Environment, Race, and Class: The Poisoning of Communities of Color; Part 2

We've heard about people organizing and succeeding that opposition and we've also heard from activists from Sunland Park in southern New Mexico where a toxic waste incinerator has already been operating for a number of years and where citizens there are trying to get this incinerator shut down. And we're going to continue with our program. Later on in today's program we are going to be taking more phone calls from viewers and listeners and right now we have another tape that we'd like to share and Mike maybe you can introduce that. Yeah this tape that we're about to see is an interview with a woman who worked in one of the high technology industries in Albuquerque and was poisoned in the course of doing her work. She worked for several years and as usually the case she's also Chicana the primary people that are workers that are working in these

plans in the production facilities for high technology are primarily Chicana's in Albuquerque and there's been a move from the Silicon Valley because of the legacy that's been left in terms of contamination by the industries there the high technology industries that they're moving out towards places like New Mexico different parts of the Sun Belt Portland Oregon Austin Texas to avoid regulations to avoid unionization and also for to be able to pay lower wages. And so this woman as many others have hundreds have was is a victim of the consequences of that and she tells her story here and how that how that came about and how it happened to her. Okay. By the time there's a few things about yourself well first of all my name is Linda Scali and born in Las Vegas in New Mexico I am originally from New Mexico I'm 36 years old and I have

a son who is 10 and divorced I worked in several different types of manufacturing companies including jewelry and electronics and I don't know what else you'd like to know. Well that's pretty good okay. Have you ever worked in high tech manufacturing and if you have where did you work and how long did you work there? I worked at Honeywell at well first it was a spary and then it was bought out by Honeywell and I worked there from 1986 to from June of 1986 to September of 1988. What kind of jobs did you do there? Well I was first I was an assembler

and when I left I was a material dispatcher trainee. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe what an assembler does and maybe if you can tell us did you work with any chemicals when you were doing these jobs? Yes I did I worked with Freon, acetone, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, trichloromethane, conformal code something they call conformal code it's something you use in a process where they dip the boards where they dip the circuit boards to coat them before they put them into units and of course my job was based on soldering a lot of soldering a touch up washing the boards we'd have large panels of Freon at our desks each individual had a large

pound Freon and say the Freon pan was maybe 12 inches by 8-10 inches maybe where each individual had been on Freon pan at their station to wash these boards we also used the vaporized Freon which was located in between all the assemblers which was rather strange because it was really warm and it was even hard to even work next to the to the to the Freon tanks. Were there any complaints by the employees? I mean when you came in to work could you smell these chemicals where there's certain times when you could smell the chemicals more than other times? When you first go in you don't you smell it okay but you know after a while you don't you don't recognize the smell anymore because it's with you and on several occasions when I went out with friends and stuff

they were telling that my blues my blues my breath smelled like airplane blue okay they told me that you know that I had a sweet type of smell like blue and they would even ask me if I was sniffing blue I told no it's not well that's not it at all I've been working here with chemicals and honey well okay was there any complaints like from headaches dizzy dizzyness oh yes there was it there was many many different different complaints as a matter of fact there was a lot of people who went to the to the nurses office quite quite frequently frequently for many things as a matter of fact there was a lot of women who had hysterectomies there was women who had collapsed lungs and lots of headaches I even saw some of the women who had rings around their red rings around their noses that worked in the conformal coat area where they had them in little

tiny little tiny cubicle compartments where they had to use black lives so that because had to make sure that everything that there was no hair there was no fingerprints and this stuff glows in the dark so they would put them in these little tiny cubicles with this conformal coat and and they sat there all day long in these little dark like cubicles you know with this stuff and there was always people welcome back to environment race and class the poisoning of communities of color I'm Marcos Martinez this program is being simulcast on community cable channel 27 and on k1m radio and in case you just tuned in I'd like to briefly reintroduce the guests on today's program here in the studio are Richard Moore co-director of the Southwest organizing project here in albuquerque also Mike Guerrero a field organizer for the Southwest organizing project Rosanna and Joe Monge are with concerned citizens of Sunland Park which is in

southern New Mexico also in the studio David Lujana the Tonancing Land Institute and Frazier is with citizens against ruining our environment in Dilcon Arizona and Jean Gowna is co-director of the Southwest organizing project also here in albuquerque in New Mexico we just viewed and listened to a tape which was an interview with Linda Scully who is formerly a high tech industry worker here in albuquerque in New Mexico Mike Guerrero maybe you can talk a little bit more about the the significance of some of the things that Linda was talking about in this tape sure first let me maybe just just touch on some of the other things that were brought out in this interview was actually about an hour and a half video interview that was done with Linda and just to let you know about some of the personal history that that was also brought out in terms of what happened at Honeywell Linda was one of the best workers in the plant she was a very disciplined and very good worker and one day in in at Honeywell they brought in a number of chipboards

