Al Gore and the Oil Spill

18 06 2010

“Al Gore’s Oil Spill Silence,” The Daily Beast, 14 June 2010.

Is the famous environmental activist putting the Gulf crisis to waste?

In the spring of 1989, weeks after the catastrophic sinking of an Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr. was leading the outcry against the company responsible for the second-worst oil spill in United States history. From his position on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Gore demanded to know if Exxon was “stonewalling” the cleanup efforts. A flustered Coast Guard commandant, Paul Yost, told Congress that Exxon was doing “the most that can be done.”

In the years after the disaster, Gore has become synonymous with environmental action. In an advertisement for his 2000 campaign for president, Gore explicitly called for a ban on offshore drilling: “For me, this issue is not only an economic issue and a health issue, it is also a moral issue,” he said. “I think we have an obligation to do right by the environment.”

The spring of 2010 has brought an oil spill already several times larger than Exxon-Valdez, featuring the same cycle of catastrophe, recriminations, and pledges to do better. But 56 days after oil began flooding the Gulf of Mexico, Gore—whose Academy Award and Nobel Prize have made him the most influential environmental activist in the country—has been largely silent during the worst environmental catastrophe in memory.

His nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection has emailed supporters that “the only way to end catastrophic oil spills like Deepwater is to end our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.” But the climate crusader has not engaged with either the White House, the Department of the Interior, or the EPA. His most notable public statement has come in a short article for The New Republic’s website comparing the oil gusher to CO2 emissions. When President Barack Obama, who has pledged to move climate legislation forward this summer, convened a group of business leaders and energy experts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House last week, Gore was nowhere to be seen.

Friends and foes alike are noticing his absence.

“Al Gore has been keeping his head down now for some time, partly because of the scandals over climate science, partly because people revealed his financial incentive in passing climate legislation,” says Kenneth Green, an environmental policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “He seems to have decided to take his money and hit the door.”

Says Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on Gore’s energy team in Clinton’s administration: “I don’t know why he hasn’t been more visible on this. Vice President Gore has a lot on his plate… He’s been trying to move the focus from threats to solutions.”

But, Hendricks adds, the crisis is an ideal opportunity to enact solutions to the problems that have become Gore’s life’s work. “The real security comes from guaranteeing that this will never happen again, by absolutely committing to a low-carbon path forward,” he says. “If the oil spill continues and a robust case is not made for climate legislation, it will be a missed opportunity.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : America, Energy, Green, Politics, Science

Green is the New Black

15 02 2010

“Green is the New Black,” The Root, 18 February 2010.

The office of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson lies halfway between Congress and the White House. The placement is appropriate; the 48-year-old New Orleans native—the first African American to run the agency tasked with protecting the air, water and health of Americans—walks a line between action and negotiation every day. She keeps a copy of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax—the mythical creature who “speaks for the trees”—in her office, alongside photos of herself grinning with Gen. Colin Powell; her former boss, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine; and President Barack Obama.

Alongside these power shots sits a framed political cartoon of a man representing the town of New Bedford, N.J., dripping with pollution and waste. His hand is outstretched, toward a shovel marked “federal stimulus”—which he will use to dig himself out of the surrounding environmental hell. His words for President Obama, seen at the edge of the cartoon, are simple: “Thanks, brother.”

The sketch epitomizes the radical changes that have accrued at the EPA since the Obama administration hired Jackson, a Princeton-trained chemical engineer and experienced political hand. Once a bastion of resistance to environmental action, the character of the EPA has been drastically altered in the last 12 months. On the first anniversary of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which provided $80 billion of investment in alternative energy and environmental cleanup, Jackson touted the EPA’s impact on communities like New Bedford—hit hard by twin forces of social inequality and environmental pollution. “We’re here to help,” Jackson told reporters gathered in her office. “We have protection in our name. We’re not the Department of Defense, but part of our job is protecting human health.”

