Publisher's Note

Cover Story

Taste Buds

Events Calendar

Center for Diversity & the Environment
www.environmentaldiversity.org

International District Housing Alliance
www.apialliance.org/idha

Association for Environmental Health & Academic Programs
www.aehap.org

Environmental Coalition of South Seattle
www.ecoss.org
 

Marcelo Bonta, founder of the Center for Diversity and the Environment, takes a nature walk with his wife Micia and daughters Kyra, 5, and Stella, 2, near their Portland-area home.

Environmental educator Mayra Ayala passes out Clean Green Kits, like the one pictured, to Latino households through her work with ECOSS.

 COVER STORY

April 2008

By Meg KRUGEL

© Copyright 2008 ColorsNW Magazine

All Our Shades of Green

Discovering Northwest Environmentalists
- of Color

The Northwest environmental movement is hiding beneath a green mask.

In this lush landscape, evergreen firs dot peninsulas and streets, native salmon swim the waters and the chilly quaint coastline beckons visitors and locals alike. Yes, the Northwest appears to be a very “green” place.

Yet the Northwest – namely Washington and Oregon – is a façade of sorts. Its landscape is green, but its people, particularly people of color, have struggled to come to terms with what it means to be “environmentalists” in a physical environment and community that hasn’t always welcomed them.

Underrepresented populations in urban areas of the Northwest tell an environmental story that isn’t about beautiful sandy beaches or towering firs. Rather, these stories are about poor air quality in Seattle’s International District, unsafe traffic and crime in the predominantly African-American Central Area of Seattle, and labor struggles stemming from the use of toxins in some Portland-area low-wage jobs. They are the same stories heard around the country – and even the globe – reminding us that our environment is often less about the old growth forest and more about the place we create and inhabit for ourselves.

As people of color begin peeling back the layers of a past clouded by environmental racism and injustice, environmentalists of color and environmental justice activists are reconsidering what it means to be a part of the “green” movement. Some refuse the label. Some hold it tentatively – arguing that mainstream organizations must change their outreach efforts to communities of color if the movement can ever hope to be successful. And for some people of color, environmental work – training people to recycle, conserve water and use toxin-free products – provides an opportunity to connect the Northwest’s diverse communities, rather than divide them.

GOING GREEN
Tucked into the predominantly Latino core of the South Park neighborhood in Seattle, the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS) Information Center is Brochure Central. One wall of the drop-in “Centro de Informacion Hispano” is lined with pamphlets in more than 14 languages; topics include hazardous household products, what can and cannot be recycled, and basic facts about climate change. And there are Green Home Kits available for the taking – buckets filled with scouring pads, yellow gloves and recipe cards in several languages for alternatives to common household products like Windex, using simple ingredients like vinegar and baking soda.

On the opposite wall of the center, environmental educator Mayra Ayala stands next to a bilingual display she’s created about lead found in common Mexican candies. It’s evident that ECOSS is a “green” hub for communities of color, particularly immigrant and ESL populations in Seattle. According to Ayala, the 14-year-old organization “was doing this job before everybody was talking ‘Green, Green, Green’ – before Al Gore and the movie (Oscar-winning documentary ‘Inconvenient Truth’), our organization was talking about these issues and finding ways for our communities to connect to the environment.”

In this day and age, what does it mean to be “green?” The word is loaded with a host of connotations – practicing environmentally progressive behaviors like recycling, eating (nearly) pesticide-free food products, working in newly-termed “green-collar” jobs, engaging with the natural outdoors and so on. It seems there are more ways to tap into the green lifestyle than ever before – or perhaps the options (like recycling, driving less or going for a hike) have long been available, but the movement to buy “green” has just improved its marketing efforts.

As organic products have become more widely available and accessible (think Wal-Mart, Safeway and the like), their rate of consumption has skyrocketed. Almost three-quarters of the U.S. population buy organic products at least occasionally, according to “Organic2006: Consumer Attitudes and Behavior,” a recent report released by The Hartman Group. More specifically, the report cites that use of organic products by communities of color is at an all-time high; Asian Americans are “somewhat” more likely to buy organic, compared to the general population, and Latinos and African Americans are “much” more likely than whites to be core organic consumers, or frequent purchasers.