from the Carolinas that were badly burned and they're very expensive so they didn't want to just throw them away and they needed to have them cleaned off so they assigned Linda to work on her own in a room in a back room in Honeywell to basically clean these off using a number of solvents none of them would work and so finally one day they brought in a chemical that was unlabeled and just told her to use those she did that she asked questions like you know any conscious person would is this stuff safe it's not labeled as art to use it they told her that it was it just make it would make her sleepy at at worst so she used the chemicals and it did work it burned through her first set of gloves and they gave her a different set of gloves to work with and and eventually you know she she did the job didn't finish it but spent a lot of time on her own in the back room one time they told her she dumped the stuff at the end of the day she dumped it down the drain they told her don't do that at the end of the day just leave it there and we'll come

and get it as time passed suddenly somebody realized that once she applied for her job she'd written down she had melanoma skin cancer so somebody in person else said that she can't be working in this area doing what she's doing because that was on her application so they moved her to another part of the plant they retrained new workers she retrained new workers to take over her job a few weeks past and then a representative from Honeywell came from Washington DC and approached her and told her that you know that they would be assigning her an attorney she asked what she done they didn't they didn't respond they said your attorney will explain everything to you she met with one set of attorneys from Washington DC there were Honeywell attorneys said that they were going to represent her they didn't tell her what the problem was later on different attorneys came or the same attorneys came out again from DC and basically told her that what was happening was the Department of Defense was looking at the possibility of suing Honeywell because this chemical that she was using on these on these chipboards

these chipboards were going into some of the F-14 fighters and other fighter planes for the Department of Defense and they were concerned that the chemical she was using would deteriorate some of the other components in the in the planes and their planes would start falling out of the skies so they were feeling that suddenly they were trying to put the burden on her of responsibility for what was being done and they were about to assign her attorneys to defend herself in this case eventually that didn't happen but the results now in terms of Linda Scally she's got no kind of compensation from them whatsoever their reasoning is that since she had melanoma skin cancer she's got cancer now rushing throughout her body internal cancers and at the time the video was done that she was told by the doctor she about had about a month to a month and a half to live fortunately she's still she's still alive she's still in very good spirits and she's still she's still fighting but nothing has been done in terms of compensation other than to say we'll pay for your doctor bills now and we'll pay for your burial but nothing has been done to compensate

her for what happens to her 10 year old son when she's passed away and nothing has been done basically to provide her with any amount of dignity for the rest of her life that that happens now so we're looking at we're talking about this high-tech industry we've we've talked with different organizations like Semitech a consortium that's been formed at the top 14 corporations in the country on high tech that's funded a hundred million dollars annually by our tax dollars but what we're looking at is a war mentality basically is that the the Bush administration just as the Reagan administration has been freaked out for years that the Japanese will begin to monopolize the high technology industries and so what we're seeing is such an incredible push and an incredible rush to develop high tech and out compete the Japanese that our people are becoming the victims of this war and that's the way that we look at them we look at them as victims of war and nothing is really being done to protect them Linda Scully is one of hundreds perhaps thousands in this city alone that are suffering these kinds of effects whether it be nervous system disorders miscarriages several women dozens of women having had their

university moved from from cancers brain tumors and the list goes on and on and on and on but nothing is being done this is one of the untold stories again in our communities where we have a holocaust occurring right here in albuquerque and the story's not being told and nothing is being done by our governments to to address the issue thanks Gene Gowna you've been involved in in researching the the the the poisoning of workers in in high tech industries is this a very widespread thing that's happening well it's sort of interesting in terms of it's the the whole notion of widespread or not and I think Mike used a real good word and he used the term holocaust I think clearly with the Southwest organizing project under our community environmental and community development programs we try to challenge people that are either polluting our environment or or really killing the workers Mike mentioned that the military is the largest polluter we look at industry as being a major actor certainly

pesticides as as used by agribusiness and governments that somehow all play a part in this I think when it really comes down to people literally losing their lives that we have all of these people more or less all of these actors to challenge clearly OSHA has not protected the workers does does it monitor again I think we have to talk about race being a very critical issue when we start saying okay who's being affected and one who are the people that that that are literally the actors that are killing people and contaminating the environment of communities of color EPA OSHA the environmental improvement division as other people have talked about here all somehow play a part in this so literally communities of color are the most impacted race plays the most I think race is the issue when you start talking about who who are the people that are

