Justice in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hundreds of African-American environmental justice leaders from across the country declared a "state of emergency" on environmental racism and economic injustice and developed an Interim National Black Environmental and Economic Justice Coordinating Committee (INBEEJCC). The INBEEJCC Action Plan includes development of youth mentorship and leadership programs, participation in national and international policy-making conferences, an demobilizing community groups to respond to EJ priorities locally and nationally.
• In January, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, the INBEEJCC sponsored a press conference and community briefing on environmental injustice in Washington, DC. The press conference included the release of a position paper entitled "National State of Emergency on Environmental Racism and Economic Injustice," and display of a quilt, which memorialized those who have died as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals.
• This past March, the People of Color and Disenfranchised Communities Network sponsored a trip to Washington DC of community environmental justice leaders from Memphis, Tennessee, Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Savannah, Georgia. The trip emphasized the effects of toxic exposures from federal facilities on African-American youth -- and itself involved 15 young people from Tennessee and Arkansas.

For more information on these organizations or to find out more about environmental justice and the chemical weapons disposal program, contact Elizabeth Crowe at 859-986-0868 or Evelyn Yates at 870-536-0836.