Detroit Peoples Movement Assembly announces resolutions, commitments to improve the city

June 13, 2011


Charity Hicks addresses the Detroit PMA 
Over three dozen commitments and resolutions focusing on grassroots solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing the city of Detroit were agreed upon at the Detroit People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) held April 28 at Sacred Heart Church. A coalition of approximately 250 concerned citizens and local activists formed groups to focus on alternative solutions with regards to Health and Healing, Media, Environmental Quality, Food Sovereignty, Neighborhood Stability and Quality Education.

The Detroit PMA has been meeting around Mayor Dave Bing’s proposed Detroit Works Project and discussing alternative visions for land use.  They came together around the shared principles of Environmental Justice, the United Nation’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Earth Charter for guidance. The PMA pledged their best effort to solve Detroit’s most significant problems of the day.

"The significance of the Detroit PMA is to lift up voice, promote, collective actions, and scale up a grassroots awareness campaign on how we can help support the work," said Detroit community activist Charity Hicks who was one of the main speakers at the PMA. "It's a part of a process to develop consensus on grassroots issues and plan to improve the quality of life of community members.
"The community can build upon the existing network of organizations and individuals doing work in Detroit and take up the resolutions as commitments for actions. We are nearthing all of the work that is going on on various fronts.  Promoting awareness of how all these issues are related to democracy, and board based interests of everyday people."


Below is a list of resolutions, and commitments from the Detroit PMA. 

Health and Healing Justice:

What we will build:
  • Reframing health and healing as a human right, not as a privilege.

  • Healthcare belongs in the commons not the "corporate/private" sector.

Our commitments:
  • Engage Future City web class in helping us build a community resource database. It will include health and healing resources, information, and education. We hope to eventually include the intersection of the other six PMA topics.

  • We can't only house information on-line. Therefore, create a monthly flyer distribution network, to get resources and information into the neighborhoods.

  • Participate in building the Midwest PMA health and healing justice network.

Media Justice:

·      We demand media that comes from and centers those actually affected, empowering folks to create our own media, lift up what we have, and move from message to action.

·      We will be a people's media network, scaled to the level of change we want, to harness our power and hold the city accountable. We will prioritize low and high tech media, analyze and influence the local and national discourse, and model transparency.

·      We will build a reality where communications is a human right, build media education for youth and others that teaches us to consume critically, support strategically and create with vision, and build free hot mesh wireless!

Environment as a Human Right:

  • We collectively support the 48217 community efforts to address the environmental injustice they face.

  • We need a culture shift that sees environment as a human right
      • We see the value of creating a public education campaign that: calls for all of us to love the environment, establishes a pollution hotline, retells the story of the environment, set up awareness and solutions in context

  • We want to foster a positive spirit, nurture diversity in relationships as well as healthy connections to each other and mother earth
      • We want to host community listening sessions
      • We will consider gathering at least annually to better communicate environmental concerns in our community

  • We believe that we need to create new models and be the change we want to see: an eco-village in Detroit, new systems of waste management, phylo and bio-remediation, green commons, green walkways, rain barrels

  • We want to advocate policy changes, bombard city and state officials to become environmental justice advocates. "We will connect with, develop, and leverage funding resources across our campaigns and work to really live our environmental awareness."

Food Sovereignty:

  • We commit to create an education campaign around healthy foods

  • We commit to collectively creating and supporting alternative distribution networks including worker-owned cooperative models and scaling up existing local food producers to get healthy and affordable food to people

  • We commit to supporting policy change on local and national levels

  • We commit to demanding a moratorium on new fast food chains and will work towards a full boycott of fast food chains in the city

  • We support value-based local businesses

  • We will host our own Food Justice PMA in Detroit and we invite all to attend

Neighborhood Stability:

  • We commit to asking our own communities what their needs are and creating citizen governance

  • We commit to look for the common analysis by polling our neighborhoods and adopting neighborhoods to create stronger communities

  • We demand businesses and factories in the city hire local residents and use grassroots community based research methods

  • We commit to create a Sanctuary City – for safe stable neighborhoods

DISINVESTMENT FROM DETROIT WORKS
  • We commit to create and develop an alternative plan.

  • We commit to oppose government take over

  • We commit to build intercontinental social movements.

  • We commit to regionalize

  • We commit to strengthen/engage existing processes and existing plan.

  • We commit to build community home first

  • We commit to create regional support

  • We commit to find someone who can do a city audit

  • We commit to use alternative media strategies to uplift existing community work

  • We commit to utilize the DWP summit meetings to voice concern, use sign-in sheet to get commitment today’s Action Steps

Education Transformation:
·      We commit to coming together after the PMA to Formulate Strategic planning group for community empowerment regarding education and moratorium on all school and library closures

·      1st meeting May 6th 1264 Meldrum – Earthworks open to youth, parents, teachers, community

·      We will commit to show up to rallies that support Catherine Ferguson Academy (a school dedicated to educating teen mothers and their children).

·      We commit to connecting school and community (churches, non-profits, etc)

·      We commit to investigating and discussing community charters as a strategy to Explore alternative plan to closings i.e. community charters

·      We will commit to sharing resources and ideas in alternative media, so that people are informed on political happenings and can learn from successful models implemented locally and beyond. Specifically publication in Critical Moment’s education section

·      We commit to fighting for libraries to remain open and including public libraries in discussions about the future of Detroit’s education

 