Jackson visited a long-suffering area of Mississippi this month, the first stop on a tour, organized with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of sites across the country promoting the message of health, non-pollution, economic opportunity and environmental justice. Closest to her heart is the goal of awareness—“putting this agency in the minds of the American people, and not just those who consider themselves environmentalists,” she said. “I grew up in the city; I wasn’t a girl scout; I didn’t camp; I wasn’t a skier; I wasn’t an avid hiker—but the environmentalism I came to know was more about the effects of pollution in society.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : America, Culture, Education, Energy, Green, Politics, Race, Science

Michelle Obama’s Healthy Eating Campaign

7 02 2010

“Michelle Obama’s Healthy Eating Campaign,” The Root, 4 February 2010.

The first lady urges the country to take childhood obesity as its cause.

The White House Kitchen Garden is frozen under, but, this Black History Month, first lady Michelle Obama is once more using food to address the epidemic of childhood obesity that has gripped the country and, she said in a recent speech to the United States’ Conference on Mayors, “never fails to take my breath away.”

It should. The statistics are grim: One-third of young people in the United States are overweight or obese, and one-third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives. In the Latino and black American community, those numbers go up to almost 50 percent. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children today spend seven hours a day using some kind of media device. At the same time, school lunches are fattier, school gym classes are shorter or nonexistent, and the erosion of 1950s “neighborhood” culture means the days of playing outside until supper are long gone.

Today, said Obama, “medical experts are predicting that this generation is on track to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.” Not only does decreased productivity and life expectancy endanger long-term American economic prosperity, diet-related diseases like asthma, diabetes, hypertension and certain cancers are slowly adding to the national health care burden.

All of this impacts the black community more severely than the rest of America: Black men are 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease, and black women are 1.7 times more likely to be obese than their white counterparts. Black neighborhoods in major cities have been shown to have fewer fresh food options and grocery stores than the average community. And according to the government’s Office of Minority Health, black Americans have reduced access to quality health care. Children who don’t eat well are performing worse in school. At an event with the first lady at a Virginia YMCA, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: “the unhealthier we are as a nation the more our health care costs will continue to rise,” adding that the Obama administration has “not only a moral obligation but economic imperative to begin to make a change.”

Perhaps fittingly, Obama has chosen Black History Month to make her stand, for “smart, strategic efforts to help our kids lead active, healthy lives right from the beginning.” By starting young and staying firm, she hopes to slow the impact of the killer diet that threatens all Americans.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : America, Culture, Education, Green

Rebuilding a Better Port-au-Prince

19 01 2010

“Rebuilding a Better Port-au-Prince,” The Root, 19 January 2010.

After Haiti’s earthquake, “starchitects” and urban developers ask: What next?

Three days after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that sent Haiti from a developing nation to a flattened one, President Barack Obama addressed a statement directly to the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who cut short a trip to Southeast Asia and traveled to Haiti over the weekend, appeared with Haitian President René Préval to declare: “We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead.” But one week after the earthquake that claimed up to 200,000 lives and destroyed the backbone of Haiti’s infrastructure, talk is turning from destruction and rescue to mourning and, inevitably, reconstruction.

Rebuilding Haiti will be a tough haul. Major institutions—the national cathedral, the presidential palace—lie toppled. Countless other homes, stores, office buildings and more churches have been reduced to rubble. Debris will need to be cleared before new structures can take their place. Those buildings still standing will need to be tested for safety. Making things worse, Haiti has a notoriously weak state—the sort that couldn’t enforce building codes, or prevent the deforestation that has left the soil unable to deflect routine flooding. Indeed, two-thirds of the buildings in Port-au-Prince were unsafe before the Jan. 12 earthquake. “The challenge for Haiti as compared to New York after 9/11, for example, is the institutional context,” says Diane Davis, a professor of urban planning at MIT who has worked on post-disaster reconstruction in several Latin American cities. “It’s very hard to project a timeline for rebuilding because the situation is so unstable.”

Yet many urban planners, architects and developers are seeing a silver lining in the near-total destruction of a major Haitian city. “It would be a small silver lining if in three years, we see a more sustainable Haiti, with energy efficient, healthy, disaster resistant buildings that makes the nation more resilient to future electricity shortages, public health crises and disasters,” says Matthew Peterson, CEO of Global Green, a sustainable development consulting firm with strong ties to the New Orleans recovery effort. Victoria Harris, CEO of Article 25, a nonprofit architectural consulting firm whose name derives from the United Nations charter naming the built environment as a human right, discussed the opportunity for Haiti to build a truly modern city on the ruins of what came before. “Buildings will affect what people need, want, do—and we want to ensure that they are technically serving their purpose,” she said. But “there is also a chance to build something that is valuable to the community.”

