[Mpls] FW: Environmental Justice Conf: October 22

[Darrell Gerber]

All,
Below is a notice of the Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota annual
conference. Hopefully everyone interested in children's health, social
justice, and environmental protection can make it.

Darrell Gerber
Kingfield

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Ellison [mailto:keith at keithellison.org]
> Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 9:09 PM
> To: keith at keithellison.org
> Subject: Environmental Justice Conf: October 22
> 
> Dear Friends,
> 
> In only 20 days, October 22nd, a free conference on Children's
> Environmental
> Health will take place at the Minneapolis Urban League, 2100 Plymouth
> Avenue
> North, Minneapolis, MN 55411. Registration begins at 10:00 a.m. and the
> conference starts at 11:15 a.m. and will go all day.
> 
> This year's theme is "Fighting for our Future: Children's Environmental
> Health".  We won't be just talking; we'll be planning and organizing on
> the
> dangerous pollution which hits low-income children and children of color
> the
> hardest.
> 
> We'll be talking about:
> 
> * The Arsenic triangle in Phillips Neighborhood;
> * Lead in our homes, which cuts our children's IQ and makes them more
> impulsive;
> * Mercury, a dangerous neurotoxin, which the government is failing to
> protecty us from;
> * Pesticides: if it kills bugs and weeds, what is it doing to the poor
> migrant farmers who work in it?;
> * Toxic Dumping in Somalia: International Environmental Racism plain and
> simple;
> * Asthma: Spreading among Blacks like mad: Is it the air, our homes? Come
> see what you can do;
> * Youth Organizing
> 
> Our keynote speaker is Margie Richard. Her presentation begins at 5:30
> p.m.
> (right before dinner).  Ms. Richard been called the "The Rosa Parks of the
> Environmental Justice Movement".  From her trailer in a small town in
> Louisiana, this retired schoolteacher took on the world's 10th largest
> corporation, and third largest petroleum company, to save her community.
> Ms. Richard brought visitors to her trailer on the Shell fenceline and
> told
> them the story of how her community was being poisoned. She said it was
> God
> "who opened the door" and allowed her to take that message to a human
> rights
> conference in Geneva and environmental conferences in the Netherlands and
> South Africa. She brought bags of polluted air from her community to these
> international gatherings and demanded that Shell buy out the homes of her
> neighbors.  The relocation campaign that she led clearly had the potential
> to become another media disaster for Shell.  In September 2000, Shell
> offered to buy out half the properties on the two streets closest to their
> fenceline. Town residents were outraged: Did pollution coming from the
> plant
> stop after the second street, they asked? And what would happen to those
> left behind? In June 2002, after protracted negotiations Shell finally
> agreed to buy out all of the residents of Diamond who wanted to move. For
> her efforts, on April 19, 2004, Richard became the first African-American
> woman to win the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots
> activism.
> 
> 
> EJAM's opening speaker (11:15 a.m.) is a bright young leader named Jesus
> Torres. Jesus will be speaking to the need to organize youth around
> environmental justice.  He has been organizing migrant farm worker in
> South
> Minnesota and he has an inspiring and informative perspective.  Come and
> listen.
> 
> Please come and get active.  Bring a friend. -Keith
> 
> 
> Keith Ellison
> 612-588-9122 office
> 651-296-5486 (legis)
> 
> "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.  Those who profess to
> favor
> freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing
> up
> the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the
> ocean without the
> awful roar of its many waters." -- Frederick Douglass