EMEAC, Nsoroma and Sierra Club team up for EJ Tour of Detroit

Nsoroma students on the EJ Tour in Southwest Detroit
Almost 50 students from Nsoroma Institute got a first hand look at some of the major features on Detroit’s environmental justice landscape during an Environmental Justice Tour coordinated last month by EMEAC and the local Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice Office. The fifth and sixth grade Nsoroma students who went on the EJ Tour were participants in environmental classes put on via EMEAC’s Stand Up Speak Out and Greener Schools Programs.
“This is about disseminating information to the kids,” said EMEAC Associate Director and SUSO Director Ahmina Maxey. “It’s about letting them be the people to share what’s happening in the city around environmental justice. I don’t have to be the spokesperson. Rhonda (Anderson) doesn’t. We don’t need to be. This should be common knowledge. Hopefully, it will not only be common knowledge but common knowledge for change.”
At various points on the tour, Maxey teamed with Rhonda Anderson and Michelle Martinez of the Sierra Club to give presentations on a range environmental issues facing the city’s future. The tour spanned a diverse cross sections of the city beginning with the Midtown/Downtown area where students learned about curbside recycling, the Detroit Incinerator and two controversial landmarks owned by billionaire mogul Manuel Moroun in the old Detroit Train Station and the Ambassador Bridge.
The tour continued through Southwest Detroit where students toured the city’s industrial corridor. There students got a sometimes nose jarring perspective of the environmentally challenged industries there such as steele plants (Great Lakes Steel and Russian owned Severstal Steele), salt mines, the city’s Waste Water Treatment facilities and a controversial tar sands oil refinery (Marathon Oil).
Students later stopped for lunch at Belanger Park before traveling to East Detroit where they visited Dr. Tyree Guyton’s Hiedelberg Project, which is a world renowned outdoor urban art museum.
Maxey praised the work of SUSO Youth Team Leader and Nsoroma alumn Siwatu Salama-Ra for the impetus to put the EJ Tour together.
“Siwatu actually got the idea for the environmental justice tour because a lot of the students in the class for Stand Up Speak Out are learning about environmental justice,” Maxey said. “They had talked about some of the facilities we saw on the tour but they actually hadn’t gone there yet.
“It was really about not only talking about environmental justice and telling them that in our city we have environmental racism and environmental pollution that is happened to people of color. Showing it to them and taking them to Southwest where they can see that right next to Marathon there is a community center. Right where there is a park there are two refineries. It really shows them what we’ve been talking about.”
The 20-year-old Salama-Ra said she believes the foundational learning students get at Nsoroma along with the hands on learning delivered by EMEAC will continue to develop a core of young leaders for the future such as herself.
““I think the tour was very beneficial to the students,” she said. “These Nsoroma students are on their game. I’m proud of them. They are going to be leaders. They already are leaders. They are asking wonderful questions. They are coming up with wonderful ideas. They are having some fun while being educated at the same time.
“This was a very good day for them to be engaged in. I think they got the full range of  understanding of the emotional impact they should have based on the environmental impact that people in the city suffer from.”



 

GAME Youth Summer Camp begins June 20

June 12, 2011


EMEAC staff erect banner at new office in First UU Church
Youth ages 13-18 are invited to attend EMEAC’s first annual Gardening Advocacy Media and Education (GAME) Youth Summer Camp starting with phase one of the camp June 20-30.
All three EMEAC programs will contribute to the two-phase camp. The program will include workshops on environmental justice, media strategies and urban gardening along with sponsorship to attend the 2011 Allied Media Conference June 23-26.
 “I'm excited for this year's summer camp because we'll be able to expose Detroit's youth to the work EMEAC's doing in our three programs: Stand Up Speak Out, Remedia, and Greener Schools,” said EMEAC Associate Director Ahmina Maxey. “They'll be able to engage in fun, hands-on activities while also learning about environmental justice and actions they can take to improve the city.”
Camp will begin with Environmental Justice training at the new EMEAC offices inside the First Unitarian Universalist Church Complex located at the corner of Cass and Forest. After three days of fun and engaging popular education exercises on environmental justice, EMEAC will sponsor campers to attend the Allied Media Conference inside McGregor Hall on the WSU campus.
During the conference, students will document their experiences at AMC. On the Monday following AMC, there will be a debriefing with the EMEAC staff and students will begin processing their video footage for a documentation piece under the guidance of the Remedia Program.
“I’m sure the students will get so much out of the Allied Media Conference and we’re looking forward to working with them on documenting their experiences,” said Remedia Coordinator Patrick Geans-Ali. “AMC is a great place to expose young people to some of the latest innovations in media technology, and it will be fun having them working with some of that technology to record their experience.”
Phase two of the summer camp will begin July 18 and continue through August 26. The second phase of GAME 2011 will include an environmental justice tour of Detroit hosted by the Environmental Justice Office of the local Sierra Club, helping lay the ground work for Remedia’s bio friendly mobile media lab, workshops by Sarah Sidewalk of Fender Bender, development in EMEAC’s North End urban garden and more.
Youth interested in participating in EMEAC’s GAME Youth Summer Camp should call 313 559-7498 for more information.



 

Eco-Media Track back again for Allied Media Conference 2011






EMEAC’s Remedia Program will once again team with the Green Guerillas out of Ithaca, New York at the upcoming Allied Media Conference 2011 to coordinate three days of media making workshops June 24-26. For the second year in a row, Remedia and the Green Guerillas will come together to coordinate AMC’s Eco-Justice Media Track, which documents the exploration the environmental landscape of Detroit to the farthest reaches of a mind/body vision of space itself through holistic health.