Haiti’s best chance lies in the lessons of history. After the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, recent mudslides in Columbia, earthquakes in Mexico, in rural China and in Nicaragua—not to mention the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of the United States—a template for rebuilding in poor countries has begun to take shape.

Near the fourth anniversary of Katrina, President Obama asked Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan to convene a Long-term Disaster Recovery Working Group. Their interagency mandate, says Fred Tamar, senior HUD adviser and lead staffer for the group, was “to look at disaster recovery and what the federal government could do, working with state and local governments, think tanks and faith-based organizations to help communities impacted by disaster recover more fully and recover faster.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Abroad, America, Green, Politics, Race

The Prez in Denmark

20 12 2009

“The Prez in Denmark,” The Root, 17 December 2009.

Obama’s trip to the climate conference in Denmark could end in failure.

When President Barack Obama touches down in Copenhagen, Denmark, he will be entering a hornet’s nest of urgent, competing priorities that will test his negotiating skills like never before. Far from the kumbaya conference that one might expect for a gathering devoted to saving the planet, the two weeks of United Nations-sponsored climate talks have been a pitched battle—a literal street fight, at times—to balance the economic interests of the diverse nations in attendance. Poor, industrializing countries are demanding climate aid; rich nations are wary of overpromising both financial assistance and emissions cuts; while island nations and global hot spots seek some assurance that they will not be left to drown or burn.

Since stepping into the national spotlight, Obama’s political image has been that of a master negotiator: As a legislator in Illinois, he helped to broker a deal between Republicans, Democrats, civil liberties advocates and the police regarding the interrogation of suspects. On the campaign trail, he sold himself as a sensible liberal who could “disagree without being disagreeable.” But in Washington, conventional politics have trumped his attempts at good-faith negotiation on issues such as health care reform. In the Middle East, his team of dedicated diplomats has not been particularly successful in promoting the American position. And the last time Obama tried to turn on the charm in Copenhagen—in support of Chicago’s failed bid to host the Olympic Games—was hardly encouraging.

The climate conference is the first test of the political goodwill that flipped American favorability ratings abroad from 17 to 71 percent since George W. Bush left office. While Obama’s major foreign policy addresses in Berlin, Cairo, and most recently, Oslo, have won plaudits from international observers, the Copenhagen crowd will be a tough one.

The White House upped the stakes significantly when it made the choice to bring Obama to the end of the climate talks rather than the beginning. “Based on his conversations with other leaders and the progress that has already been made … the president believes that continued U.S. leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. That decision, said Andrew Light of the liberal Center for American Progress, “may well have prevented the meeting from ending in a dangerous stalemate.” The president also seems to have faith in his ability to close a deal. But will the Obama treatment—a speech and a handshake—really make a difference?

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Energy, Green, Politics

Copenhagen’s Class Divisions

18 12 2009

“Copenhagen’s Class Divisions,” The Root, 8 December 2009.

Developing countries at the United Nations Climate Conference want to be heard—and compensated.

It isn’t often that Russians climb in bed with Rwandans. Yet, as the much-hyped United Nations climate summit convenes in Copenhagen this week, 56 world newspapers united against the growing threat of catastrophic climate change. An editorial urging global action to deflect the worst effects of fossil fuel dependence appeared in major news outlets, including ones in Moscow and Kigali—and in 10 other newspapers published from the African continent. “This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west,” the text, originally drafted by the Guardian UK, read. “Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.”

The pre-Copenhagen coordination is significant for several reasons. For months, the dialogue on climate policy has largely focused on the actions of China and of the United States—powerful and dynamic economies that are the two largest global polluters. Their electricity production, transportation and manufacturing industries account for the lion’s share of world pollution—with populous India not far behind. But these actions have grave consequences for smaller countries. Water wars between Burkina Faso and Ghana, or Pakistan and India, food shortages in Niger or oil shocks in American cities are all destabilizing to the global economy and political order. As the stakes mount and the conversation deepens, a new alliance among nations from the global south is asserting a voice in the debate.