going to pay the price predicting for instance where the toxic waste are going to go in the community who gets protected in terms of exposure to dangerous chemicals etc all of these issues play a part in that and I think literally Linda Scully is is will eventually and quickly unfortunately pay that with her life women and children are the poorest of the poor and the ones that are going to pay the biggest price that pay literally the huge as burden so one of the things I always talk about too as organizations that we've been talking about the need to organize but as we become stronger and start challenging these polluters that literally they will flee to the third world or now maybe another concept would be to the south where as we get stronger for instance as happened in Silicon Valley the environmental regulations were being enforced there

to a certain extent the whole concept of of worker protection wasn't critical but wages to play a part in that is that they ran away here to where people are are not as politically strong as mentioned here the issue of economic blackmail literally is if you want a job and if you need those those sorts of wages that come with that job then clearly you must put up with what what we say which is not enforcement or regulatory of environmental safeguards I mean people aren't even given masks the whole idea of sort of having to choose between short term liability sort of for them to increase their short term profits but for us it's not even just short or long term issues it's clearly people dying from three to five years of exposure to camp dangers chemicals the other thing that I think happens is this profit motive is so extreme

that and we talked about people being thugs robbers you know robber bearances now they talked about but I think it's even worse than that I would call them straight up criminals murders when you have the GTE Lenkert workers literally hundreds of Latina women being poisoned and filing lawsuits they move they say they take care of the problem how they take care of the problem is they move that area to what is Mexico to me it is clearly and I think to us it's swap at the southwest organizing project is to us that's straight up premeditated murder and I think we have to call it for what it is and I think that's real critical when we begin to see about what people were talking about earlier is no information if any and sort of the whole idea that somehow people of color are expendable because if they poison us in either the short term or long term then they can go to Mexico and have just an enormous pool of labor

but the reality exists is that human beings are the most important resource that clearly that we have to know how to you know we have to have clean air clean water and if we plant our gardens and and they're either planted and contaminated soil or watered with contaminated water then we eat those poisons and so the cycle continues so I think it's real critical that we organize ourselves and call it for what it is so do you think that well what is it going to take you mentioned people getting organized there are some success stories out there of people organizing and turning the tide back to some degree but how much more really needs to be done to make a difference oh I think you know the problems are enormous I mean we sit here talking about that again I think that if people are organized that is again I mentioned that that literally the hope will lie in the community itself we've already talked sort of exposed the politicians

we've exposed industry for what it's doing which is to just profits at any at any cost we've already talked about the military Mike mentioned the military industrial complex but at the same time the real hopes sort of lies in the strength of the community because I think we are winning even in the face of these enormous odds or at at these huge costs that we're talking about here in the in the sawmill I think was the first issue that we worked on through the southwest organizing project what we began to really analyze the issue as an environmental racism issue where a company had literally contaminated the air 24 hours a day everyday but Christmas of a large community Chicano community here in downtown or close to Old Town Albuquerque it started out with people just complaining one at a time that didn't work we organized ourselves

and began to talk to the politicians to the agency saying you got to be accountable to us you are literally the people that are set up to protect us and you're not so the community organized itself we went on television much like we're doing right now trying to educate people trying to pass on the information that's not always accessible to us and empowering ourselves and saying hey as the company that I hear from Dillcon mentioned that it's it's literally got to come out of the grassroots because it is literally our survival that we're talking about that we do have to organize ourselves sort of a short of a long story was that organizing ourselves this way we ended up with two years later after a campaign had begun and over a process of a couple of years we end up with the first major urban groundwater cleanup in the state of New Mexico now we're talking

about environmentalists being influential in New Mexico and yet environmentalists don't have the so-called mainstream environmental movement doesn't win these kinds of victories because to them they are literally coming from somewhere else and don't have the roots that Davi's talking about also the whole idea of survival is critical so in many ways part of what we do is go into coalition spread the information organize ourselves one is local organizations that are linked to a broader geographical area like the state of New Mexico that are linked then to a regional networks and coalitions national and all the way to international so this is the organizing I think is really key and really the power of the people is our only hope you you mentioned environmental racism and to many people this might be a new concept but what kind of responses or reactions do you get to that idea well I mean you know we're trying to talk about racism in the 1990s people still don't