“I am really excited about the evolution in holistic justice work that I see taking place as evidenced by the Allied Media Conference,” said EMEAC associate director Lottie Spady who also directs the Remedia Program. “Last year was the first time there was an Eco-Justice Media Track that specifically connected environmental justice to media and digital justice. It was also the first time I had the pleasure of working closely with the Green Guerillas and other youth environmental justice media makers. I was so geeked to know there were more of ‘us’ out there.”
The Eco-Media Track will begin on Friday, June 26 with an environmental justice tour of Detroit co-sponsored by the Detroit Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice Office. The theme of the three-hour, two-bus tour is “Neighborhood Stories of Healing and Change.” Tour guides for the tour will be Spady and Rhonda Anderson of the Sierra Club EJ Office.
Participants will travel beyond the four walls of the AMC to learn about, reflect upon, and co-create eco-media that connects their home communities with environmental justice issues facing poor and underserved residents in Detroit. The tour will highlight Southwest Detroit’s industrial corridor – the most polluted zip code in the state of Michigan, which is also home to Marathon Oil, the Detroit Waste Water Treatment Plant, and the fourth largest steelmaker in the United States. The tour will engage with the local community’s long history of organizing, and fighting for environmental protection. It will also invite participants to an interactive tour to discuss and learn about the critical role environmental justice media plays in the movement.
Day two of the Eco Media Track will consist of a two-part Food Justice and Eco-Media Field Trip. The theme for part one is “What’s for Dinner?” It will send out a call to all teens hungry for real food and sustainable change. It will help answer essential questions around food justice during this field trip to a nearby farm. Participants will team up with peers and elders to prepare a zero-waste local foods group meal. With support from the Detroit Food Justice Task Force, People’s Kitchen, and Red Mesa Cuisine, this community-cooking workshop will encourage all to embrace the radical notion that “we are what we eat.” Space is limited to 24 teens; RSVP by sending an email to leslie@stamp-cny.org, or by calling 607-277-2122.
Part two of the Food Justice Eco-Media Field Trip will consist of a Farm Dinner and Open Mic session on Saturday evening at the Spaulding Court Living Community. Any young people feeling under-nourished by mainstream media’s promotion of fat, sugar, and fossil fuels are invited to join Remedia and the Green Guerillas for dinner and share their vision of food justice media. This community kitchen workshop and open lens/mic event will be powered by the Green Guerrillas’ solar-powered veggie diesel bus and will encourage us all to re-define corporate food narratives and embrace the radical notion that we are what we eat. Space is limited to 24 teens; RSVP by sending an email to leslie@stamp-cny.org, or by calling 607-277-2122.
The final day of the Eco-Media Track will focus on making “Compostable Cosmic Connections: Closing Sessions for Survival and Sustainability.” On the final day of the 2011 AMC, EMEAC and the Green Guerillas will be calling all Earthy Enthusiasts as they wrap up a weekend’s worth of transformative actions. They will look at the environmental justice tour of Detroit, and a teen farm-to-fork dinner featuring local foods, kids cooking, and culinary-related multi-media arts. All are invited to partake in the last daily special on the eco-media menu: an open caucus exploring the unique connections between urban/local, land/community, (inter-galactic) universe/abundance, and composting toilets.
Finally, there will be a virtual “boxing match” where coordinators will tackle life’s contradictions while re-imagining sustainability by creating a new galaxy which balances collaboration and personal accountability; life-affirming actions and green privilege, and survival and wealth in the age of technology.
“Get.read to blast.off,” says Spady. “Last year, it was great to meet up with (the Green Guerillas) from across the nation and make something so needed and beautiful happen. From the collaboration of an environmental justice CD for fundraising to hosting a jam-packed EJ tour with on-the-spot media being made and shared, it was wonderful. This year will definitely be next level with the series of workshops that are planned. Everyone should be sure to check it out."

 

Greener Schools takes students on Humbug Marsh Field Trip to teach Outdoor Landscape Design Classes

GIBRALTAR – Middle and high school students from Detroit Institute of Technology (DIT) and Detroit Community Schools went on a field trip last month to Humbug Marsh to take part in the rebirth, reclamation, and restoration of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. They planted trees, watched the birds, and hiked the trails of the newly restored refuge in Gibraltar, Michigan.

“The bus drove south on I-75, and as the skyline faded into the distance we passed industrial polluters like the Detroit Salt Mines, the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant, and Marathon Oil Refinery,” said Lizzy Baskerville, Coordinator for EMEAC’s Greener Schools Program which sponsored the trip.  “As we approached the downriver towns of Wyandotte and Trenton, a student murmured ‘We sure aren’t in Detroit anymore.’

“Though we were definitely in new territory and 40 minutes from home, the post-industrial landscape was somewhat familiar to us. Off of busy Jefferson Ave in Gibraltar, the façade of Humbug Marsh was hardly distinguishable from its industrial neighbors- with a cyclone fence surrounding us, and a smokestack in the distance. But down a short road towards the river was the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and Humbug Marsh- the first of its kind in North America.”

Humbug Marsh is located at the intersection of the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways, so the area is important for migratory birds.  Birds rely on the area’s marshes for resting and refueling, but if the river and marshes are polluted and habitat is destroyed. The birds have nowhere to stop.

“We learned that these restored habitats support 300 species of birds, including 30 species of waterfowl, 23 species of raptors, and 31 species of shorebirds, plus 117 kinds of fish, all within an urban area of six million people,” Baskerville said. “We kept trying to find the birds we heard in the trees, saw a couple toads bouncing along the trails, and stepped alongside deer and other animal tracks in the mud. It was beautiful and lush, and wet.”

“As some of these urban people visiting the refuge, we weren’t entirely prepared to hike through a muddy marsh while the rain was pouring down, but the youth were incredibly positive and eager to brave the wetness. We made our own boots and ponchos out of garbage bags and duct tape. As if signaling our dedication to Mother Nature, after an hour of withstanding the rain it stopped and the sun came out.”

With the guidance of the Humbug Marsh staff, students went on a nature hike. They planted hundreds of baby dogwood and willow “sticks” along a newly day-lighted pond. They learned about reclamation, habitat restoration, and the importance of the region’s wildlife through these activities. Most importantly, the sutdents had a lot of fun. One young woman who ventured into the middle of the pond to plant a sapling fell in, and emerged to giggles and mud caked all over her pants.

“I don’t care,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m having fun.”

For more information about Humbug Marsh visit: http://www.fws.gov/midwest

 