The primary instigator of this new diplomatic dynamic is the African Union. The federation of 51 African states, formed in 2002, along with the G77—representing 130 developing countries—has made a strong push for financial support as it tries to participate in the new, green world order. Chief among its requests, developed in Accra in 2008 and hammered out at a recent AU conference on the environment in Addis Ababa, is the creation of a climate fund to support the greening of emerging markets, via subsidies for alternative energy production, reforestation, drought and flood-preparedness infrastructure, and technology transfer. The precise amount of funding—rumored to be between $50 and $70 billion over several years—has not been determined, but “it carries a lot of weight that the AU is saying something,” says Mwiza Munthale, director of public outreach for TransAfrica Forum. “You’re trying to get the attention of the most powerful countries of the world that do not always look out for the developing world.”

The Obama administration’s final position on American emissions reduction targets is not yet known, though a 17 percent cut (below 2005 levels, by 2020) has been its working number. The White House has also suggested that developed nations provide some $10 billion annually by 2012 to help the global south adapt to climate change—but the G77 and AU, along with China, India, Brazil and South Africa, are pushing for more action on both fronts. “We cannot agree to [halving emissions by 2050] because it implies that … the remaining (cuts) must be done by developing countries,” said Alf Willis, chief climate negotiator for South Africa. African states boycotted a preliminary diplomatic conference in Barcelona in November based on a similar complaint. And the same bloc of nations is insisting that climate aid be a central part of any deal in Copenhagen. “These are the new shifts in global decisionmaking,” says Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. “Having one common platform has strengthened the hand of the region.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, America, Energy, Green, Politics

Green Shoots in New Orleans

30 10 2009

“Green Shoots in New Orleans,” The Nation, 21 September 2009.

A frustrating quest for food has led some residents to grow their own.

Margarine, margarine, ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.’” Poppy Tooker recalls the months of food shortages after Hurricane Katrina ripped the Gulf Coast apart. “I could not believe there was no butter.” According to the New Orleans native, one unfortunate but little-noticed repercussion of the storm was the demise of dairy. As a food activist, she understood the heavily industrial process of butter churning, preservation, shipping and storage. But in light of her city’s rich culinary history–fresh collards, crawfish étouffées and endless okra–the dearth was particularly jarring. After “a concentrated three-day search,” Tooker found her grail–in Baton Rouge, more than an hour’s drive out of the ruined city.

From August 2005 until, well, now, thousands of city residents have been living what Pamela Broom, a food-justice advocate also born and raised in New Orleans, calls “the frontier life.” Richard McCarthy, who reopened one of his farmers’ markets just ten weeks after Katrina, recalls the shortages with a grim look. Privileged shoppers trucked to nearby Jefferson Parish for essentials, but “there just wasn’t enough anything,” he says. Early returnees picked through food bins alongside National Guardsmen with automatic weaponry. Volunteers plastered trees with Food Wanted posters, sharing news of a Wendy’s open until 5 o’clock, or an aluminum buffet at noon, courtesy of the Salvation Army. And as the city dried in the sun, the food chain began to reconstitute. “One woman started to make food on Fridays,” says Broom. “Just one thing–red beans or whatever–and the people started to come.”

Federal failures forced this ethic of self-reliance onto the city. Today, however, the question of where to find fresh food is no longer whispered along a community grapevine. More often than not, the answer is blooming in plain sight, from a bed in one of dozens of neighborhood gardens and microfarms that dot the blighted cityscape. These victory gardens for the twenty-first century produce no butter but rather fruits and vegetables that may yet change the future of American agriculture.

Helping to lead the urban farming effort is the New Orleans Food and Farm Network, established in 2002 as a means of coordinating the fledgling group of regional farmers and urban growers who were sending green shoots into a city already plagued by food and economic insecurity before Katrina struck. The summer after the hurricane, NOFFN rallied its membership to create a series of “food maps,” tips for the real-life scavenger hunt that Gulf Coast residents undertook to stave off hunger. Today the nonprofit is still “kind of like the doctor on call,” says Daphne Derven, executive director (Broom is deputy director). Dozens of nascent and existing New Orleans growing operations look to their policy and technical expertise for guidance on how to eat and what to grow: “We are always focused on food access — whether that’s how to cook and eat nutritiously, or whether that’s how to grow your own food,” Derven says.