believe that it exists I mean from the highest of powers president Bush who sent people of color into the war in the Persian Gulf at the same time not signing the Civil Rights Act so there's many contradictions so if you talk about race that's almost a no-no if you link it up to environment it's it's really not a credible issue unless we prove it we have to have so much many more so much more evidence and it's it's really incredible to us one there is no doubt in our mind as people of color just based on some of the speakers here previously that have begun to talk about it not only in the southwest that for all practical purposes is a resource colony to the rest of the country but all over the country and certainly internationally where race is the most critical issue in terms of who pays those burdens we were talking about for me their environmental contamination to to exposure dangerous chemicals on the job

to me there's no question I think we can say that it's probably the most potent predictor of where this is going to happen than any other including class and I think another way we can prove it is that we can't move as Davi said we have no place to go so literally we can't vote with our feet which is sort of the whole concept of class is if you are getting poisoned if you are a poor white working working class person you can literally move we cannot we are literally tied to the to where we have you know to our traditional land base in just a few minutes we will be taking phone calls again from our audience if you'd like to make a comment or ask a question of any of the panelists on today's program you can call us at 292-3263 this is environment race in class the poisoning of communities of color this program is being simulcast on community

cable channel 27 and also on KUNM radio at 89.9 FM so if you want to join in the discussion call us that number again is 292-3263 you can ask a question or make a comment we were just talking about environmental racism Davi Luchan you mentioned that your organization the Tonancing Land Institute works with land-based people who are who have traditional types of lifestyles is it very difficult to talk to the the mainstream environmentalist about the issues that you deal with about land-based people who who can't pick up and and leave and move somewhere else well I was just I was recalling earlier back in the 70s in our work against the uranium industry and the Whip Project and remembering that when some representatives from the clamshell alliance in North Carolina came

to New Mexico and met with several of us to to kind of introduce this threat from the uranium industry to us in the southwest and we formed we formed an alliance with them and I remember that discussion real clearly trying to impress upon them that we didn't know too much about the uranium industry and all the technicalities behind that and the threats and so on but we wanted them to understand that if we were going to enter into this this struggle against that threat that they should understand that the issues that we're about were land rights sovereignty rights the right to practice our religion our traditions and so on and they couldn't conceptualize it was it took us took us maybe five years to those that are that were willing to work closely with us to to educate them about that so if it took that long to educate people that were willing to understand and willing to work and to recognize some of their own lack of understandings

well you can see how difficult it is to try to do it on a national basis because people just the racism that gene was referring to and everybody it just really clouds their vision they just cannot see beyond their own experience and try to understand where we're coming from you might say the other side of that coin is in response to the racism and the difficulty that it takes to deal with it and I don't think I'm exaggerating but I think that it's it can be said very clear that to try to get communities to the position of exercising the power that they should be able to as a matter of course for Anglo people that starts from from ground zero for us you have to imagine that it takes undoing 500 years of a colonial experience 500 years of racism since the conquistadores came to this land so to say you know why don't we organize for us who are who

work in this in this field on a day-to-day basis it's not that easy it takes a lot of work for even our to get our own people to discard those kind of like our political like you know the politicians that supposedly are supposed to represent to discard those things and really look at at the the way things really are and the impacts on that note let's take a phone call you're on the air hello our phone number here in the studio again is 292 3263 if you have a question or comment you can call us up and be part of the discussion today we're talking about environment race and class the poisoning of communities of color and it appears that we hello are you there maybe not if you'd like to try to get on the air you can call us back again that number is 292 3263 and we're going to continue we did have a question actually that was phoned in previously

um i think we may have another uh color on the line let's try that again uh uh someone had called in earlier uh with the question of uh what is contained in medical waste we were talking earlier about uh medical waste incineration what is contained in medical waste that makes it so toxic do we know the answer to that question well let's see there is a lot of well just about anything that comes out of a hospital a lot of times it was anything including from the cafeteria whatever waste they have there there's infectious waste whether it be rubber gloves gowns that were used in in you know in dealing with problems there is a lot of plastics uh syringes needles there are um uh the bags that they come in the red bags that hospital waste comes in is a is a real hazard uh because it you know when when that's burned it causes a lot of

uh you know dioxins which has been uh it's familiar to a lot of people because of the um the agent orange situation creates dioxins and these other things called furan and also um creates what they call hydrogen chloride which is a gas but when it condenses it becomes hydrochloric acid in your lungs it becomes an acid in your lungs that eats away your lungs that's why you start seeing the short term or more mild effects like asthma and allergies and things like that but later on the longer terms of fix could be could be death from it so a lot of that's already happening uh in some of the part people have testified to that that they're they're seeing those problems also there's body parts and other things that are that are in that waste um one of the things is uh mr. mongkay mentioned the um the border actually two sides of the dump are the mexican border and there's not adequate fencing there and squatter communities on the other side um children have been coming into the dump and playing with syringes and and and rubber gloves and things like that and then also as trucks are going in medical waste is falling out of the trucks as

