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BP Oil spill waste dumped in minority communities
With the federal government and BP claiming that most of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has simply disappeared, there are some minority communities in the region who would beg to differ. Some 40,000 tons of waste — including used absorbent materials and "oily water" — have been dumped in communities around the Gulf. More than 60 percent has gone to communities that are majority non-white, whereas people of color make up just 26 percent of the population.
The same communities have long been subjected to the underbelly of the petroleum industry. Those in Louisiana are collectively referred to as Cancer Alley.
What exactly has been dumped? That's BP's trade secret, of course.
| August 05 2010 at 11:34 AM
Limbaugh warns of white Jim Crow
TGL has been following the devolution of political discourse into fear-mongering and apparent race-baiting since Van Jones, the former adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, first got entangled in it.
Like many commentators, this blogger has felt that the level of disrespect shown for Obama, and indeed the office of the president, of late was fueled by racism.
At least as far as Rush Limbaugh goes, the nagging question has been answered. Limbaugh called for segregation of school buses in response to an incident in which a white boy was beaten up by two black boys.
Here's the chain of events: In one of probably hundreds of school bus incidents that day, a white student was roughed up punched by two black students while onlookers egged them on. Local law enforcement tentatively declared that the incident was racially motivated. The next day, national conservative blog the Drudge Report made the incident its top story.
The same day, the AP reported that law enforcement was now saying that race was not a factor in the fight. (The aggressors objected to the boy's choice of seats.)
The next day, Limbaugh discussed the incident, and even after a caller reminded him that the police were reporting that race was not a factor, said:
In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on.' I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.
Frankly, it's hard to make sense of Limbaugh's rant, but in what appears to be a continued attempt by the right to redefine racism as blacks' alleged hatred of whites, with what appeared to be sarcasm, Limbaugh made reference to how racism should be socially acceptable because (according to a study cited in Newsweek), it's inborn like homosexuality.
Apparently still using "racism" in this new frankly Orwellian sense, Limbaugh went on to opine that not only was the beating [remember, over the choice of seats] "racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that's the lesson we're being taught here today. Kid shouldn't have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses -- it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama's America.
Takeaway: Though hardly even coherent, Limbaugh is attempting to tell white people that they should fear this new "racism"; with presidential support, new anti-white Jim Crow laws and beatings could be just around the corner.
Danger scale: high.
UPDATE: While some bloggers did miss Limbaugh's sarcasm in this segment, TGL did not. See paragraph 7. Without sarcasm, Limbaugh would have been calling for a return to segregation, which would be racist. With sarcasm, Limbaugh was suggesting that the "racist" president will bring about a new segregation in which whites are the separate-but-(not) equal underdogs. Which is both racist and race-baiting.
SFGreen on Facebook
| September 18 2009 at 12:33 PM
Inside look at 9/12
I blogged about this Sunday's protests at the capitol, which drew more than 50,000 people to protest government spending...or maybe it was abortion, or maybe it was Obama's proported Muslim faith or maybe it was the excess of "czars" in the administration. [Ed note: "Czar" is media shorthand for an adviser with a narrow focus. Van Jones, for example, was an adviser on green jobs to the Council on Environmental Quality. Anyone in the media, whether Fox or not, would know that.]
Here are 10 minutes of interviews inviting participants to speak for themselves:
Yeah, the people look ignorant. And, yes, I think you could select footage from left-leaning protests that would make those people look ignorant, too. And, yes, I see a similarity to the ACORN gotcha videos. Nevertheless, this and related protests, and disingenuous fear-mongering in general, have become part of our political discourse. I have a hard time thinking that's a good thing.
| September 17 2009 at 12:12 PM
The fringe at work
Yesterday's 9/12 protest, came as a surprise to those of us who don't exist in the Fox/Limbaugh universe. Yet, as evidence of our cluelessness, protesters carrying "You lie" placards offered still further proof that "Call me Joe (but my name is Addison Graves)" Wilson had planned his unprecedented "spontaneous" outburst for political gain. (The heckler's website promoted the event.)
