March 19, 2019 by Michele Roberts
I was in New York City at the United Nations, representing Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of The Episcopal Church. As a third generation Episcopalian, this gives me great joy. My grandmother would be so proud, and I feel her spirit every day. Her name was Alma B. Roberts. She considered it a blessing that she found a church in Wilmington, Delaware, that provided a safe space for her children and family to worship during the height of racial segregation. She was the epitome of love. My grandmother was a virtuous woman. She was grounded in her spirituality, and along with my parents, taught me the meaning of faith and service.
I have spent a great deal of time visiting groups that address gender violence. As I listened, I thought about the women and girls I serve living on the fence line to our nation’s most egregious polluting facilities and industrial operations. These women are bombarded by chemical assaults daily. Many of these polluting facilities assault the reproductive systems of women and men. According to our Native indigenous sisters from the International Indian Treaty Council, this is chemical violence. There are many hazards to the health from exposure to toxic chemicals including:
• Early puberty, abnormal breast development
• Sterility, miscarriages, birth defects, and low birth weight babies
• Reproductive systems cancer and breast cancers
• Uterine fibroids
• Toxics in breast milk, tissues, and cord blood
• Premature ovarian failure
• Damage to fetal reproductive organs, overall development
• Premature menopause
While engaged in this experience, I couldn’t help but think about my own personal environment racism story and stories of others. Being in this space of committed, faith-filled, vibrant women, I thought about my aunt, Loreda White, grandmother, Paulyne Dickerson, and their sisters.
Opening day of the United Nations 63rd Commission on the Status of Women would have been my aunt Loreda’s 99th birthday. However, due to the strains of racism and patriarchy, she died from a very painful cancer after also living with no pension. Aunt Loreda was a domestic worker and later worked in a segregated bomb-making facility where the majority of the workers were women. All of her sisters, including my grandmother, were also domestic workers with no pensions.
My grandmother, Paulyne, died in a state-operated, separate, and unequal tuberculosis facility. My aunt, Loreda, and grandmother lived along the Route 9 industrial corridor in Wilmington, Delaware, which got started as an answer to separate and unequal housing. Thanks be to God, my aunt Loreda, was able to raise my mother along with her husband, Charles White, after the death, of my grandmother. She eventually died from urethral cancer as well at age 86.
“I live in the center of a toxic donut,” said Mrs. Hazel Johnson, a keynote speaker at a legal conference in Washington, D.C., where I was in attendance about 30 years ago. Mrs. Johnson was a wife, mother, and grandmother who struggled to raise her family in Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project on the south side of Chicago.
Her story went on to describe the years of caregiving she provided to her family and herself. Hazel’s husband suffered and eventually died from cancer; her children had asthma, a daughter miscarried, and she herself had diabetes and high blood pressure. Mrs. Johnson was not alone. Her neighbors also lived through the same experiences. In essence, their lives were compromised daily due to what Mrs. Johnson considered to be the hundreds of hazardous waste and industrial facilities that surrounded her community.
The proliferation of these facilities was the result of policies that allowed their concentration to be low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Mrs. Johnson learned about the impact toxins had on the human body, water, soil, and air and how communities like hers did not have the right “complexion for protection.”
She became a fighter for environmental justice. She became an organizer and activist grandmother who, on more than one occasion, would deny authorities by putting her body in front of a truck to stop it from unloading hazardous materials.
As I sat reflecting on these various stories, I gave thanks for the women who came before me. Women who were brave and courageous enough to create their own resistance. We must have a “do no harm” approach to creating and regulating chemicals. Too many of our sisters of color and the poor have been traumatized by chemical violence. This is indeed a reflection of man’s inhumanity to humanity.
As we call for an end to gender-based violence, I hope that the UNCSW will also see the need to include the narrative of chemical violence as well for the sake of Mother Earth and her children. Now is the time.
About the Author:
Michele Roberts (Diocese of Delaware, Province III) is a scientist, advocate and 3rd generation Episcopalian. She is one of several founding members of Delaware Concerned Residents for Environmental Justice (DCR4EJ), an environmental justice ministry at the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew (Wilmington, DE).
She is national Co-Coordinator of a National Coalition known as the Environmental Justice and health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) and Director of Outreach for Coming Clean, which DCR4EJ is an affiliate of. She has participated in several UN COP meetings on Environmental Justice issues and Climate Change. Roberts has co-authored reports on environmental justice issues. She is also the environmental justice producer for a weekly radio program the On the Ground Show: Voices of Resistance From the nation’s Capital.