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Gordon Plaza Residents Suffer Second Highest Cancer Rate in LA

New Orleans, Louisiana– On September 8, tens of thousands of people gathered for a major climate mobilization across the U.S. and the world. People around the world joined more than 830 events in 91 countries under the “Rise for Climate” banner. In the U.S., over 300 events took place in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The “Rise for Climate Jobs, and Justice” events in the US highlighted the need for real climate leadership in the face of intensifying climate impacts and the ongoing assault on climate and communities from the Trump Administration. The actions took place just days before the Global Climate Action Summit in California, demanding a phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and a just transition to a 100% renewable energy economy. Event organizers emphasized community-led solutions, starting in places most impacted by pollution and climate change. Gordon Plaza is a house development that has been designated by the US government as a Superfund site where over 150 toxicities have been documented. Gordon Plaza residents’ only demand for Mayor LaToya Cantrell is: Fully Funded Relocation for all affected residents. Photo by Fernando Lopez | Survival Media Agency

Gordon Plaza residents are fighting for a fully funded relocation from the toxic site the city built their homes on decades ago.

A new report by the Louisiana Tumor Registry confirms the findings of previous studies: Gordon Plaza has the second consistent highest rate of cancer in Louisiana. The study consistently found between 125 and 406 more cases per 100,000 residents than the state average. Gordon Plaza homes were built on a city landfill containing arsenic, lead and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons—all known or probable carcinogens according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Mayor Cantrell:  the time to remedy this injustice is now!

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Extinction Rebellion Youth Fighting to Save the Planet, Blame the Rich

Since April 15 more than 1,000 people have been arrested in London blocking trains, roads and bridges to demand an end to fossil fuels and a plan to save the planet for humans and all species. Activists in 33 countries joined in similar actions across the world. The environmental crisis is upon us now and serious.  Extinction Rebellion, a grassroots environmental organization that has led these protests, points out that it is the rich who are responsible for the crisis.  Their militant actions should be applauded and repeated everywhere.

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U.S. Military is the World’s Biggest Polluter

By Nathalie Clarke

Our planet is being sacrificed to corporate greed. As the rich get richer, the rest of us must deal with poisoned air, water, soil, and food. But one major actor in the current environmental crisis gets to walk away blameless time after time: militarism. In order to continue to make a profit in a system where most of us struggle to make ends meet, the super rich have expanded the military so they can go steal resources and workers from foreign countries and maintain business as usual at home. Whether in France, the United States, Germany, or Norway, all capitalist countries have built up military forces geared towards invasions of other countries, costing tons of money and countless lives.

The U.S. military admits to using 395,000 barrels of oil every day and produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO²) every year (a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO² per year)—which doesn’t even take into account all the emissions they won’t admit to. The military’s fossil fuel consumption drains our landscapes and drives coastal erosion. If you’re asking yourself why Louisiana loses a football field of land every hour, why our city risks going underwater in the next 100 years, you need look no further than the military.

The U.S. military admits to using 395,000 barrels of oil every day.

The Paris Agreement, and other international accords made by politicians have time and time again EXEMPTED military operations from even trying to reduce their carbon footprint. While poor people get told to recycle, become vegan, stop using straws, reduce our plastic bag use, the crooks in Washington continue to expand the military. Individual actions are not enough! We need to oppose rich men’s wars and unite with working-class people across the world. If we don’t oppose militarism, climate change will continue to devastate the lives of working people across the world.

In spite their supposedly “progressive” stance on environmental issues, Democrats are unwilling to challenge the U.S. military, which not only drains resources from the budget each year, but also causes significant environmental harm. Multi-millionaires like Nancy Pelosi don’t oppose the bloated military budget because they profit from the arms industry and the drive to war.