UPDATE: Wilson has refused to apologize to the House for his outburst, suggesting, again, that he feels he did nothing wrong.
Yesterday's protests join a line of such events that have been funded by astroturfing PR organizations and whipped up by extreme right wing shock jocks. They have relied on comparisons of Obama to Adolf Hitler [Ed note: ??], lies, and even forged letters from citizen groups. They reek of disregard for the popular vote.
Rush Limbaugh has been all in on this attempt, earning him the tediuous scolding of leftie commentators. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Limbaugh defended "Joe" Wilson's shout-down. But, tell me now, isn't there a distinctly racial subtext to his rant?
Folks, can I tell you what's happening here? This is not...this speech last night and this administration is not your average presidential administration—this is not a garden party. This is not a lecture at Harvard, or any other university. We are in the process, we are in the midst of an administration that is trying to totally tear down the traditions that have made this country great. He is lying, president Obama is, from the moment he opens his mouth until he ends the speech.
Can we agree that race-baiting and Hitler-comparing are bad? As for the rest, what do you think? Should the media ignore these astroturf events or cover them? Should leftie commentators ignore Limbaugh and O'Reilly? Should the government force Fox News to wear an "Entertainment Only" label? Or sue for liable? How can less fanatical citizens make their voices heard?
SFGreen on Facebook
| September 13 2009 at 06:14 AM
Careful where you p
You know those white mothball-smelling deodorizers they put in urinals and public toilets?
You guessed it: They cause cancer. The chemical p-dichlorobenzene is used in low-cost toilet deodorizers and moth repellents, sometimes at 100 percent strength. The chemical is designed to disperse and stay put, making it particularly dangerous.
Products featuring p-dichlorobenzene seem to be sold aggressively in Hispanic neighborhoods, and a new study found frighteningly elevated cancer risks among Hispanics.
Inside Houston homes with the highest levels of the chemical, 16 out of every 1,000 Hispanic residents were at risk of cancer...[I]n Los Angeles, four out of every 1,000 [were at risk].
Experts say such a high cancer danger from a single source is highly unusual. Federal guidelines usually consider ten cancers per million people an "acceptable" risk; in some of the Hispanic households, the cancer risk is about 1,000-fold higher.
Although the study was relatively small, the results were so striking that the authors say p-dichlorobenzene should be banned.
But—you guessed it again—that's easier said than done. Air fresheners are regulated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. But moth repellants, which are considered pesticides, are controlled by the EPA. That agency regulates industrial emissions of p-dichlorobenzene, but not household use.
Takeaway: Don't wait for regulations. Get rid of these items in any home or work spaces you use regularly. Use cedar instead of mothballs and use citrus oil air freshener (or nothing) in the bathroom.
SFGreen on Facebook
| September 11 2009 at 01:12 PM
Joe Wilson, Van Jones, and the watermelon hypothesis
UPDATE: More on "Joe" Wilson: His name's not Joe; he's linked to a racist group and segregationist Strom Thurmond. He probably planned the outburst and has voted against health care for vets 11 times.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) showed a grave lack of respect for the president and congressional protocol when he shouted, "You lie!" at Mr. Obama as he insisted in his speech last night that health care reform would not mean insuring illegal immigrants. (The president was not lying.)
Wilson later sounded contrite, insisting his outburst was "spontaneous," and that he "let [his] emotions get the best of" him.
So is Joe Wilson just passionate about immigration? More like he's been bought and paid for by the health industry lobby. The industry is his biggest backer. Also among his cash cows are pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and nursing homes.
Here's a prime example, then, of a politician using hot-button race issues to foment populist anger that will serve his corporate masters by defeating health care reform.
Is this an off-topic post? So far, perhaps, but Van Jones was a victim of a very similar phenomenon: Glenn Beck used fear of blacks and reds to oust the former green jobs adviser—but the campaign originated with the industry front group Americans for Prosperity. (Americans for Prosperity is behind the Hot Air tour—which calls global warming "hysteria"—and is funded by members of the Koch family, who have holdings in the chemical and oil industries.) The organization's policy director, Phil Kerpen, was Beck's guest in the segment that began the smear campaign.