But from a land use and agricultural policy perspective, the Big Easy is still the Wild West. Tooling around the wards of New Orleans with Broom and Derven is an exercise in blinking and missing: was that shock of green we just passed a vacant, weedy lot or a young garden staked with tomatoes and sunflowers?

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : America, Culture, Green, History, Politics, Race

“The Van Jones Affair”

8 09 2009

The Van Jones Affair,” The Root, 6 September 2009

Green jobs guru Van Jones resigned under fire for his political past. Did the White House sell him out?

57703850Shortly after the news that President Barack Obama’s “green jobs adviser” Van Jones had resigned over the weekend, Republicans were rejoicing and claiming the “scalp” of the man that Fox News host Glenn Beck had branded a “socialist” and an “ex-con.” For weeks, Beck had launched an extensive on-air campaign against Jones. And on Sunday, he was claiming victory, posting this statement: “The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness. … Judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.”

In a FoxNews.com commentary, Phil Kerpen, a policy director for Americans for Prosperity, a right wing political advocacy group, declared that Jones’ resignation was “one of the most significant things I’ve ever had the honor or being involved in.” (Kerpen’s organization was one of the main groups behind the Tax Day Tea Party protests from last April. It also created Patients United Now, an anti-health reform campaign.)

Meanwhile, Democrats and others who have supported Jones’ policy agenda and personal ambition are crying foul, blaming the administration for not defending one of its own. “Jones was one of the only movement progressives in a policymaking position in the Obama White House,” wrote progressive columnist David Sirota on the day of the announcement. “No more—and that’s a damn shame.”

“I think this is bad for democracy,” says James Rucker, co-founder, with Jones, of Color of Change, an online advocacy group that launched an effective advertiser boycott of Beck’s program in July. “Van is someone who’s been great at getting a spotlight on lower income communities in the context of greening America. But because he [was] associated with Color of Change, he’s a target. It’s shameful.”

Jones’ resignation comes in the wake of a quick and dirty partisan battle. He had come under fire from conservatives, most notably Beck, for his political past, which included organizing for income equality, prisoners’ rights and environmental justice. Last week, criticism against Jones took on added furor when news broke that he’d signed a 2004 petition speculating that high-level government officials were involved in planning the 9/11 attacks on the United States. For an administration focused on delicate negotiations on health care reform, defending Jones’ controversial association was a bridge too far.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : America, Green, Politics

Lunchtime Lessons from New Orleans

28 08 2009

“Lunchtime Lessons From New Orleans,” The American Prospect, 28 August 2009

As the Gulf Coast struggles to redevelop, its children build a thriving food justice movement.

55018148

President Obama’s daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I? So asked a pigtailed black girl plastered on buses and billboards around Washington, D.C. The White House blasted the political ad, which promoted healthy food options in public schools, as exploitative — but the little girl’s complaint should resonate with an administration that has prioritized healthy eating and food security, from both the East and West Wing of the White House.

In 2006, a group of New Orleans elementary school children, freshly returned from displacement after Hurricane Katrina, took up a similar refrain about public school cafeterias as part of a citywide leadership-development program known as Rethink. Their version: “We hate sporks!”

Initially used throughout the New Orleans Parish school district as a cost-saving measure, the plastic spoon-fork combination was all that remained after Katrina swallowed dishwashing equipment at school cafeterias — leaving hundreds of students with a bad taste in their mouths. According to a survey of some 500 middle-schoolers, the spork was the most humiliating thing about going back to school. “In Louisiana,” said one Rethinker, standing on a chair to reach the microphone at one of the group’s awareness-building press conferences, “our food culture means eating with a knife, fork, and spoon.” The crowd roared — and in the summer of 2008, the kids notched a significant policy victory: The state-run New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) wrote into its charter that the sporks would be no more.