Our politicians, the monsters who vote to bomb children in Iraq, destroy forests, pollute landscapes, and build more and more nuclear weapons, will not be swayed with words of encouragement, votes, or polite calls and emails. The working-class is under attack—our communities are being destroyed by climate change, our families are sick from the poison in our food, air, and water, our children are sent off to fight in unjust wars, and our future is at stake. United, as one band, one sound, we have the power to take back what is already ours and build a better world.

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1.4 Million Students Hold Global Strike to Demand Climate Change Action Now!

Thousands of middle and high school students walked out of class in Sydney, Australia, kicking off a day of global youth-led protests demanding action on climate change.

By Nathalie Clarke

While capitalist politicians and billionaires twiddle their thumbs and hoard more wealth stolen off the backs of the working-class, students across the world are organizing and protesting elites’ inaction in the face of global climate change. On March 15th, an estimated 1.4 million students from across the world—from Nigeria to New Orleans—walked out of their schools. These internationally coordinated protests—the largest in 16 years—were organized entirely by the students themselves, and took place in 120 countries, 2,000 cities, and on every single continent including Antarctica.

Because our society prioritizes profit over the health and well-being of humans and our planet, species are going extinct at an unparalleled rate, and an estimated 210 million people have been displaced by rising sea levels and climate change-related disasters. Many of the students carried signs and banners directly connected the current ecological crisis with capitalism with slogans such as “Capitalism is killing the planet; kill capitalism;” or “Profit or future.”

Proposals such as the “Green New Deal,” are of great interest to many youth, but we cannot count on Congress to enact anything useful without a mass struggle—and certainly not without a militant struggle against US military spending and imperialist war. While we fight to push back to ultimately to save the planet, the humans and all species, we must rid ourselves of the capitalist system we live under. The super-rich extract every last resource from every human, animal, and plant on Earth in order to fill their pockets and maximize their profits. There’s no compromising with their greed.

March 15: Students from Lusher Middle and High School walked out of school to protest politicians’ inaction on climate change.

These student walkouts illustrate how powerful mass mobilizations of people can be. What if every single lab technician in a refinery or half the workers on the oil rigs across the Gulf South walked out of their jobs and demanded jobs in clean renewable energy? Our planet does not belong to the elites who poison our water, soil, and air. The planet belongs to us, those who have nothing to sell except our labor, those of us who toil in fields, and offices, and kitchens, and restaurants. When we are truly united—one band, one sound, despite our many differences—we win. We just need to wake up and see our power.

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Louisiana House of Representatives Moves to Criminalize Water-Protectors

By Meg Maloney

The fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline intensifies in Louisiana. The Indigenous-led L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp, located in the swamps of Houma, Chitimacha, and Chata Territory, have been peacefully protesting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline for several months now. Community leaders have been organizing to spread awareness on the high-risk project, which puts 700 bodies of water in danger, including our precious Atchafalaya basin, the last growing delta in the state.

Big Oil is trembling in fear of the people organizing to fight back against companies who continue to make messes in our communities. From this fear has stemmed the bill HB727, which passed the Louisiana House of Representatives in April Next it will go to the Senate. Then it will land on our governor’s desk. If passed this bill could land water-protectors in jail for up to 25 years, and a year for even “conspiring” to protest pipelines.

Knowing how quickly our elected officials fall in line behind corporate sponsors, this bill is very worrying. The HB727 bill is meant to hyper-criminalize water-protectors, fisherfolk, environmentalists, journalists, justice organizers & anyone who wishes to exercise their First Amendment rights in relation to defending their lands and waters.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the organization guilty of writing the HB727 bill. ALEC is an organization that has over 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch brothers, AT&T, and Exxon Mobil. ALEC uses their corporate contributions to draft legislation that legislators across the country take back to their states and introduce as their own “reform” ideas. ALEC is known for promoting privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, including education, healthcare, the environment, voting rights, etc.