they're going into the community so there's there's a whole range of things that go in there and the plastics and syringes and all those kind of things are the real the real hazard and this incinerator's not being operated safely at all it's it's basically a chimney it's a fireplace and the smoke that comes out of it is really it makes it real obvious that it's a health hazard um we talked about the the state uh permitting or licensing for this kind of facility uh is there also federal any any kind of federal regulation of of this kind of uh facility i believe there is but the thing is is that what happens in a lot of cases um and whether it be for for these regulations or others is that the federal government turns the authority over to the state to deal with and the EPA well we believe that if the EPA really wanted to take an active role in this problem they could the citizens of some of the park have written uh Robert Layton at at the uh the regional director for for new Mexico about the problem he basically wrote back saying that um it's your guy's problem

it's the states you know the state's going to deal with it and we're not we don't have anything to do with this so a lot of times that happens the state the feds will just turn the problem over to the state to deal with and that's what's happening in this case very good again our phone number here in the studio if you'd like to join in is 292-3263 you can call us with your questions or comments this is environment race and class the poisoning of communities of color and once again this program is being simulcast both on community cable channel 27 and is being broadcast on KUNM radio here in albuquerque and is being heard throughout northern and central new mexico uh we were talking about uh mainstream environmentalists and their their attitude toward environmental racism uh i'm interested uh and phraser in your community of dillcon arizona uh whether the people there consider themselves environmentalists or what what their their viewpoint is or their perspective is toward uh environmentalism as as it is known sort of in the mainstream uh where i come from down in the dillcon arizona where it's you know people that we work in the community that um

um live in that area are just grassroot people uh there many of them are uneducated so when you say environmental um problems they don't know what you're talking about and in the novel language um it's very difficult to translate what the word means and uh toxic waste all these things we have to come up with um many words you know to describe those things so it's uh very uh difficult to to give them the information uh but their understanding of um environment probably is that um um that's what they exist in in the on the land they breathe the air they um they uh observe the birds and the animals you know that's what environment is to them

and uh and so they're very protective of that and they're um um they're just um i mean they they're out there daily riding horses hurting sheep and um all these kinds of things so that's what environment is to them but uh when you when you mention the um environmental protection you know agency and all these kinds of things um i don't think it means um means anything to them at all they're more familiar with what's in their surrounding area what's there what they can see and touch observe and daily that's that's what their environment is uh in your work uh in terms of organizing and uh addressing these issues uh i'm wondering whether you what your experience has been with uh so-called mainstream environmentalists and and sort of what their perception of your of your situation is

i believe that um they they don't understand um the feeling that we have you know out there on um because they've come from a different culture than uh where we come from and uh they just can't um um um they just don't understand it i mean they don't don't understand us so um it's it's been very difficult to deal with them to um to uh try to make them understand but so it's it's um it's kind of like um knocking your head against the wall you know when you be uh when you talk to these kinds of people and um so it's been it's been it's been it's been very tough for for us to uh to try to get our our feelings across to them let's take another phone call now go ahead please yes i have a question about how widespread the problem is it seems like it's

something that's happening dropped southwards is that right anybody want to pick a pick that up Richard yeah actually uh you know uh you know sitting there thinking it was really actually it's pretty incredible you know we're hearing in Sunland Park that uh that people are getting sick from a medical incinerator i mean that's i mean that's i mean that's a pretty i mean we're talking about hospitals that are supposed to be making people well and the opposite that now here today and for as many years as the people of Sunland Park has been faced with these these problems these hospitals are responsible for making people sick and Sunland Park there's something really wrong with that and we really need to look at that situation and those hospitals need to be held accountable for the problems that they're causing in Sunland Park and we need to make that happen i think in terms of what the question is it's it's not as we see by any mere accident that uh that incinerators are located primarily in mexican communities whether or Chicano communities uh whether it be native communities in terms of incinerators whether it's slaughterhouses whether it's dog food

companies whether it's texical whether it's chevron whether it's the railroad tracks whatever it may be that in the majority that those facilities are located in our communities now we cannot just assume that that's by mere accident by any means so if we talk about environmental racism or industrial racism or if we talk about the people in northern new mexico in las vegas for example that went out on strike to defend their rights as workers and that took the company to task and were fired for doing that because that company was responsible met i'd incorporated in las vegas for dumping chemicals and the in the in the back piece of property of the property these are not by by accident by any means so as we say then um that what we're hearing i think here are somewhat success stories and some to still be somewhat more successful because it's taken communities to empower themselves devians other spoke here it takes organization it takes training um it takes skills it takes all those kind of things that that that i think the people sitting here and many people throughout new mexico and throughout the southwest in the country have begun to do and that's

