=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #262
—December 4, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT L.A.’S LETHAL AIR
The air in Los Angeles is as bad as it gets anywhere in the U.S.
For example, at the University of Southern California recently,
scientists performed autopsies on 100 youths, aged 15 to 25, who
had died by violence, accident, or other non-disease cause. They
found an astonishing 80% had “notable lung abnormalities” and 27%
had “severe lesions of the lung.” Dr. Russell Sherwin, the
principal investigator of the study, said the youths were
“running out of lung.” He commented, “The danger I’m seeing is
above and beyond what we’ve seen with smoking or even respiratory
viruses… It’s much more severe, much more prevalent.”
No doubt about it, bad air is killing large numbers of people in
Los Angeles. For many thousands more, L.A.’s bad air means as
people get older they can look forward to emphysema, chronic
discomfort, chest colds and other persistent ailments, restricted
movement, debilitating pain, and finally a prolonged and
unpleasant death.
But L.A.’s bad air has a bright side, as well: it has provoked
the formation of a far-reaching Campaign for Clean Air that seems
to offer innovative ways to attack environmental destruction and
injustice everywhere. It is an exciting development. People who
have been asking, “How will the grass-roots environmental
movement develop next?” will want to learn more about the
organization behind the Campaign. It is called the
Labor/Community Watchdog. Despite the name, which might seem to
imply a passive role overseeing government as it fails again and
again to deal with L.A.’s bad air, this Watchdog has an
aggressive and expansive vision, and maybe a real bite.
The Watchdog has outlined its vision in an unusually
well-written, thoughtful and attractive 80-page manifesto called
L.A.’S LETHAL AIR–NEW STRATEGIES FOR POLICY, ORGANIZING, AND
ACTION. The book begins with a description of L.A.’s deadly air,
moves to a discussion of who’s affected most (children, pregnant
women, sick people, the elderly, athletes, workers, low-income
people, and people of color, in sum, a majority of L.A.’s
population), identifies the main sources of the problem (carrying
names like DuPont, Chevron, Unocal, and General Motors) then
lays out a stra-tegy for creating solutions. But not band-aid
solutions of the kind environmental groups have tried for the
past 20 years with little success. The Watchdog’s strategies are
rooted in the sit-down strikes of the ’30s that sparked the
growth of industrial unionism, the bus boycotts and direct-action
campaigns of the ’60s that forced passage of civil rights laws,
and the United Farm Workers boycotts of Gallo, grapes and lettuce
that forced passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of
1975.
The Watchdog says, “We agree that individuals must take
responsibility for making environmentally sound choices. But, for
the most part, it is large corporations that manufacture the
consumer products we purchase and that determine our choices
through advertising, market share, pricing and other forms of
power in the marketplace.
“…it is misleading for us to talk about making environmentally
sound ‘choices’ based on our individual consumption when it is
corporate America that must change its products in order for us
to have any real options.
“When products are environmentally destructive we have to combine
the personal choice to stop using them with the collective action
of demanding they be taken off the shelf,” the Watchdog says.
“If we have any hope of constructing a society that is based on
industrial democracy and environmental safety, we need a strategy
that targets corporate production,” the Watchdog says.
Then this from Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle,
there is no progress. Those who profess freedom, yet deprecate
agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the
ground, who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want
the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never
will.” [Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857.]
“We intend to fight corporate polluters on terrain most favorable
to workers and communities–not primarily in the courts, the
legislatures, or the regulatory agencies, but in the workplace,
the communities, the media, the marketplace, and the streets,”
says the Watchdog’s manifesto.
And it is evident that they mean it. As you page through L.A.’S
LETHAL AIR and read the captions beneath the attractive photos,
you will see that the Watchdog already has built an impressive
coalition of labor and community groups, has tested some of its
strategies and tactics, has won some victories, and has thought
hard about where to strike next. The plan is bluntly put:
“…Environmental groups don’t have to show they can
‘communicate’ with big business by sitting on corporate boards of
directors or taking grants from corporate polluters. In fact such
tactics compromise their credibility and leverage.
“We welcome face-to-face negotiations with executives of
polluting companies, based on concrete environmental demands. But
for those conversations to generate any changes in corporate
policy, we will have to: 1) organize a powerful
constituency-based movement; 2) set the terms of the debate so
that concepts of public health, worker and community rights,
corporate responsibility, and restricted profitability create the
parameters for the discussion,” the Watchdog says.
L.A.’S LETHAL AIR goes on to say, “We need a model of community
action that forces companies to stop producing toxins RIGHT ON
THE SPOT, even if that means temporarily shutting down
production.”
One Watchdog goal: “To initiate a highly-visible test-case
campaign to confront a major corporate polluter, and to win major
changes in production technologies and processes that will, in
turn, improve the health and safety of workers and communities in
L.A.
“But before we initiate such a campaign we need to identify a
company that (a) produces or uses a highly toxic product that is
acknowledged to create a clear and present public health danger;
(b) has substantial economic ties to L.A. and thus could be hurt
by a boycott of its products; and (c) engages in production for
which far safer and less-polluting alternatives are
available–even, or especially if, transforming the production
technology would involve significant corporate expense.
“It is precisely the conflict between community health and
‘corporate expense’ that we want to raise in the public arena,”
the Watchdog says. When management caves in and commits the
necessary investments to make production processes safer,
“…That precedent, if we are strong enough to succeed, could
begin to change market practices by other companies in the
field,” the Watchdog says.
“Factory and office workers, high school and college students,
women, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native
Americans, white working people, farmworkers working with
pesticides in the field, and the inner-city residents facing air
pollution, waste incineration, and groundwater contamination must
become the leaders of the new environmentalism…. Therefore the
Watchdog is going into workplaces, churches and communities to
develop new leaders and a new grassroots movement.”
This short review can hardly do justice to the vision laid out in
L.A.’S LETHAL AIR. Suffice it to say that the Watchdog’s
strategists are working on tough issues such as the flight of
capital overseas, the dumping of toxics in the Third World, the
need for environmentally benign economic development using L.A.’s
own abandoned rust-belt factories, affordable public
transportation, changes in the tax structure, and international
campaigns to ban particularly dangerous chemicals. These are not
people who think small, yet they are rooted in local
confrontation over local problems. We expect to hear much from
them and about them as the decade unfolds.
Get: Eric Mann, L.A.’S LETHAL AIR–NEW STRATEGIES FOR POLICY,
ORGANIZING, AND ACTION for $15.00 (includes shipping and
handling; California residents add $1.25 tax) from:
Labor/Community Strategy Center, 14540 Haynes Street, Suite 200,
Van Nuys, California 91411; phone (818) 781-4800; fax: (818)
781-6200.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: air pollution; emphysema; chest colds;
campaign for clean air; labor community watchdog; children;
pregnant women; corporations; citizen groups; health; corporate
campaigns;