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The Right to Breathe
Every year, many Americans young and old get sick because of air pollution. Thousands die. But our lungs don't have to be the dumping ground for dirty industries. Clean air should be a fundamental right.
Ideally you should update this article and list out the stats for the area. 1 in 4 kids has asthma is great but you need to paint a more realistic image and put it in context to other areas. For a population of x that is x kids. That is 25% more kids than the national average etc.
What did Jackson say? Did you identify the cause or causes of pollution? Was it a company dumping toxic stuff? Is it emissions from cars? Was a local companied fined over and over? Is the fine high enough.Is it growth in the area without regulations?
If you going to get any movement on this or make this kind of article go viral your going to need details and action items.
EPA may control some laws but corporation control the government. Your angle should be to rally people and narrowly define what needs to change.
Thanks for the thoughts anonymous. Jackson didn't say much at the meeting, she mostly listened to advocates voice their concerns about health issues caused by pollution in the area. Pollution sources in the valley stem from massive industrial agriculture and the heavy trucking transportation related to it, oil fields, fossil fuel power plants, waste incinerators and geography among other things. Emissions from cars does not have much to do with it. It's difficult to "narrowly define what needs to change" - the problems with pollution in the valley are complex. One thing that has to happen is that people need to become aware of and interested in the issue, which was the goal of the blog. Litigation over issues is another thing that has to happen. You can learn about our litigation in Sarah Jackson's follow up post.
http://earthjustice.org/blog/2011-march/valley-advocates-demand-environm...
Thanks again for your thoughts -
Chris Jordan
"Unfortunately at the last minute the press was not allowed into the event.."
And the most obvious question is WHY?
Though we had informed EPA of our intention to have this event be open press a week earlier, and they agreed, when we all showed up at the church, EPA suddenly changed its tune and told us that the Administrator would not meet with us if we allowed the press inside the meeting. Whether it was a misunderstanding or a calculated maneuver, advocates were understandably upset, especially since Jackson had just come from two other open-press events with Valley businesses.
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