Detroit Shall Burn No More! Incinerator Fight Heats Up

May 31, 2011

“Detroit Shall Burn No More!” Incinerator Fight Heats Up
By Jeff Conant
On the final day of the 2010 United States Social Forum scores of local activists and several hundred of their allies from across the country held a series of rallies targeted at the city’s municipal waste incinerator. The Social Forum had chosen Detroit because the city represents all the vast failures of corporate industrialism and immense possi- bilities for renewal. The closure of the incinerator four months later, temporary though it may be, showed the prescience of the Forum in its choice of target.
Given the wide range of themes discussed at the forum—from immigration to gender to militarism to media justice—and the broad set of issues facing Detroit—from evictions to utility shutoffs to unem- ployment rates of up to 50 percent—the focus on the waste incinerator for the forum’s closing action was significant.
As the marchers made their way through the nearly vacant neighborhoods of this once thriving metropolis, one chant evoked a complex web of memories. To locals, “Detroit shall burn no more!” brought to mind the 1967 race riots that resulted in thousands of buildings being burned, as well as the inner city arson incidents of the eighties, when prop- erty owners would burn down their unmarketable homes for insurance under cover of Devil’s Night (the night before Halloween). This time around, however, the metaphor served to connote the burning of waste and rising global temperatures.
A Fiery Symbol of Despair
A remnant of industrial development that should have been relegated to oblivion long ago, the Detroit municipal waste incinerator serves as a clear example of the ways in which emitters of point-source pollu- tion target low-income neighborhoods and commu- nities of color. It is also a classic target for the growing climate justice movement. Speaking at the rally, City Council Member Joanna Watson admitted that there is no more important issue facing Detroit.
Indeed, the fight over the incinerator—the largest such facility in the country, owned by Covanta, the world’s largest incinerator company—is one of the most iconic environmental and social justice fights in the U.S. today.
The word “consume” means “to destroy or use up, as by fire or disease.” So, incinerators represent the very definition of toxic and unsustainable consump- tion. They emit more carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit of electricity than even the dirtiest coal-fired power plants and the incineration process drives a climate-changing cycle of resources extracted from the earth, processed in factories, shipped around the world, and eventually, burned. In truth, more than 90 percent of the materials disposed of in incinera- tors and landfills could be reused, recycled, and com- posted, creating both jobs and community resilience.
Like every other incinerator in existence, the Detroit facility stands squarely in the way of green jobs, vibrant communities, and environmental justice—a fact evidenced by the frontline presence of the Teamsters Union at the march and rally. The Teamsters also issued a strong statement, saying, “The facts are clear. Recycling creates six to 10 times more jobs than incinerating or landfilling. By recy- cling waste we can recover valuable materials and limit hazardous pollution.”
Paid to Pollute
When Detroit’s incinerator was proposed in the
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Race, Poverty & the Environment | Fall 20101980s, it aroused strong community opposition. A group called the Evergreen Alliance organized direct actions, including blockades of the site, which led to many arrests and significant public attention. But racial tensions and the strong support enjoyed by Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, con- tributed to the failure of the mostly white Evergreen Alliance to block the plan. (Young’s administration, it later turned out, was riddled with corruption and the incinerator is just one piece of his troubled legacy.) The Alliance did succeed on a broader front, however, by raising early awareness that helped galva- nize a national movement.
Most notably, Detroit’s incinerator came with a staggering debt load. Clean air policies enacted immediately after it was built demanded the addition of costly pollution controls. And although the city sold the facility to private investors in the early 1990s, taxpayers were saddled with the construction costs. In its 20 years of operation, the incinerator has cost Detroit taxpayers over $1.1 billion; in exchange,
it generated toxic pollution causing asthma rates three times the national average.
A recent news report stated: “Detroit doesn’t just outpace the state in pollution levels. Forbes Maga- zine, analyzing EPA data, last year named the Detroit-Warren-Livonia area the second most toxic city in the nation, with 68 Superfund sites and 281 facilities releasing toxic chemicals.”1 The cumulative impact of this pollution is literally killing people.
Roland Wahl, a resident of the Oakland Heights section of greater Detroit, states: “We live in the most polluted zip code in the state. My doctor told me ‘this environment is killing you.’ People are selling their homes for as little as $300 to get out of [here].”
March organizer Sandra Turner-Handy, a commu- nity outreach director for the Michigan Environmen- tal Council said, “My granddaughter attended the Go Lightly Educational Center, right near the incin- erator. She got asthma and had to use her inhaler every single day. [But] from the time she left there... she has not used her inhaler once.”
Detroit Says: “Give Me Your... Wretched Refuse”
To operate efficiently, the incinerator needs to burn about 800,000 tons of trash a year; and as long as the incinerator is licensed to operate, its owners must find ways to ensure a steady supply of mixed waste, by the ton. In recent years, however, because of Detroit’s drastic drop in population—from around 1.5 million in the 1980s to about 750,000 today— the amount of trash produced in the city has declined. Consequently, the city has had to import trash from its more affluent neighbors.
Pending the incinerator’s permanent shutdown, Detroit’s inner city residents pay up to $150 a ton to
8
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Photos:
(Top) After the U.S. Social Forum people march on the Detroit in- cinerator, the largest in the world.
(Bottom) Mother Na- ture collapses due to toxic incinerator emis- sions.
©2010 Orin Langelle/GJEP
Race, Poverty & the Environment | Fall 2010
Environmental and Climate Justice
import garbage from wealthier areas so that the incin- erator can burn its daily quota of 2,858 tons of garbage and release its annual allowed quota of up to 2,251 tons of regulated pollutants.
Not surprisingly, the incinerator is deeply impli- cated in Detroit’s budget crisis as well. According to Brad van Guilder of the Detroit Ecology Center, “[The] facility has brought Detroit to its knees three times... first in 1991, when the scrubbers had to be added. [Next], when the city sold the facility to a private consortium—it was valued at $643 million, but Detroit received only $54 million. The majority of the funds were actually borrowed from the city, and had to be paid back over the next 20 years.”
The third instance is the crisis occurring right now: Detroit’s contract with the facility’s owners has expired but closing the incinerator now could cost the city more in the short-term than keeping it open. That’s because the incinerator is a Waste to Energy (WTE) facility, meaning heat from burning trash is used to generate electricity, which is sold to Detroit Edison, the local power utility, which in turn sells it to the city. Detroit Edison’s city contract stipulates that even if supply from the incinerator stops, the utility is guaranteed payment through 2024.
WTE or the Great Carbon Boondoggle
Incinerators have long been a key target of envi- ronmental justice struggles in the U.S.—with great success. Massive public opposition and community advocacy have led to a tremendous rise in alternative waste reduction practices, such as recycling and com- posting, over the past several decades preventing any new incinerators from being built since 1997. In response, the waste industry has taken to promoting
the dubious “Waste to Energy” idea, using misleading claims about burning trash offering a “clean energy source.” Actually, it is an absurdly inefficient source of energy because incinerated waste includes a large percentage of organics.
Incineration is based on the false assumption that there is a large, nonhazardous portion of the waste stream that cannot be avoided through source-reduc- tion and cannot be reused, recycled, or composted. In truth, most municipal waste can be recycled except for hazardous materials, such as PVC, batter- ies, and electronics—precisely those that are the most hazardous to burn.
“We need to get trash out of the renewable portfo- lio standard entirely,” says Brad van Guilder of the Ecology Center. “The Obama administration is sup- porting cap and trade, which will allow these facilities to continue. But if we allow for these cap and trade schemes, we’re going to continue to concentrate the dirtiest facilities in those neighborhoods that can least resist them.”
A healthier and more practical alternative would be the practice of zero waste—designing products and processes to minimize toxicity and waste and conserving and recovering all resources in a closed loop cycle. It would help to conserve three to five times more energy than is produced by waste inciner- ation. “We know land-filling is bad and we know incineration is bad,” says Turner-Handy, who is also a founding member of Zero Waste Detroit, a coalition of environmental organizations, community groups, and individuals working to move Detroit toward recycling. “So we need to have full materials recovery. If the city wants to save money and create jobs, they need to create a materials recovery center.”
n
Photo:
Protesters try to con- vince "Mayor" to shut down incinerator.
©2010 Orin Langelle/GJEP
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Race, Poverty & the Environment | Fall 2010
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n
Photo:
Activists drop banner adjacent to the inciner- ator during the march.
©2010 Orin Langelle/GJEP
An environmental task force set up by the Detroit City Council determined that closing the incinerator would eliminate about 50 jobs, but creating a materials recovery facility would create 123 new jobs, and an additional 300 jobs would be created through recycling-based manufacturing.
However, at present Detroit recycles only about three percent of its waste stream, as opposed to Boston (15 percent), Chicago (23 percent), and San Francisco (over 70 percent).2 According to van Guilder, the city signed a contract committing the Department of Public Works to pick up house- hold waste and bring it to the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, which would then bring it to the incinerator. “It basically locked out any kind of recycling,” van Guilder points out. “You would literally be fined for hiring someone to pick up your recycling.”
An End to Smokestacks Everywhere
Recycling is widely acknowledged to be the most climate-effective waste management strategy because it reduces emissions throughout the economy, not just at the waste facility (landfill or incinerator).3 Which is why Zero Waste Detroit and the other organizers of the June 26 march and rally deter- mined to focus on “smokestacks everywhere, in the backyards of the poor,” and not merely in Detroit, according to Ananda Lee Tan, who is the U.S. and Canada coordinator for the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA) and works with communities worldwide to end incineration.
“To stabilize the climate we need to stop burning oil, coal, forests, crops, and waste,” says Tan. “For most eco-conscious cultures, fire is sacred—only to be used for life-support functions like cooking food and carefully maintaining ecosystems with con- trolled burns. We need to reconsider the use of fire
in destructive processes like burning for energy.”
In October 2010 the inciner- ator abruptly ceased operations as the owners couldn’t come to terms with the buyer for their overpriced steam heat.
"This facility has never been essential to the city of Detroit. It has just been extremely costly," said van Guilder on news of the shutdown.
Now that the incinerator has been taken off line, environ- mentalists are organizing to
keep it closed and launch curbside recycling in earnest.
According to van Guilder, this is not just a local issue: “Detroit’s struggle is very important to how this plays out nationally, just like the fight of the Evergreen Alliance back in the late ‘80s. They lost the fight in Detroit, but it played out in other incinerator struggles around the country.”
“Historically there are a lot of barriers to organiz- ing different constituencies around an issue like this,” admits Tan. “The fact that frontline EJ communities and their allies from around the country were able to come together with unions to fight this incinerator shows a real shift in the political landscape.”
“Ultimately,” he adds, “it sends a signal to com- munities across the U.S. that not only can we shut down polluting industries in the backyards of the poor, but we can replace them with green jobs that have tangible benefits. This is a tremendous story that’s still unfolding.” n
Endnotes
1. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/06/must-read_report_de- troits_4821.html
2. http://www.sfenvironment.org/our_sfenvironment/ press_releases.html?topic=details&ni=482
3. USEPA, Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases: A Life-Cycle Assess- ment of Emissions and Sinks, 3rd Edition. 2006.
Jeff Conant is an independent journalist, activist, and educator, and author of A Community Guide to Environmental Health and A Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency.
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Reimagine Detroit