Green jobs are a major threat to the energy lobby's central talking point: that going green will destroy our economy, which the lobby further "simplifies" by suggesting that carbon regulations will turn the country communist. Kerpen calls this the "watermelon hypothesis": green on the outside, red on the inside (coincidence or not, you decide). As a black man cheerleading for green jobs, Jones essentially had a target on his back.
If you doubt that race played a major part in Jones' demise, read after the jump for a collection of all of the racially tinged comments readers submitted in response to my post on Jones, which barely mentioned his race.
SFGreen on Facebook
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| September 10 2009 at 12:07 PM
Why I hate Burning Man
Burning Man is uber-progressive. You free yourself of capitalism for the weekend and experience only art; you free yourself of social roles and norms and enter a utopian world. Since Burning Man went green in 2007, what's not to love?
Looked at another way, Burning Man is the anti-ecology. But before I get to that, which is my main point here on the Thin Green Line, let me first say that Burning Man isn't free of social norms at all. The Playa fills up almost exclusively with 20-40 year-old economically privileged white heterosexual people, the majority of whom exist on a fairly narrow swath of the political spectrum: the place where hippie meets libertarian. If the festival were as effective as some believers think at conjuring away normative biases, that wouldn't be the case.
Then there's the stuff they take: the labor- and transportation-intensive costumes created for one-time use, the DIY climate control machines, the generators, the fire dancing, the drugs (which, with the possible exception of marijuana aren't green...at all), the packaging, the bottled water, etc. Some of the art is made of reused and/or reusable materials, which is great, but some of it isn't. I wouldn't expect DaVinci to limit himself to reused materials, but let's be honest: Most of the "art" of the man is just "look at this cool thing I made" for the Man. And, really, watching a giant hunk of wood and whatever else burn just for kicks is the epitome of wastefulness.
The festival's green proclamation, while an important step, is a substance-lite exhortation of the kind that I've read on many a corporate website. Did I mention that Burning Man is a for-profit corporation? Whose leaders refused to take a stand when Sempra proposed building a coal-fired power plant nearby?
Burning Man is, at heart, a party—and it's one that thousands of people drive hundreds of miles to get to. It's great that they clean up after themselves when they're done, but driving that far to have a good time just plain ain't green.
So why do Burners drive out to the middle of nowhere to have fun, especially since so many of them hail from the same 2-3 cities? Because the natural world there—which is flat and barren—won't upstage their ego-shows. I don't mean that quite as harshly as it sounds—we all have egos, of course, and not everything that we do to feed them is inherently bad. But nature offers a radically different perspective on the ego: It makes you feel like a small part of something much bigger, which, empirical evidence suggests, does wonders for the psyche.
I'd venture that no matter how fantastic your costume, if you stand in front of Niagara Falls you'll feel silly. I'd further venture that not that many people would stop to look at you.
I'm sure the Burners reading this would protest that the festival is physically away from the everyday world so that participants can get psychologically away from the everyday world. But going outside of nature to do it overlooks the answer that's been there all along. Our human and social norms seem limiting and arbitrary because, well, they are. What's not limiting and arbitrary? The complex forces and landscapes and patterns and interactions of the huge planet that we live on. The one that made us. And pretending not to see that is as silly as some of the costumes on display.
Burners: Ready, aim, fire!
| September 08 2009 at 06:31 AM
Life and times of Van Jones
Glenn Beck began drumming his almost incomprehensible conspiracy theory about Obama's green jobs adviser, Van Jones, shortly after an Oakland group Jones co-founded, Color of Change, began its own campaign against Beck for calling the president a racist.
The charges? He was an ex-con, a former black nationalist and a communist.
The facts: Jones had been unfairly arrested at a peaceful protest, and charges were later dismissed. He had been a member of a group that sought a "a multiracial socialist utopia."
But then Beck got lucky: It turns out Jones had signed a 9/11 truth petition. Several petitioners, including Jones, say they were unaware of the blurb that suggested that the government allowed 9/11 to happen, and believed the petition was merely a call for a thorough investigation.