If the HB727 bill is passed our tax dollars will be used to protect private companies who are destroying our waterways, wetlands, and crawfish habitats. Our wetlands are vital in protecting us from storm waters, and we’re losing a football field worth of land every hour. Protecting waterways and wetlands should go without saying in South Louisiana. We should be focused on restoring them, because our culture and livelihood depends on it. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported the HB727 bill. It is not an issue of party; it’s an issue of whose pockets are getting filled by big oil.

Cherri Foytlin, an indigenous community organizer at the L’eau Est La Vie camp, says they’re not backing down. That if the people can’t put their bodies on the line to protect the water, on the route of the pipeline, they will bring the fight to the offices of all our corrupt politicians. Our officials can stand on the opposing side of the people, but when organized & united the peoples power will always win. The question is how far our corrupt politicians are willing to take it.

If you wish to support the work against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, visit nobbp.org. Donate, sign up for camp, and help spread awareness in your community. Call your representatives and say no to bill HB727.

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Residents of Gordon Plaza Fight Decades of Environmental Racism

RELOCATION IS THE ONLY OPTION

By Sanashihla

Around the world, people are dealing with the impacts of environmental injustice. Of course, Black and Brown communities deal with it more, because these are the communities most vulnerable to being targeted for oil and other corporate plants. What used to be known as the plantation, is now too often the corporate plant, which come with their toxicity.

Whether dealing with climate change, or blatant disregard for the earth and communities across the United States, we never have to go far to come up close and personal with environmental injustice.

Let us examine the daily experience of the residents of Gordon Plaza, who are entire community of predominately Black residents who were sold homes built on a TOXIC dump. Periodically, they have seen trash work its way up from the depths of the soil, up through their grass into their yards. Their soil was tested, and over 100 high level TOXINS were found.

What is the story of the residents of Gordon Plaza?
“Residents of Gordon Plaza, Inc. is a group of neighbors that purchased houses in good faith only to find out that our houses were constructed on top of hazardous waste. We are New Orleans families, African American, trapped in homes built on the Agriculture Street Dump, a former city waste dump that was designated a Superfund site for high levels of contamination, including hazardous waste that can cause cancer. We suffer and some have died from cancer. We want to relocate.

From 1967 through 1984, city land use decisions approved residential developments on the Agriculture Street Dump. These developments included the Gordon Plaza single-family homes where we currently live, the abandoned Press Park townhomes built by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), and the abandoned Robert Moton Elementary School built by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB). The fact that homes and a school were built on the Agriculture Street Dump was not a concern for city officials. Families who bought homes in Gordon Plaza were never told that the land was a former city waste dump. Again, our families are predominantly African American.

Beginning in 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dug up, piled, and hauled off a portion of the contaminated soil on the Agriculture Street Landfill Superfund Site, while our families still lived in our homes. Public health and environmental experts criticized the EPA for jeopardizing the health of residents and failing to provide an effective and humane solution. Although the EPA detected 17 feet of highly contaminated soil, the agency removed only two feet. Today, at least 15 feet of the contaminated soil remains beneath homes, yards, streets, and other areas of the former Agriculture Street Dump.

There was a class-action lawsuit that ended with a $14.2 million settlement award in which the lawyers and a court-appointed administrator were paid $7.1 million, one-half of the settlement award. The remaining half was distributed among the 5,053 people represented in the lawsuit, resulting in an average pay-out of less than $2,000. With a few thousand dollars, the families living in Gordon Plaza cannot relocate from this toxic neighborhood. We cannot purchase new homes, nor can we sell our current homes for what our homes would be worth if we were not on a toxic Superfund Site.”
The city of New Orleans is responsible for giving permission to developers to build these homes on the Agriculture Street Landfill, and now take no responsibility. THIS is an inhumane environmental injustice, Black Lives Matter, lack of equity issue. The New Orleans Peoples Assembly organizing committee stands with the residents of Gordon Plaza in their call for complete relocation.

This is a Complete Injustice

We Stand with the Residents of Gordon Plaza