May 9, 2011

Charity Hicks, The People’s Water Board Coalition
Published
• Sun, May 08, 2011
By Marcus WrightSpecial to the Michigan Citizen
DETROIT — Several hundred people gathered at Sacred Heart Church April 28 to share information and develop strategies on how to make Detroit a better place to live.

They were not politicians nor were they award-winning urban planners. They were ordinary people concerned about the city of Detroit and its residents.

The event was facilitated by the People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) and rganized during the U.S. Social Forums in June of last year. PMA’s are gatherings of people to discuss and analyze conditions, come up with strategies, commitments and visions for how to better their communities.

The overwhelming consensus at the meeting was Detroiters need to develop and execute their own plan or redesign and improve Detroit.

Charity Hicks of The People’s Water Board Coalition Detroit, explained how certain entities are attempting to take over Detroit. She told the audience a group of deep-pocket foundations got together and created a pot of money to entice Mayor Dave Bing to create the kind of Detroit they wanted.

“Bing called it ‘right sizing’ and said there would be winners and losers,” Hicks said. “The people rebelled. What you mean you gon’ shut off services to some parts of the city? We pay taxes.”

Hicks says Bing and his staff rethought their presentation.

“They hired an award-winning urban planner named Toni Griffith and a team of consultants from all over the world to tell Detroit how to become lean, mean, green and thriving but they never asked a block club president, never asked anybody who goes to a BP gas station to shop for groceries to feed their family; never asked a neighborhood association; didn’t go to any churches,” Hicks said. “They just said ‘We’re going to right size Detroit. We’re going to strategically reframe Detroit. We’re going to make Detroit work.’”

Hicks says Bing has proclaimed Detroit can’t remain as it is and he’s not telling Detroiters anything they don’t already know.

“The question is, ‘Have you asked the people what they want? Where they want to go and how they want to get there?’” Hicks said. “Our mission is to bring the people’s voice into this process that doesn’t have any transparency, democracy or accountability because those who are paying the cost are entities the people never voted to redesign and reframe the city.”

According to Hicks, Bing will present a plan sometime in June.