The Organic Trade Association estimates that between 2005 and 2006, the sale of organic non-food items increased 26 percent from $744 million to $938 million. Organic foods are one of the fastest-growing segments within in the food industry – leveling off in 2006 with $16.7 billion in consumer sales and making up almost 95 percent of sales in the organic product market.

As a result of these numbers, the green movement has wound its way into the workplace, as well. Green-collared jobs involving environment-friendly products or services can lead to successful career options for newcomers to the job market and big money for business owners. From sustainable product sales to renewable energy and clean technology, “green” is now the fifth-largest market sector in the United States, according to Alternative Energy News. Green-collared jobs include work in environmentally friendly building construction, native landscaping and solar engineering – even bicycle repair.

But beyond this, mainstream corporations from automakers to retail giants are starting to “greenwash” their messages, emphasizing the act of “being” green, rather than promoting environmentally sound practices or products.

The “Six Sins of Greenwashing” – a study published in December 2007 by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing – found that 99 percent of 1,018 common consumer products were guilty of “greenwashing” their image, including “energy efficient” appliances, “organic” beauty products and “natural” clothing. All of the mixed messaging about what’s truly “green” can lead to over-consumption of products that are impacting the environment in negative ways. In terms of waste reduction, the truly “green” products are the ones people don’t buy.

For Ayala and other multicultural educators at ECOSS, part of the struggle in promoting environmental education is reversing the image that people associate with being “green.” It’s not about buying the most-expensive hybrid car or throwing out polyester shirts in place of organic cotton ones. Rather, as Ayala and the ECOSS team try to convey, being “green” means equipping ourselves with tools (most of which are already in place) in our homes and businesses – so-called “little things,” like conserving water and turning off the lights when not in use – which add up to a big difference.

“UNINTENTIONAL EXCLUSION”
The rapid growth of the green movement and workforce doesn’t discount the fact that environmental industries – particularly environmental activist organizations – have struggled on the diversity front to place people of color in positions of leadership or on staff at all.

A 2005 study by the Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative looked at the demographics of mainstream environmental organizations around the country and the results were startling. Of 158 environmental institutions nationally, 33 percent had no people of color on staff and 22 percent of government agencies were completely white. The initiative also found that people of color make up only 11 percent of the staff for member organizations of the Natural Resources Council of America – a collection of 85 big-name partners in the environmental movement, including the National Park Foundation and the National Wildlife Federation.

Marcelo Bonta, founder and director of the Center for Diversity and the Environment in Portland, says the relationship between environmental organizations and people of color has been “unintentionally exclusive” in its outreach efforts. “No one is really trying to be exclusive, but no one is trying to be accepting to people of color or inclusive either,” he says.

Bonta says that after the global effects of the 2004 tsunamis in Southeast Asia and the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina on communities of color in the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, it has become absolutely necessary to link the impacts of global warming and the environment on people of color.

Initiatives to address the environmental crisis have emerged in the U.S. political process. In December 2007, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 as a response to his “Twenty in Ten” challenge in last year’s State of the Union Address, which set to reduce dependence on gasoline by 20 percent within the next ten years, and increase supply of alternative fuels.

Bush's mandate has been criticized by biofuel experts for relying too heavily on increased corn-based ethanol production (35 billion gallons by 2017) – and not enough on actually decreasing Americans’ use of gasoline (around 140 billion gallons per year). The experts insist it would better to focus on more environmentally sustainable initiatives that have a smaller carbon footprint long-term. They reason that by some measures, using etha-nol in vehicles results in fewer carbon dioxide emis-sions than an equivalent amount of gasoline – but, after taking into account the carbon diox-ide emitted from ethanol production, the reduction in emissions is only modest.

Bonta points out that people of color can be inadvertently left out of environmental initiatives on a leadership level. In January, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski announced the formation of a 25-person Global Warming Commission, which will develop recommendations for the 2009 legislative session to support Oregon’s actions on climate change. But, according to Jillian Schoene, deputy communications director for the Governor’s office, no people of color were appointed to the commission. “There is always an effort to reach far and wide in terms of race and gender,” Schoene says of the office’s recruitment efforts.

