Building Environmental Justice in New York City
This blog post is based on my testimony before the New York City Racial Justice Commission, which it tasked with dismantling structural racism in the city’s charter.
This November, New York voters will decide whether to enshrine an explicit environmental right in their state constitution. If adopted, the new section will read, “Every person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.” New York would join several other states, as well as the United Nations and roughly 150 countries across the globe, in recognizing a fundamental human right to breathe clean air and drink clean water.
We all deserve to live in healthy communities. Yet, the grim reality is that Black communities, communities of color, and low-income communities frequently have to fight tooth-and-nail for these basic human rights. This situation is neither accidental nor inevitable. New York City is a clear example.
The city’s racial segregation was carefully planned. This link takes you to a map of the New York City neighborhoods that were redlined nearly a century ago. It is a map of structural racism — of the deliberate racialized decision to cut Black and brown neighborhoods out of the New Deal and …
- 1 (current)