She says members of the Peoples Water Board Coalition are also working on a plan. “The mayor’s plan is separate from our plan. But we reserve the right to critique the mayor’s plan. It also means we have to engage our family and friends around consensus building for our plan,” Hicks said. “As people who live on those blocks and in those houses, we have a responsibility to each other.”

Maureen Taylor of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, spoke to the need to develop a common strategy. A common strategy requires a common analysis, Taylor said.

“If some of us think Santa Claus is the cause of our problem then they will go off and organize to fight Santa Claus. If some think it’s Russia that is the cause of our problem, then they will organize to fight the Russians,” Taylor said. “So, we have to see if we can arrive at a common analysis.”

Taylor explained that money was taken from working people and was supposed to be loaned back. But the money wasn’t loaned back. “Are you clear they took your money and won’t loan it back to you. Nine hundred billion dollars is a little less than a trillion. Seems like a lot of money to me,” Taylor said. “It is very important everyone in this room understand this is not a cyclical crisis.”

Taylor explained things are not going to get better. She says Detroiters are experiencing a structural realignment of capital.

Referring to local history, she says 40 years ago names like Dodge Main, Huber Road, Lynch Road, Mack Stamping, Warren Stamping, Chevrolet Gear and Axle and Ford Rouge were familiar to everyone. “Some of you here worked in those places. Some of you here have parents who worked in those places. But those places are gone,” Taylor said. “But the number of cars they make has not decreased. However, the number of workers needed to produce those cars has decreased.”

Fifty percent of all the jobs that left this country came out of this state, according to Taylor.

Taylor rhetorically asked, “What happened? Where did Snyder come from? Talking about teachers make too much money? Production workers make too much money?”

She said American Axle workers used to make $35 an hour. Now they start at $8 an hour and the highest they can go is $14 an hour.

“Why is it when working people need money none is there but we can find money for a third war. Three wars going on at the same time. Things have changed and we don’t have a book to open to see what we do now,” Taylor said. “That’s why PMAs are important. We can’t look to Bing for a plan. Dave Bing is a point guard. We can’t get the plan from a point guard, especially a point guard playing for the other side. The solution lies within the affected community. We are the affected community. Our plan has to be developed by us.”

According to Taylor, Detroiters can’t look to elected officials for help. All of them got Blue Cross Blue Shield. They can pay for gas at the gas station. The soldiers of this movement are in this room. They understand what has changed.

“The corporations have decided to take what they want and rule over us. They have decided that with enough money they can pay their politicians to create laws that make it so,” Taylor said. “What we have to do and will do is flip the script. Tell folks we will not surrender our humanity; we will not surrender our future; we will not surrender our children, we will not surrender mother earth and we will not surrender our vision. Even as they close libraries and schools we will not surrender. We will build what we need.”

After the speakers, participants formed focus groups to hammer out resolutions regarding education, food security, the environment, neighborhood stability, health and healing justice, media justice and disinvestment from Detroit Works.

Resolutions included formulating strategic planning groups for community empowerment to be held May 6, at 1264 Meldrum, 6 p.m.; May 3 4-7 p.m. meeting at Frederick Douglas school in support of Catherine Ferguson Academy; launch an education campaign around healthy food; boycott fast food and establish a moratorium on new fast food restaurants; attend the May 18-19 food summit at Eastern Market; organize an annual gathering to better communicate environmental concerns in our community; canvass community to determine needs and create citizen governance; create a database of health and healing messages with information and education; create a reality where communication is a human right; build a free, hot-mesh wireless; develop media education for youth and others, teaching to consume critically, support strategically and create with vision; identify someone who can do an audit; use alternative media strategies to uplift existing community work.

Call 313.964.0618 or 248.258.5188 or visit peoplepowerdetroit/home for more information.

 

Earth Day Celebrated by Reclaiming Abandoned Spaces

May 5, 2011

DETROIT -- Approximately 18 local citizens celebrated Earth Day by plating sunflower seedlings on a vacant lot next to an abandoned building in East Detroit on April 21.

The event was held at the corner of Forest and Chene where seedlings grown by Nsoroma Institute students were implanted by students from Build On and other community members in a symbolic gesture of “reclaiming abandoned spaces” as part of a ceremony of the Radical Joy for Hard Times program.

“In honor of Earth Day we wanted to commemorate the Earth and all that she does in our lives,” said Sonya Green an Environmental Community Fellow with the East Michigan Environmental Action Council. “People all over the world are taking this concept and going to places that may have been negatively affected. We go to bare witness to what has happened and then leave something beautiful behind. It’s about recalling our connectedness to the Earth, and then giving something positive back.”

 

Greener Schools visits Heidelberg Project


DETROIT -- Approximately 35 students from the Detroit Institute of Technology and the Detroit Community School took a guided tour of Detroit's world-renown outdoor art exhibit the Heidelberg Project on January 14 on the city's East side. The students, who are also taking part in the East Michigan Environmental Action Council's "Ugliest School Yard Competition" under the Greener School Program, not only got to see and learn the history behind the colorful array of artwork now decorating an entire block on the street for which the project was named, they also had an opportunity to meet the man whose visions inspired it all, Dr. Tyree Guyton.

"I think it was overall really great," said EMEAC's Greener Schools Program Director Elizabeth Baskerville. "Having Tyree speak was really important. I think being able to explore spaces that are in Detroit is really important. People come from all over the world to come here, and people who live here don't even know that it's here. I think there's something wrong with that."

 

Create Solutions for Detroit

By Patrick Geans-Ali

To give voice to the community, a coalition of local activists affiliated with some of the city’s leading community based, nonprofit organizations will convene Detroit’s first city-wide People’s Movement Assembly from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 28 at the Sacred Heart Church. The main goal of the People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) is to provide a forum for community voices to be heard, and then organize to create solutions for the concerns that are raised.


Many Detroiters feel that what has been missing from Mayor Dave Bing’s Detroit Works Project plan to revitalize the city has been input from the people of Detroit themselves. They are asking: “Detroit Works for whom?”
“Whether you are in a block club, neighborhood group, youth program, mentorship, sorority, fraternity or even just a concerned individual, we hope that people can come into the PMA with their ideas and experiences and leave with new connections and ideas about how they can contribute to the future of grassroots Detroit,” says William Copeland of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC).