Bonta sees a different story. “With reports that people of color are disproportionately affected by global warming – (Kulongoski) puts together a commission and no people of color are on there. I don’t think he’s intentionally trying to be exclusive. But, by the frame of thinking, it’s not getting in our heads who we should be thinking about when we make these decisions,” he says.

When Bonta moved to Oregon from Massachusetts to work as a wildlife conservationist for the Defenders of Wildlife Northwest field office in 2000, he wasn’t surprised to find himself the only person of color on staff. Bonta, who is part Filipino and part white, recognized that Oregon wasn’t known for its ethnic diversity. But, as he began traveling to environmental conferences outside the Northwest, he found himself one of the few people of color engaging in the work – and it blindsided him. “I wasn’t expecting a real lack of diversity in the movement,” Bonta remembers after discovering he was the only person of color on Defenders of Wildlife’s entire conservation staff nationwide at the time.

He noticed that other people of color, if they were hired by environmental organizations at all, worked in support and tech roles. “If you want to be really committed to being diverse in all aspects, both internally as an organization and externally in your outreach and partnerships, you really need to make a direct and concerted effort to be diverse,” Bonta says. “Its not going to happen by osmosis – the movement’s been trying to do that for the past 30 years and it doesn’t happen. You need to have a multifaceted, strategic approach. It doesn’t work by just hiring at lower levels.”

After he finished working with the Defenders of Wildlife ended in 2004, Bonta began tapping into what he knew to be a rarely breached realm – diversity and the environmental movement. With the help of a web-designer friend, Bonta created the online Center for Diversity and the Environment (CDE), a collection of resources on multicultural recruitment and the environmental sector. Since its inception, and particularly within the past six months, the website has grown as a sounding board for all things related to communities of color and the environment. This work moves beyond written resources to highlighting and connecting “people of color who are pushing forward on environmental issues, who are pioneers in the field,” Bonta explains.

“We’re in the middle of a growth period,” he says of CDE. “We acknowledge we’re able to fill this need, so we’re continually examining what else we can do to connect people of color to the environmental movement and connect the environmental movement to people of color.”

Bonta explains that there are barriers to keeping the movement from being successful at this work – perhaps the most pressing one is the myth that people of color don’t care about the environment. But Bonta points to a 2003 study in the Detroit metropolitan area by the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, which revealed that 23 percent more African Americans than whites cited neighborhood environmental problems among their biggest concerns. The same report showed that blacks are more likely than whites to make intentional lifestyle choices that help protect the environment: buying pesticide-free foods (37 percent of blacks vs. 29 percent of whites), driving less (17 percent of blacks vs. 10 percent of whites) and refusing to eat meat (15 percent of blacks vs. 7 percent of whites).

Bonta’s consulting work through the CDE aims to help environmental organizations identify areas where they are “unintentionally exclusive” in their practices to engage communities of color. Internally, this means recruitment, cultural change within the organization and education around dismantling racism. Externally, it might mean developing broader partnerships and better outreach to communities of color, or funding environmental projects in ethnically diverse areas. According to a 2003 survey by the Environmental Grantmakers Association of more than 250 foundations, 75 percent of EGA member organizations agreed that “increasing diversity in the field of environmental philanthropy (is) either extremely important or somewhat important.”

CREATING THE “RIGHT” MOVEMENT
“People of color care about environmentalism, but they might not care much about the environmental movement because the environmental movement hasn’t shown to care much about them,” Bonta says. Part of the problem is that many mainstream environmentalists and organizations have focused the movement’s efforts on the “natural” environment, or the outdoors. This focus marginalizes and excludes other more-urban environments and the people who live in them.
 
As in many social spheres, the definitions and labels people attach themselves create division. Yalonda Sindé, former executive director of Seattle’s Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, identifies strongly as an environmental justice (EJ) activist, but not as an environmentalist or as part of the environmental movement. Sindé, who currently leads the Association of Environmental Health Academic Programs (AEHAP) in Portland, is careful about drawing a distinction between the two ideas. “Although I care about the environment, I’m not an environmentalist, because that is limiting my understanding of these issues,” Sindé says.