mobilized their communities and train and organize ourselves and build the kind of organization that's necessary to to win these issues that we're speaking about so no i think the answer to the question is it's not an isolated situation we can we just return back from Denver for example several weeks ago um what people were telling is that uh um well the situation in mountain views is is is isolated situation you can't talk about mountain view and think that that's going on in other places other cities throughout this country the southwest and Denver when we just returned there was a housing project that was closed down that was sitting next to our sarco i think the people not passed or know about our sarco i would imagine and i also would think that the people in mexico in terms of the colonias also know about our sarco because our sarco was responsible in our past for making a lot of children sick on the mexican side of the border because of the smoke the smoke stack so i think on one hand as we say we need to talk about genocide we need to talk about murder we need to talk about the kind of thing that's happening to us we need to make the governor of the state of new mexico accountable and responsible to his constituency which is all

of us and many more and we need to continue to make the eid and the environmental protection agency itself you know we made a statement one time is that we may need to start an agency to protect ourselves from the environmental protection agency because we're getting no protection in fact from the from the epa what we're seeing in return from the epa is them consistently as to be expected siding and aligning themselves with the bush administration which is who they're in reality they're accountable to in an industry and multinational corporations against our interests let's take another phone call now go ahead please i've heard recently that the city is trying to change their sewer ordinance to allow sentia national labs and other facilities dump radio active waste in the sewers and i'm wondering you know i've heard different things and i'm wondering how that's going to affect say the residents in albuquerque and people downstream okay thank you we touched on this a little bit earlier um yes it's true the uh sendia national laboratories has or the department of energy i should say they have

uh 50,000 gallons of contaminated water uh that's radioactive that's sitting up there and um also they have a facility called the inhalation toxicology research institute where they do testing on beagles um and other animals to see what the effects are radioactivity if they inhale it man and and what what happens with that so there's waste from that facility on this 50,000 gallons the department of energy is told sendia you can't dump this on the ground and um the state is told them you can't just leave it up there so now uh sendia national laboratories as we say they've got a 1.2 billion dollar annual budget they've got some of the best scientists in the in the world up there and you would think that they would try to come up with a real um a solution to how they're going to deal with the radioactive waste in the future but the best they can come up with is to say uh approach the city of albuquerque and say can we just dump this down the sewers the question in terms of how this is going to affect people is uh well sendia national labs of course says it's very low low low low low low low low low levels so low tend to

tend to the minus low and that it's not going to hurt anybody but the question is for one is this a really a precedent that we want to allow for these industries to be able to do this as it is hospitals again we get to the issue of hospitals are the only industry that are allowed to dump radioactive waste in the sewers what sendia is asking the city to do is expand that ordinance and change the ordinance to allow um all other industries as long as they meet certain limits um to be able to do that too so the question for us is what are going to be the long-term effects because what goes into the sewer plant goes into the river eventually and also um part of that whatever they they clear out of there in terms of solids is uh made into sludges that go on to uh parks they fertilize parks with it so what are the long-term effects going to be the people downstream um it's led to pueblo uh the tribal councils already passed a resolution uh opposing this and then the village council of of los lunes has already expressed concerns to the city of albuquerque about it too but they could say how low low low it is for as long as they want the thing is is that the more that we find out about radioactivity uh they they keep having

to lower the standards because um the the more they find out about it the worse it is so we think that uh sandy and national labs in the industry including the hospital industry have a responsibility again rather than put the burden on the city of albuquerque in our communities to deal with their problem uh they've got a 1.2 billion dollar annual budget and they've got some of the best scientists in the world um come up with something better than this our phone number here in the studio is 292 3263 call us with your questions or comments and we do have another caller on the line hi go ahead please you're on the air so i'm calling to respond to the person who wondered if this was just a southwest problem uh i'm a victim of hazardous rage from Massachusetts and lived for 30 years in an area we're getting chemicals and watch 65 of my neighbors died in average age of 45 we got a site put on superfund and we were told by Richard Layton or the site manager that health was not on their agenda and if we mentioned health did cancel the meetings we came to New Mexico five years ago to recover and we just recently attended the meeting with

