The Green Movement sees No Color
I am seriously kicking myself for not being able to attend this because I didn’t know about it. I’m getting my act together to actually finish and publish my other blogs, one is about minorities (mainly blacks) and the impact of environmental problems and useful solutions. Also, how Industrial Hemp can change Flint’s, as well as Michigan’s, economy, environment and community. But please read the article below:
THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Sunday, January 13, 2008
By Elizabeth Shaw
eshaw@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6311
“Few people of color join green groups”
FLINT - Charlotte Greenard hikes on sidewalks instead of trails. Her forests are in city parks. Her green spaces are vacant lots transformed into community gardens. The Sterling/Myrtle Neighborhood Association official is among the blacks and other minorities who could be changing the mostly white face of the green movement in Flint and around the country.
"People of color can't wait around for whites to invite us to get involved in the movement," said Charles 
Jordan, a nationally known conservationist and the first black to head The Conservation Fund, one of the nation's top environmental nonprofits.
"Nothing exists in isolation in this world. Everything is connected. One person living upstream can contaminate more than 500 downstream could ever clean up. So how can either us, black or white, ever say I'm just taking care of mine? We have got to come together."
Green diversity was one of the topics addressed by Jordan during his visit to Flint on Thursday as a guest speaker for the Flint River Corridor Alliance.
"We are only a generation away from those days when we were not wanted, when we couldn't participate even if we wanted to," said Jordan, who grew up in rural, segregated Texas before moving to California and then to Portland, Ore.
He became Portland's first black city commissioner and later, as parks director, helped create one of the nation's most progressive park systems.
"There's a myth that blacks don't care about the environment. They do care," said Jordan. "But there are different agendas. Particularly in times like these, there are so many things people consider more important than the great outdoors - health care, food, education, jobs. It's hard for us to convince people that conservation is critical to all those things."
Part of the problem is a long-running perception that environmental groups value trees and polar bears above people - touting lofty, high-minded goals that have little to do with the day-to-day needs of ordinary folks.
Even environmental justice measures - which try to protect minority and low-income neighborhoods from industrial pollution - are sometimes accused of protecting the environment at the sacrifice of jobs and economic development.
A 1998 environmental justice case that blocked a new steel mill from being built in Genesee Township drew criticism from both the Michigan Jobs Commission and national black conservatives for those reasons.
"The environmental movement is an elitist movement that is significantly disconnected and even counterproductive to our needs," said Deneen Borelli, a spokesman for Project 21, a black conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
"The biggest concern for blacks is not the environment on a daily basis. What we are concerned about are jobs, housing, health care. These are the daily concerns."
The Flint River Corridor Alliance could change that perception in its effort to revitalize downtown Flint through economic development, recreation opportunities and environmental quality along the river's corridor.
"I've lived here 23 years, and anything to do with the city of Flint is important to me," said Greenard, whose block club is among the neighborhood groups invited to join forces with the alliance. "If you can beautify the Flint River or the waterfront area and make it safe, people will come."
The alliance is the first so-called "green" group she's ever belonged to, Greenard said. The reason?
"Nobody ever asked before," she said, laughing. "I was really surprised they involved the block clubs, so I went to my first meeting out of curiosity. Honestly, I'm looking forward to seeing more diversity than I did at that first meeting. But I know it's going to grow because it's just getting started."
Norm Bryant, a longtime community activist and founder of the Greater Flint Afro-American Hall of Fame, is optimistic that Flint's black community can help drive local environmental issues. "If you take a gallon of white paint and put just one drop of black paint in it, you get a whole different color. That's the reason I'm there," Bryant said of his attendance at alliance meetings.
"There's so much going on and this city has so much to offer, it's unbelievable. But before you can bring all this to pass, you've got to include the blue-collar workers, the low-income families, the minority communities, everyone."
The challenge is figuring out how to make that happen in a world where even many environmentalists admit their image is mostly that of white middle-class backpackers and upper-class elites.
"We definitely notice it," said Linda Berker, president of the Sierra Club's Nepessing Group. "We look around the room, and everybody's white. But how do you change that? We've talked about this, but we haven't been good enough to find a solution.
"I think part of the problem is every time we get someone from the minority community to a meeting, I'm afraid we overdo it. So many people are trying to welcome them, they probably feel too singled out."
Green groups also need to widen their outreach methods to better connect with community leaders, Berker said.
"We don't have regular contacts with church groups because we're kind of a secular group, yet churches are some of the main forces in the community," she said. "It's another structural reason why things are the way they are."
The alliance's mix of economic, recreational and environmental goals could make it easier to bring everyone to the same table, said Jonathan Jarosz, program manager of the Center for Applied Environmental Research at the University of Michigan-Flint.
"When we only talk about water quality or parks, we're missing the larger picture of context," he said. "In trying to create a whole sustainable community, conservation is only one of a variety of needs that have to be met, especially in an industrial community like Flint."
The alliance isn't the only front where urban green action is at work.
Bryant said he's hoping to work with Kettering University and his brother, Bunyan, a University of Michigan environmental justice professor, on developing an energy education program at the Broome Training and Technology Center in predominantly black north Flint.
"We were the automotive industry. Now we should be known as the energy laboratory," Bryant said. "This is what Flint needs to be about.
"We're on the edge of turning this thing around, but it's going to take groups like the alliance to push this. With Jordan coming in, we're going to sell some people on this."
Greenard agreed.
"No matter if you're north end, south end, whatever end you're at, everybody's got problems," Greenard said. "It's time we work together to solve this."
QUICK TAKE
Hear highlights from Charles Jordan's speech at mlive.com/flintjournal, under Flint Journal Extra/Multimedia.
Minorities and the environment
- By 2050, the number of people of color in the U.S. will grow to almost 220 million and comprise the majority of the population.
- But a 2005 survey of 158 environmental institutions reported 33 percent of mainstream and 22 percent of government agencies had no people of color on staff.
- Minorities make up only 11 percent of staff and 9 percent of the boards among member organizations of the Natural Resources Council of America.
- In a 2003 study in the Detroit metropolitan area, 23 percent more blacks than whites cited neighborhood environmental problems among their biggest concerns.
- The same report showed blacks are more likely than whites to make lifestyle choices that help protect the environment by buying pesticide-free foods (37 percent of blacks versus 29 percent of whites), driving less (17 percent blacks, 10 percent whites), and refusing to eat meat (15 percent blacks, 7 percent whites).
Sources: University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment; Center for Diversity and the Environment
Read More about Charles Jordan interviewed by Tavis Smiley
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200409/20040906_jordan.html