“Because I’m African American and a woman of color, my world isn’t the same. To me, it’s not just about the environment and that there’s pollution; I look at the fact that, because of historical racism, I’m going to have more, my son’s going to have more, we’re all going to have more exposure to pollution than white people,” Sindé says. “I categorize myself as an EJ activist, not an environmentalist, because I think the environmental movement has been excluding people of color in leadership. And, although they’ve made some strides, I don’t want to attach myself to that, because I don’t think they have addressed issues of race as they should.”

Bonta echoes Sindé, adding that the environmental movement has a lot to learn from the environmental justice movement. But part of his solution is to begin including different forms of environmental activism – including environmental justice, environmental health, public health, labor issues, conservation, faith, and so on – under a more collective vision. “We need to think broader (as people of color) and create these partnerships and collaborations,” he says. Bonta’s consulting work through the CDE aims at helping mainstream organizations see where they can join in on this umbrella movement – by and large, it comes from connecting individuals, particularly communities of color, to their environment.

As a single mother living in the Central Area in Seattle in 1993, Sindé stepped into her first environmental justice role in the most grassroots fashion of all – by knocking on doors. She was concerned about the overflow of traffic on her street and the safety of the neighborhood, so she successfully organized to have a traffic roundabout put in to improve the living conditions.

Sindé’s first foray into the environmental justice realm was empowering – and led to a career modeled around engaging people of color to take leadership roles in their environmental wellbeing. As she developed her career, her “environmentalism” was inspired by the need to address air quality and its relation to higher rates of asthma among black children; to focus on gentrification in the Central Area and its relation to crime; to reshape the American Lung Association’s Indoor Air Quality Assessment to be more relevant to low-income renters who were targets of poor housing conditions.

Around the same time in the mid-1990s, Jeri Sundvall-Williams, a low-income mother of two, was in the process of creating her own environmental career through a developing relationship with the Hotel Worker’s Organizing Committee (HWOC) in Portland. After severely injuring her back on the job cleaning hotel rooms at the Red Lion, Williams, a native Oregonian of Mexican and European descent and member of the Klamath Tribe, joined the HWOC, which later became the Worker’s Organizing Committee, to understand her rights under fair labor laws. She brought to the committee concerns about chemicals being used by the hotel, which were causing severe skin burns on the employees and resulted in the birth of a hotel worker’s baby with central nervous system damage. “We were all a paycheck away from poverty, and so we lived in a lot of fear, but we organized to get those chemicals out of the hotel,” she remembers.

SETTING GREEN IN MOTION
During those times, Williams and Sindé lived in two very separate worlds – different neighborhoods, facing different environmental challenges and working at very different jobs – but their connection at a 1994 environmental organizing training in Seattle was instantaneous. They bonded over a Clean Green Kit – the same green bucket used today by ECOSS environmental educators to outreach to communities of color. But more than this, Williams and Sindé bonded as women of color on the forefront of the Northwest environmental justice movement, one from Seattle, and the other from Portland. They were experts in a field they’d completely carved out for themselves and their communities.

“The people who are most directly affected by these issues are the ones who are the experts – it’s their truth that’s going to change things,” Williams says.

And change she did.

In 1998, Williams was asked to serve as a founding board member of the newly formed Environmental Justice Action Group (EJAG) in Portland, a community-based organization of North and Northeast Portland residents driven to address significant environmental health hazards faced within their communities. Drawn by the mission that “the community that educates itself and speaks for itself, can best protect itself,” Williams became executive director of EJAG in 2000.

In a joint role with the Worker’s Organizing Committee, she led EJAG in taking on the Oregon Steel Mills for the violation of the Clean Air Act and co-founded the Urban Workers Union for Diamond Parking attendants of Ethiopian descent. But, perhaps most notably, Williams was appointed by the governor to a 28-member task force for the Vancouver/Portland I-5 Trade and Transportation Partnership, a bi-state effort to address congestion on Interstate 5 that began in 2000 and is still continuing. Through the task force, she helped defeat the existing expansion plan, which proposed adding four lanes in each direction, to better protect vulnerable neighborhoods in North Portland from increased air pollution.