uh congressman Richardson and when we asked him what rights we have people who have been chemically poisoned from permissible chemical emissions he said we had no rights i think we need a constitutional right to clean air water and soil because the people in this country are being murdered and their genetic material is being damaged permanently from this chemical exposure okay thank you very much for that comment uh again our number here in the studio is 292-3263 you can call us if you are viewing this program on channel 27 or if you're listening on k-1m radio you can call us with your questions or comments uh one one quick question to uh to tie up the uh the issue of uh sandia labs dumping radioactive water into the albuquerque sewer system mike uh is there a timeline in terms of the the decision making whether to give them permission to do that well right now it's before the uh finance and government affairs committee of the city council the city council ultimately will make the decision to allow the

change of the ordinance uh september 23rd at i believe five o'clock at the city council chambers is when they're going to to hear this issue and make a decision on it it's five out of the nine city councilors if this is allowed to happen if they do pass it at this committee then it goes before the full city council but we're encouraging people to be there on the 23rd as many as can be there to express their opposition to this and say that this is not a way to deal with this problem that they're they've got a responsibility come up with better ways to deal with this and the public has the right to to make the ultimate decision in terms of of how it's going to be done is there any sense of how the committee is going to vote on this um it looks kind of um um i would say probably three out of the five would would vote to allow this change in the ordinance to happen and we do feel that there ought to be stronger regulations on the hospitals even for what's happening so there's a change that's in order but uh to allow the other industries to do it um you know that's that's that's no reason to allow everybody else to to to to do this too um but it looks like right now it's very close but it's leaning towards that this committee at least

is willing to allow this to happen one of the uh there has been a great deal of organizing that's been going on around uh environmental issues and people of color and one of the things that's come out of it is a network called the uh the southwest network for economic and environmental justice and Richard maybe you can talk a little bit about what this organization is doing well i think actually that uh what we're seeing here today and what we've seen throughout the state is an example i think of what's happening in a much broader context i think on one hand people are saying that we're not going to allow it to happen to us anymore and whether that's to state government or county government or federal government whether it's to environment organizations that have also participating in the taking of our resources and otherwise so i think what we've seen is is is is a development in the state of New Mexico to where that communities are communicating and networking sharing strengths and weaknesses sharing experiences um sharing successes sharing non successes and and trying to uh to look at why maybe in fact we have not had success in some of those issues i think what we've what what was took place was last year there was a call by the

south was organizing project asking people in the southwest to come together um in a broader context to discuss environmental justice issues as we see them as racial and social justice issues as survival issues as poverty issues um there was somewhat over 80 uh individuals uh both individuals and representatives of organizations that came together in April of last year out of that i think came two very significant um reports no or two very significant victories one was the formal establishment of the southwest network for environmental and economic justice and i think the second one was the beginning of discussions around the need for a training institute uh to take place and for people to be trained as organizers and trained in other kind of skills it's necessary to move our movement forward so now we have a network that's uh made up of represented from eight states i'm also from some uh native nations that also have representations sitting on the coordinating council and that um i think it's a very significant uh situation

now that's that's moving it's forward in the southwest what what are some of the issues specifically that this network is is involved in addressing well i think uh it's it's pulling the economic and the environmental pieces together because in fact we've always somewhat seen them as interconnecting issues so as you see some of the people that came together for example are people that involved in immigration issues um we said to those people we're not asking you to take on a new issue let's us come together and look at the issue of immigration and how that impacts on us environmentally and economically and we'll see that many undocumented workers and and and what was beginning to be talked about in terms of the border situation is happening um i think pulling trade unions together uh union organizers together to talk about that we need to be establishing and developing community labor strategies in terms of dealing with situations the point i was speaking to in Las Vegas um where these workers went on strike and

one of the issues very very specifically was that around the issue of health and safety um these workers were this particular company was dealing with over 22,000 gallons of from out of high on a daily basis and these workers in many cases were becoming very sick so i think it kind of cross connects there in in in many different directions um as i said earlier we do not see it as an accident that our communities are being dumped on or being posed on or whatever it may be that this is a plan this is a situation that that industry is intentionally moving itself to our communities and that government is not being responsive to our needs and that we need to move government to be responsive to our needs so so we kind of you know cross those issues and in other words i think are very significant and the point is the whole situation will leave by straws um one of the issues that the south was network now is taken on in support of the women in the relocation of the 26th Levi Strauss plant out of the country to Costa Rica um is a call for the boycott the former boycott of Levi Strauss uh blue jeans so i mean it's

it's a lot of issues that were involved in the present time the i'm sorry the other part that's real important about the the lead that the southwest organizing project has taken on this issue and more specific on the issue uh between the relationships between traditional communities or people of color and the environmental movement quote unquote uh i think it's real real critical because basically what we are saying as as people of color is that to us environment uh means something different that's what we want you to understand when we talk about water water is a prayer to us it's life it's more than just a resource that can be exploited or whatever that's one the other part we're saying point blank to the environmental movement today we think that you're our friends and based on some general observations we want to uh assume that but based on other observations you're not acting like you are you're actually

