Along with better funding have come more sophisticated goals—and bigger victories. Marisol Becerra, 19, started fighting against coal-fired plants in southwest Chicago five years ago. First, she helped a local organization map and inventory the atmospheric toxins of 150 blocks in her Mexican-American community. She found that more than 60,000 kids who lived in a two-mile radius of the Fisk and Crawford coal power plants breathe air that violates EPA standards. With funding from several nonprofits she launched Youth Activists Organizing as Today's Leaders and made an interactive online map with a dozen youth-created videos and descriptions of toxic sites. In 2006, the DePaul University sophomore helped win a major concession when the Illinois governor approved the strictest mercury rule in the nation, set to take effect in 2012.
In southeast San Francisco, Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ), which works with young people on environmental issues, lobbied to close one of California's oldest and dirtiest power plants in 2006 and helped turn a brownfield near the plant into a vibrant wetland, Heron's Head Park. Later this year, LEJ will open an EcoCenter, a solar-powered environmental education facility, in the park. "Twenty-five years ago there were very few funders who would give money to young people to do something like that," says Bullard of Clark Atlanta University.
But the movements are about more than ratcheting up political victories. Ina Bendich, Hernandez's teacher and director of the law academy at Excel High School, says she wants to help her students feel more empowered. "Kids of color living in poverty feel less connected to the system and don't tend to engage as readily with civics," she says. "My ultimate goal is to show kids that government really is for everyone and that their concerns are as important as any other citizen, but that they must be the squeaky wheel if their condition has any hope of changing." Lesson learned.
With Nadine Joseph in West Oakland and Karen Springen in Chicago
© 2008
All peeople this is from HolySage www.holysage.inriodulce.com THE united States of America must not trust your state department most of all if you think about what the Fedarel Government is doing to your people, Ask your mind this why is the State Department locting a SPY CHIP in the Human Body.then agen ask this why would a n international holy sage tell you this-because it is the turth.
Spiritually
www.holysage.inriodulce.com
this article was very affirmative and interesting i learned alot about the toxins in west Oakland. My name is nayah papaya and i attend a school in west OAKLAND
As a student from West Oakland, I found this article very enlightening. I knew already how horrible the air is and the high asthma rates but the was the depth of my knowledge. It's very inspiring to hear about other youth making a difference in my community. My question is it possible to clean already polluted air? Once air is heavily polluted, does it ever return to its former, natural, and pure state. ~Imani
MEDIA Just a year after buying The Wall Street Journal, the press rapscallion has revitalized the fusty paper.
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