“I expect that the networks of people committed to interrogating rightsizing, building democratic processes and increasing grassroots vision of change [will grow]. We will learn more about how to communicate with Detroiters about political change and our organizing strategies will deepen and improve.”

 

Students, teachers arrested during CFA protests

April 21, 2011

 

The People’s Movement: Community Response to Detroit Works Project

April 20, 2011

Published
• Sun, Apr 17, 2011
By Patrick GeansSpecial to the Michigan Citizen

DETROIT — A grassroots-based Detroit People’s Movement Assembly (PMA), which aims to solicit community input around the Detroit Works Project and other initiatives aimed at shaping visions of the city’s future, will be held April 28 from 4-8 p.m. at Sacred Heart Church on the city’s east side.

A coalition of local activists affiliated with some of Detroit’s leading community groups and individual citizens concerned with the lack of democratic processes being employed to determine the city’s future are the convenors.

“The goals of the PMA are to bring people together to discuss social problems, come up with creative solutions and make commitments for working together,” said William Copeland, Stand Up Speak Out Program Coordinator with the East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC).

“The Detroit PMA is a space to discuss rightsizing and other challenges Detroiters face on democratic and community governance and to come up with grassroots visions and solutions.  We are using the PMA process to bridge differences of individual organizations and to stay connected with national and international allies.”

 

EMEAC holds community debriefing on U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancun

April 4, 2011

DETROIT -- The East Michigan Environmental Action Council held a community debriefing on January 5 at Hannan House to report out to the local Detroit environmental activist community on the EMEAC delegation's activities at the United Nations' 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Conference that took place in Cancun, Mexico from November 29 to December 10.
EMEAC Executive Director Diana Copeland and Associate Director Ahmina Maxey, who comprised the Detroit delegation to the Cancun conference, facilitated a discussion at the debriefing with representatives from the state and local Sierra Clubs, National Environmental Justice Office, Zero Waste Detroit, The Ecology Center, Great Lakes Detroit Bioneers, Boggs Center, Food Justice Task Force, Black Community Food Security Network, People's Water Board, Green/Blue Alliance, United Auto Workers and others. At the debriefing the delegation detailed their organizing efforts and discussed a range of topics of interest to local community members that came up at the conference like the U.S. Government's deceptively titled Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) plan and their collaboration with the Grassroots Global Justice delegation.
"I think it went really well as far as organizing," Copeland said. "I'm not happy with the outcome of COP 16, but in terms of our organizing I felt like it was well worth our time. I think that things went very well and we were able to assess some things and have a stronger relationship and I am very glad that we did it.


After the EMEAC team gave an account of their activities at the conference, they then engaged the representatives in attendance in a dialogue about how local groups can come together to be more effective in taking on environmental challenges in the Detroit Metro area. By the end of the debriefing, all parties in attendance agreed that Detroit is uniquely situated on the domestic landscape to become a hub of environmental activism in the U.S. and that time for greater collaboration between the various environmental groups is needed now more than ever.

"Coming out of the (U.S.) Social Forum was a good place to start," Copeland said. "We are very rooted in Detroit.  Doing the social forum and being the anchor organization really helped with organizing. We deal with pieces of all these different movements, all these different networks, all these different organizations that were coming to Detroit. We had to look at what was our relationship to them. It opened up a lot of opportunities and a lot of questions.

"During the forum we had a lot of conversations because people were interested in what was our position on climate justice and hearing about the incinerator issue. Of course, that led to how our struggles around environmental justice and the incinerator issues locally connect to the national struggles around environmental justice. We then connect that to the global struggles because it is all related.

"It's very easy to get caught up in what's happening in your own community that you lose focus of what's happening that you are not focused on what are the solutions and what are the tools being developed outside of your own organization that can actually help you in your struggle. The main goal was to understand and learn about those tools that were available to possibly put pressure to help win local victories. We also want to find out who are our allies nationally that can also help -- not only in providing models but in putting pressure on either the city council or the state government in helping to implement federal regulations that will help to create a better environment in the city of Detroit. That was the big goal."

Coming out of the COP, both Copeland and Maxey agreed that another primary benefit was the organizing and strategy tools they learned while working with delegations from all around the world. The delegation learned tips on how to create mobile media hubs and small informational brochures called zines like the No-REDD Reader.

"We went there with Grassroots Global Justice. That was about 25 people from different communities across the country," Maxey said. "There were two people from Appalacia. There were two people from L.A. There were people from New York. There were people from New Jersey. Also, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) was there. They have a presence at every single COP. We were all kind of there side by side. 

"A lot of the work we were doing was supporting I.E.N. They were really doing a lot of the organizing around REDD," Maxey said. "There was like all 40 of us. We strategized everyday about the conference. We had an inisde strategy for those who were going in there. We wanted to pay attention and push hard and ask hard questions. We wanted to push other NGOs to jump on the REDD Bandwagon and push the other way."

The REDD program essentially seeks to commoditize forested areas in developing nations through a new form of carbon trading. Many environmental groups are opposing the plan on the basis that not only does it fail to honor the basic human and land rights of indigenous populations in those countries, but it also fails to effectively reduce greenhouse emissions or protect the forests. In fact, REDD will only allow polluting industries a way to avoid emission reduction through cheap REDD offsets while actually increasing pollution.

"In addition to the inside strategy, there were also people who were there to elevate the issue," Maxey said. "There was media circulating throughout the whole thing. There were people there who held demonstrations, actions and protests within the space. Then, there was a tiny area where they allowed people to hold signs and protests, so that’s where we did it.

"There was also the outside strategy. That was the one that we were involved in. Our job was elevating the issue with the media from the outside. That was easier because we had a lot of freedom. Sometimes, it was in downtown Cancun and other times it was way far away. There was a really strong police presence. It was almost like a police state. It was crazy." 

In addition to on the ground activist tools and strategies, Copeland also emphasized the importance learning more about educational, legal and fundraising tools they were exposed to in Cancun.

"When we talk about tools, I'm not only talking about policy tools but there were several different types of things. There are also these charters like the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights. If you know these documents, they can be used in your own community. If the community knows this, then they can hold corporations accountable.