hurting us now let's bring that to surface and let's put it on the table and deal with it today because otherwise we just go back and forth and we end up in the same as victims and we we want we need that support we need the alliance but it's not there and i think that's the that's the issue at point today that we want to get to you mentioned earlier the the necessity for people of color to to discard the um the baggage of 500 years of colonialism uh how do you see that that process working well it's a long-term process it takes it takes uh it takes or organizing ourselves it takes educating ourselves it takes garnering the resources building alliances like we're doing here and it takes um getting to the point of saying you know what the way we look at the world and our viewpoint even though it's different it's not bad in fact in many cases and that's the irony of all this you know the environment and protection i mean uh no in Mexico you know the

Chicano say mi casa es tu casa we invite people native people when they pray that pray just for themselves they pray for all of us they pray for the universe they pray for all our relations but then here they come and disregard all of that and that's the irony so it's just it's a process of empowerment that needs to confirm that we're right rather than confirm what we get in the educational system and the economic system that we don't we don't have any worth that we can be discarded at the will of quote unquote more powerful institutions such as the environmental movement the environmental movement today just like the corporations the local motion for both of those is the profit the money motive they need to discard that if we're if they're going to ally with us Richard you've been involved in raising these these issues with some of the largest mainstream environmental organizations you've been raising this issue for a couple of years now

have you seen some some movement in terms of their coming to terms with the points that David is making and that you make with these organizations i think actually the key to that is what that we was speaking to i think that we've seen some light in the tunnel there's been some movement on the part of some of those organizations what would be perceived as mainstream environmental organizations but i think one of the crucial things that they that they need to do is listen that's what we've said we don't need people speaking for us we do a perfectly good job of speaking for ourselves what we need these organizations to do is to commit to opening their resources we're talking about environmental organizations that have millions of dollars of resources we're talking about scientists and technicians and on and on with the kind of resources that they have at their fingertips we're talking about communities that have an incredible amount of resources now if we merged in some cases those resources and pulled it together then we might might see in a larger scale many more victories taking place in our community so based upon that as

I say we see some movement forward not the kind of movement honestly that we would like to see at the pace we would like to see it the nature conservancy is a prime example 300,000 acres or 200,000 acres of southern New Mexico that's not them purchasing that now that's not as as I think as we would say as us beginning to come together to discuss these issues at the table very clearly then in fact they need to listen they need to come and meet with community representatives they need to meet with leaders from that are chosen from our choice to represent our self-interest and based upon that then we might see some significant movement on their part where do you see all of these efforts going in terms of you know various communities organizing and there are some networks in place what direction is this going in well I think the establishment of the southwest network is a model in this country right now we have gotten calls from all of this country and outside of the country to assist and share and exchange around how the southwest

network was formed and what that's all about we're having a gathering here in two or three weeks that'll bring another 100 to 150 organizers from the eight states back together again to look at the next one year two year three year and five years in terms of where we want to go with it. Okay we're out of time I'd like to thank our guests in the studio today Richard Moore and Mike Guerrero of the Southwest Organizing Project Rosanna and Joe Mongue of Concerned Citizens of Sunland Park David Luhan of the Tonancin Land Institute and Frazier of citizens against ruining our environment and also Jean Gauna of the Southwest Organizing Project the strand in the web video was produced by Greenpeace also the Linda Scali interview was produced by Mike Guerrero and Ruth Contreras of the Southwest Organizing Project I'd like to also thank the studio crew today this program was directed by Fernando Moreno of the Southwest Organizing Project assistant director is Claire Conrad the audio operator today is Don Cherry the VCR operator Nick Montoya

simul cast coordinators Frank Contreras and Lewis Head the call in coordinator today is Ruth Contreras studio production assistants include Michael Smith and Carolyn Keifer camera operators Joseph Montoya Emil Shaw Jim Morrison Tim Vandenover Terry Vandenover James Dickey and Belma McConnell this program was produced by the Southwest Organizing Project with collaboration of the Reyeses collective of Keo and Emredio and Community Cable Channel 27 for more information about the contents of this program you can write to or call the Southwest Organizing Project there are two 11 10th Street Southwest in Albuquerque that's 8 7 102 the phone number is 247 8 8 3 2 this program was produced by community volunteers from the Southwest Organizing Project and Community Cable Channel 27 I'm Marcos Martinez thanks for being with us today