But even if Jones did sign a "truther" petition, isn't that precisely what's called freedom of speech? I don't agree with it, and frankly I think it's kind of crazy—but hardly as crazy as believing the president is going to beam communist propaganda through the airwaves and straight into the minds of unsuspecting schoolchildren later this week. That's no saner than thinking communism comes from fluoride in the water.
And no crazier than the Beautiful Mind-caliber charts Glenn Beck has been making to generate the impression in confusable minds that Obama is the head of a huge left-wing conspiracy.
Basically, it boils down to this: Van Jones is an activist. Activists sign a lot of petitions, so Jones' statement that he wasn't informed of the final language of the 9/11 petition could well be true. Activists also use over-heated rhetoric. Jones made the infamous "a-hole" quote at a Berkeley green energy conference, where I'm sure his role was to be less wonky than the rest of the speakers. Asked why Republicans were more effective when they held the Congress, Jones said (here's where you cover your children's eyes, if you must):
The answer to that is: They're assholes. That's a technical political science term. And Barack Obama's not an asshole. I will say this, I can be an asshole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start getting a little bit uppity.
He was going for a laugh. But he was also, quite clearly, right. Right-wing Republicans are assholes, and being an unrepentant asshole works. Jones' story is the proof of that.
And talk about unrepentant! Mike Pence, the Chair of the House Republican Conference, had this to say about Jones: "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate." Pence has been in the House since 2001, so surely he remembers a guy named Dick Cheney? Cheney used coarser rhetoric on the floor of the Senate. His views—on torture and on democracy—could hardly be described as anything other than extremist. And unlike Jones, Cheney was not some low-level functionary; he was the most powerful vice-president in the nation's history.
| September 06 2009 at 10:52 AM
'The Garden' sows the seeds of discontent
If you have any doubts that environmental politics are race politics, watch "The Garden," a 2008 documentary about the 14-acre South Central Los Angeles community garden that was razed, despite widespread public protest, in 2006.
Here's the story. The city seized the 14 acres from developer Ralph Horowitz in 1986 to build a trash incinerator, paying Horowitz $5 million. A black community group called Concerned Citizens successfully fought the incinerator. After the devastating riots following the 1992 Rodney King decision, the city allowed philanthropists to turn the vacant lot into the largest community garden in the country. The impoverished Latino residents fed their families with what they grew on the land. (A few seem to have broken the rules and sold some of their produce, a point on which their opponents would seize.)
In 2001, Horowitz sued Los Angeles in an effort to buy the land back. He lost, but a mysterious deal to sell the land back to him for the same $5 million was brokered anyway, apparently by the then-powerful leader of Concerned Citizens (Juanita Tate) and the black councilwoman, Jan Perry, Tate had helped to elect in the predominantly Latino district. In an apparent violation of the city charter, the deal to sell public land for private use was not disclosed, and only when an eviction notice was posted in 2004 did the farmers begin to learn what had happened.
They obtained an injunction and halted the eviction. But then it was overturned. The farm's leaders drummed up public support, including revealing the unsavory circumstances surrounding the sale. Tate and Perry played political hardball right back.
Eventually, under public pressure, Horowitz offered to sell the farmers the land for $16 million. Miraculously, South Central Farm raised the money, only to have Horowitz renege, citing his dislike of the farmers' "you owe me" attitude.
The land was razed and remains empty in a devastating morality tale about the reverence for private property and cyclical redundancy of L.A.'s mistreatment of poor people of color. (According to Wikipedia, Forever 21 is negotiating with Horowitz to build a warehouse on the site.)
"The Garden" was nominated for an Academy Award, and it's much more than just a narrative. My only reservation is that the film doesn't do more to give Perry and Horowitz's side. (Tate comes across as a self-aggrandizing bigot.) To the filmmakers' credit, it appears they were unwilling to participate.
As for watching the movie in the greenest way possible, you can either walk or ride to your local video store, or, if you have a Netflix account, you can watch online to avoid additional transport of the disk.
| August 26 2009 at 07:01 AM
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