In Louisiana, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, both sides of the Mississippi River are lined with factories. Oil refineries, chlor-alkali production facilities, plants producing plastics and polyolefins. The Chamber of Commerce types are proud of the concentration of industry; they call the area the “Chemical Corridor.” If you stop in a diner down there, you may have a placemat with a map of the various plants laid before you.
The people who live along that stretch of the Mississippi have another name for conglomeration of chemical facilities. They call it “Cancer Alley.” In the last 50 years, Louisiana has gone from being the rural “Sportsman’s Paradise” the state’s license plates still boast of, to becoming America’s own third world country; there are now over 140 petrochemical and other factories along the 85-mile stretch of Cancer Alley.
In 1996, a Japanese company called Shintech announced its intention to add three more chemical factories and an incinerator to Cancer Alley, in a town called Convent. Convent is in the heart of the Chemical Corridor, but the billions of dollars generated by those chemicals have passed Convent by. Of the 2,000 residents of the community, 40 percent live below the poverty line. Before the Shintech application, there were already ten industrial facilities less than five miles from Convent’s two elementary schools. In a year, those facilities emit 16 million pounds of toxic air pollutants. Along comes Shintech and proposes to add another 600,000 pounds of annual pollution to those children’s lungs.
It is not surprising that Convent is not only extraordinarily poor, it is overwhelmingly black. Eight of ten residents of this town are African-American.
In a state where white men buy and sell political power as a commodity, you would think a small town of poor black citizens would not stand much of a chance against a giant corporation, but the people of Convent have had enough and when Shintech came to town to add more poison to the air their children breathe and to the water their children drink, they said this was not a decision for the governor and this was not a decision for the Chamber of Commerce. This decision belongs to the people and the people say “no.”
There’s a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits racial discrimination as an intent or consequence of decisions by a state agency, such as the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Few people know of this provision, because the one thing the government seems loathe to defend is civil rights.
Because their government did not protect them, the citizens of Convent found their own lawyers and challenged the permits for the Shintech facilities. And they organized, bringing into their cause the support of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus and celebrities from Branford Marselis to the Neville Brothers.
And last week, they won. Rather than lose their case in court and set a precedent other communities can use, Shintech announced they are pulling out of Convent and will try instead to build a smaller facility in Plaquamine, 30 miles up the river. The citizens of Convent have vowed to travel up the river and help the people of Plaquamine keep Shintech’s pollution out of that community, too.
Because while the people of Convent are fighting for their community and their children, they’re also fighting for a principle, and that is this: this planet is too small for us to be able to afford to spoil even the smallest corner of it, no community is so strange or distant that we can allow our interests to trample their rights.
And Last Week, They Won
In Louisiana, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, both sides of the Mississippi River are lined with factories. Oil refineries, chlor-alkali production facilities, plants producing plastics and polyolefins. The Chamber of Commerce types are proud of the concentration of industry; they call the area the “Chemical Corridor.” If you stop in a diner down there, you may have a placemat with a map of the various plants laid before you.
The people who live along that stretch of the Mississippi have another name for conglomeration of chemical facilities. They call it “Cancer Alley.” In the last 50 years, Louisiana has gone from being the rural “Sportsman’s Paradise” the state’s license plates still boast of, to becoming America’s own third world country; there are now over 140 petrochemical and other factories along the 85-mile stretch of Cancer Alley.
In 1996, a Japanese company called Shintech announced its intention to add three more chemical factories and an incinerator to Cancer Alley, in a town called Convent. Convent is in the heart of the Chemical Corridor, but the billions of dollars generated by those chemicals have passed Convent by. Of the 2,000 residents of the community, 40 percent live below the poverty line. Before the Shintech application, there were already ten industrial facilities less than five miles from Convent’s two elementary schools. In a year, those facilities emit 16 million pounds of toxic air pollutants. Along comes Shintech and proposes to add another 600,000 pounds of annual pollution to those children’s lungs.
It is not surprising that Convent is not only extraordinarily poor, it is overwhelmingly black. Eight of ten residents of this town are African-American.
In a state where white men buy and sell political power as a commodity, you would think a small town of poor black citizens would not stand much of a chance against a giant corporation, but the people of Convent have had enough and when Shintech came to town to add more poison to the air their children breathe and to the water their children drink, they said this was not a decision for the governor and this was not a decision for the Chamber of Commerce. This decision belongs to the people and the people say “no.”
There’s a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits racial discrimination as an intent or consequence of decisions by a state agency, such as the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Few people know of this provision, because the one thing the government seems loathe to defend is civil rights.
Because their government did not protect them, the citizens of Convent found their own lawyers and challenged the permits for the Shintech facilities. And they organized, bringing into their cause the support of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus and celebrities from Branford Marselis to the Neville Brothers.
And last week, they won. Rather than lose their case in court and set a precedent other communities can use, Shintech announced they are pulling out of Convent and will try instead to build a smaller facility in Plaquamine, 30 miles up the river. The citizens of Convent have vowed to travel up the river and help the people of Plaquamine keep Shintech’s pollution out of that community, too.
Because while the people of Convent are fighting for their community and their children, they’re also fighting for a principle, and that is this: this planet is too small for us to be able to afford to spoil even the smallest corner of it, no community is so strange or distant that we can allow our interests to trample their rights.