The dysfunctional, disposable flatware, however, was just one symptom of the city’s bankrupt educational system. During lunch periods capped at 30 minutes, students were also subject to fat-filled, sugary offerings, long lines for food, and “silent” cafeterias used as a punitive measure in crowded, troubled schools.

***

The national debate on obesity and health is gathering steam — thanks in no small part to Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden. The 1,100-square-foot plot grows kale, rhubarb, lettuce, broccoli, figs, and countless herbs. And Obama has used America’s youngest generation as a way to draw attention to the massive problems associated with food sourcing in the United States. The first lady, who planted the garden with local fifth- and sixth-graders, believes empowering kids can have remarkable outcomes. They have “really learned some lessons about nutrition,” she said in May. “They’re making different choices because they’re a part of the process of planting and tilling the soil and pulling up the food.”

But a better example of progress on food justice comes from New Orleans, where the crop of youths in Rethink have discovered that education and nutrition in America goes far beyond Obama’s Washington outreach and picture-perfect plot. As seventh-grade Rethinker Renaldo Herald put it: “We are experts in education. We go to these schools every day.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : America, Education, Green, History, Politics, Race

“Black Folk, Green Thumbs”

23 04 2009

“Black Folks, Green Thumbs,” The Root, 22 April 2009.

How the urban farming movement repairs the relationship between black folks and the earth.

flotusgarden2

At first glance, recent scenes of Michelle Obama planting a White House garden were captivating because of the backdrop. The thought of berries, herbs, spinach, okra, cucumbers, radishes and sweet potatoes sprouting from the South Lawn of the “People’s House” is enough, on its own, to capture the public imagination. But there was something even more striking about the White House garden—the fact that it was planted by and for a black family and that among those helping to till it were young children of color from a nearby D.C. school.

“I used to plant,” Mrs. Obama told a fifth-grader from Bancroft Elementary School. “One of my aunts used to have a garden, but we haven’t done it in awhile.”

Think about it. When was the last time you saw a positive, empowered image of a black farmer? What black faces come to mind when you think of the fast-growing and suddenly influential green movement?

Certainly industrialization has caused all Americans to become more divorced from their food sources. But that separation has often been far more drastic and detrimental for black Americans. The 1999 case of Pickford v. USDA found that black farmers had been subject to decades of governmental loan discrimination. In 1910, black farmers owned 15 million acres of American land. In 2002, according to a report from the “Why Hunger” campaign, the figure had dropped to just a tenth of that. As these connections have disappeared, suppliers of fresh food have all but abandoned many black neighborhoods. A recent study in New York City found that in underserved black and Latino areas, shoppers had to travel 20 blocks before finding produce for sale. Washington, D.C.’s heavily black Ward 8 got its first major grocery chain in late 2007. The story is similar in Oakland, Detroit and Tampa. And even in small towns, black residents often have to go to the “white side of town” to find decent fresh food.

Blacks have historically maintained deep ties to the earth, living for centuries—as with most of the world—as subsistence farmers. And so there is something ironic about the fact that black Americans whose ancestors were brought here to work the soil—first as slaves and then as sharecroppers—are now largely clustered in neighborhoods where it is harder to find fresh oranges than “orange drink.”

“When you can’t go grocery shopping without a car, and you’ve got to take your neighbors with you; or you go to three or four stores just to be able to get the things that you need—[the problem] is obvious,” says LaDonna Redmond, a longtime activist for sustainable farming in Chicago.

Other emerging black foodies are doing their part, planting urban gardens, educating communities on sustainable living, helping workers retrain for green jobs and even taking cues from celebrity food activists Michael Pollan and Alice Waters. But a larger marketing campaign is needed to realign black with green. Historically, environmentalism has been packaged as the province of upper-middle-class white hipsters and socially conscious professionals with money to burn. The new image of the Obamas as the first family of the green movement may be shifting the earth beneath our feet. “The emphasis is not on the most expensive foods,” says Jocelyn Frye, director of policy and projects for Michelle Obama. “It’s really about saying that everyone deserves to eat healthy food, regardless of race.”

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Culture, Education, Green, History, Race

« Previous Entries