Nearly 15 years after their first meeting, Williams and Sindé remain close friends and colleagues in the Northwest environmental justice movement. Still, they recognize that it’s time for new leadership in the more grassroots-type environmental justice organizations (like EJAG and CCEJ), where they’ve both served in the executive director role. Now, they’ve moved into positions with a more “middle-class” focus – Sindé focuses on academic programs in the environmental health field, while Williams leads the City of Portland’s Neighborhood Program. But in these new roles, they bring a personal understanding about why issues of environment and sustainability matter to underserved populations. “I think this is why I was hired – I saw that environmental health and academics were experiencing a deficit. They (AEHAP) wanted to change that by hiring somebody who understands why there are environmental health disparities,” Sindé´ says.

Other local groups are keen to keep the “green” momentum going in ethnic communities. ECOSS and the International District Housing Alliance (IDHA) of Seattle are using a community-outreach model driven by the power of the one-on-one relationship to connect communities of color to an environmental movement that matters to them.

IDHA’s WILD (Wilderness Innercity Leadership Development) program fosters environmental leadership skills predominantly among Asian-American youth. The 11-year-old program began as a vehicle to connect youth of color with broad-based environmental issues – bringing youth out into the wilderness to provide them a space to engage with the natural world around them.

But, as new programs do, the vision behind WILD has morphed since its early years. Today, its youth participants are focused more on connecting with the community about public spaces in the International District and on reduction of waste among minority-owned businesses. Part of the evolution of the program is the result of a broader shift in focus from the environmental movement being solely about the “great outdoors” to one that’s more aware of urban and community environments. “We forget that the urban environment is our reality, and it is just as relative to making sure there are green spaces and wildlife in the areas where we live,” says Joyce Pisnanont, director of Community Building Programs at IDHA.

And, while WILD’s primary participants continue to be youth, elders in the Asian-American and Asian-Pacific Islander community are engaging in the project as well. The program, which encompasses about a third of IDHA’s total budget and includes six full-time staff members, has grown as the result of a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to foster a neighborhood design center, which will, in turn, work to educate International District residents on how to organize for affordable housing and sustainable development.

Recently, WILD participants took on a “Greening Ethnic Businesses” project, which involves educating Asian-American business owners about converting to biodegradable packaging products and cutting down on Styrofoam use. Similar programs are under way through ECOSS. Ayala, an immigrant from Mexico City, has been working with owners of local Mexican restaurants to encourage water conservation and help set up recycling and compost systems for food waste.

The myth that people of color don’t care about the environment becomes just that – a myth – when you look at the many ways communities of color have, and are, engaging in environmental issues throughout the Northwest.

Stereotypes about “who” participates in environmentalism discount activist group agendas that strive to protect communities of color from environmental racism in the Northwest. But more important, these stereotypes hide the stories of local environmentalists of color who do the work, day in and out, like activist Tigist Negash, an Ethiopian educator at ECOSS who meets with East African families to teach conservation practices. When she returns to check up on these families’ “green progress,” usually nine out of 10 have started recycling in their homes. Or take the case of another ECOSS educator, Tram Duong, who has partnered with nearly 60 Vietnamese-owned nail salons in Seattle to persuade them to use toxin-free products in their beauty procedures and implement air-purification systems in their stores.

Bonta, of the Center for Diversity in the Environment, says people of color have to implement environmentalism in a way that works into their existing lifestyle. It’s about looking at what’s possible – within their budgetary, time and family constraints – and making those informed decisions to create small, realistic changes that will better our communities, first and foremost, and then the “big picture.”

“I know that, for many people, there are issues out there more important than the environmental movement. The struggle is, ‘how do I continually integrate these issues that will enhance my lifestyle and complement what I do already?’ ” Bonta says.

“As conservationists, we say we are protecting (the environment) for future generations, and so this is my future generation – my two little girls,” says Bonta, about his daughters, Kyra, 5, and Stella, 2. “My inspiration to make the movement more diverse and to create a more environmentally friendly place to live is for them – and the generations following them.”