"The other tool out of many of these COP Conferences is that if they do pass this REDD there are funds accessible to the community. They need to know how do you get access to them because too often the money is only going to the organization that (funders) pick to dole out and feed it to instead of directing it to the community. If we know that that is coming down the pike and we can let the community know about it, that's a significant tool. We did that with the Digital Justice Collective and the Hot Mesh Network. They went after the federal stimulus money for the broadband grant because many people didn't know that that was available for community groups.

 "There are the policy tools, the charter tools and the funding tools. Then there are the organizing tools. What we are learning from the outside of the U.N. space is how are our communities coming together to meet their own demands. Not only are there techniques around doing banner drops that can get a lot of attention. That was a good example of that when during the Air Quality March; they dropped a big banner next to the incinerator to let people know what was happening there. We can use art or use banners to point a finger at a community burden. That's a tool."

From this experience and others in 2010 like hosting the U.S. Social Forum, EMEAC plans to move forward in concert with all their partners in hopes of making Detroit a focal point of the environmental justice movement.

"This was the first time that Ahmina and I had participated in anything that large as far as a national or global issue," Copeland said. "We really just needed to understand the lay of the land and bring that back to our organization in terms of our strategy going into these types of global events.

"Coming off of the social forum, we connected back up with Grassroots Global Justice and Gaia and other different groups that we had worked with during the forum. We wanted to make sure that we had solidified that connection to make sure that wasn't just a one time thing and that we were actually building something. It was a next step from the social forum into this climate justice space to really shore up those relationships and understand that you all helped us out so much, and we built so much through the social forum. This is going to continue. This is going to lead to other victories and bigger and better things like a better climate."



 

EMEAC staff holds "Emerging Issues" conversation


DETROIT -- The staff of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council held their first quarterly Emerging Issues Conversation on January 21 at the EMEAC Offices. Members of each EMEAC program and collaboration: Greener Schools, Stand Up Speak Out, Remedia and the Detroit Food Justice Task Force engaged in a four hour intensive where the organization discussed its formation and foundation upon the principles of environmental justice.

“I think we need to get out to the public what our beliefs are,” said EMEAC Executive Director Diana Copeland. “Even though we are in flux, we still want to let people know what we stand for. That's one thing to be able to say this is what we believe, and this is where we are coming from, but also I think there is a responsibility to be out in the environmental dialogue and the whole global discourse about environmental justice.”

Over the past year or so the EMEAC affiliated staff and programs have more than doubled. Meanwhile, the organization has come to the forefront of the local environmental justice activist community by helping to host events like the United States Social Forum in June of 2010. In addition to EMEAC’s three core programs, the organization has deepened its long-standing relationships in the justice movement through collaborations with other social and environmental justice organizations in Detroit by taking part in the formation of the Detroit Food Justice Task Force and the Digital Justice Coalition. EMEAC closed out 2010 with a community debriefing around its participation in the United Nations World Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico, and EMEAC is kicking off 2011 by joining with the Senegalese Association of Michigan to send a delegation of 10 activists to the World Social Forum beginning February 6 in Dakar, Senegal. 

“The organization has grown by leaps and bounds of the past year. We went from being a six person staff to what is soon to be a 15 person staff,” said EMEAC Associate Director Lottie Spady. “I think we were all having trouble figuring out how all these different pieces fit together -- not only understanding exactly what each person does but knowing each other on a personal level. 
“In theory everybody agrees with the environmental justice principles, but it gives them an opportunity to work with folks who are doing environmental justice work. It works for a better collaboration between all the programs to be able to see ways we can fit together and work together. It's about how all of our work can really support one another.”

During the Emerging Issues Conversation, staff members first unpacked where "Environmental Justice" came from, where it is now and where it is going by attempting to answer questions around understanding the history of environmental justice. The staff also focused on understanding the people associated with different movements and how to delve deeper to increase that understanding. In looking at the existing timelines of the environmental justice movement, there is a need to critically analyze the current narrative that has shaped this movement and a need for community to tell its own stories. Through a collective defining session, members broke into small groups and created their own visions of environmental justice. They examined what EJ is and is not, and looked at the steps for achieving those visions. After synthesizing these collective definitions, the next step is to assess how EMEAC's work and mission reflect this shared vision.

In one exercise, staff members engaged in a speed-dating type dialogue where they shared personal examples of environmental justice experiences. 

“It was like you had all of these amazing people in the city that you didn't know about,” Copeland said. “Now, you are so aligned and you are ready for the next big thing to build on together. Just like the social forum one of the things that came out of it was it put the whole city in a big shaker. I think that was what it felt like. We have this group that is coming together and after the big shake you feel like, 'This is why we are together.'  You realize that everybody is working toward the same goal. 
“Building that community gives us a better understanding of what environmental justice is. It's important to start having those conversations and I would hope that different groups and different people will find each other. I think it was a good introduction conversation. People just need to know where we are coming from and who we are working with.”

Following the meeting the group elected to meet on a quarterly basis to discuss future emerging issues with an option to meet monthly or bi-monthly should the need arise. Future meetings will focus on issues such as the connections between environmental justice and other justice movements, eco-feminism, and right sizing. The goal is to strengthen the organization's work and contribution to the environmental justice movement by expanding EMEAC’s activist tool kit, creating informational zines, and authoring individual blogs for the various programs. 

“I think it will help everybody,” said EMEAC Associate Director Ahima Maxey. “We are all at the point where for a long time we have all been on the same plane, but as we grow bigger, we now need to articulate EJ principles to the community. Of course, we get it but we need to make sure that everyone coming in will see that this is what we are all about. We have naturally kind of progressed from this place where we all started.”

“Because there are such a convergence of issues happening right now in Detroit around right sizing, around large-scale urban agriculture, around just questioning the influx of foundation dollars that come in to support the city and looking at our experience with having hosted the U.S. Social Forum, that whole experience of figuring out how to come together and collaborate has really made us on the forefront of all these issues,” Spady added. “It's put EMEAC in the public eye. There have been a number of instances where the organization is working not only to shape the local narrative pertaining to issues around Detroit, but on a national and international level. 
“The more we are put in the public eye the more it is important that we as an organization really understand the stance of EMEAC. We want to make sure that the values that we talk about are evident in the way that we conduct ourselves. It's about putting out an reminder to all of the organizations that we work with of the principles that we are supposed to be working in support of.”