I strongly agree with Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, authors of From the Ground Up when they state that environmental justice is a simple term used to examine and promote positive change for a complexity of relationships "among economic, political/legal, and social forces as they influence environmental decision- making processes and environmental outcomes."1 Environment is a term defined by Cole and Foster as a place "where we live, where we work, where we play and where we learn."2 In this article I have chosen to focus on the environmental health sector that falls under environmental justice. I had an eye-opening and fun experience interviewing Mrs. Florence M. Grant and Ms. Bonnie Johnston, who work for the Cambridge Massachusetts Health Department.

Ms. Grant and Ms. Johnston are two full-time skilled and dedicated public health nurses in the Cambridge Health Department. The entire public health nursing team focuses mainly on methods and studies that entail prevention and control of communicable diseases. They are medical consultants who are constantly working to provide health care, support, education and guidance to shelters, childcare centers, schools and local businesses situated within the City of Cambridge. Recently the public health nurses have taken on a new mission of becoming deeply involved with the emergence of West Nile Virus and the threat of bioterrorism.

After we introduced ourselves, I asked Mrs. Grant and Ms. Johnston, 'How would you define environmental justice?' Mrs. Grant and Ms. Johnston did not give me complex, long or confusing definitions of environmental justice; their answers were simple and directed. Ms. Grant described environmental justice through the environmental injustice occurring within many Cambridge neighborhoods because big universities such as Massachusetts Institution of Technology (M.I.T) and Harvard University are creating no rent control districts, as they buy entire neighborhoods. The purchasing by these institutions are creating unaffordable housing where it was previously affordable, forcing many working- and middle-class families to leave their neighborhoods and preventing similar families from moving in. This fosters a community of crime.

Ms. Johnston's environmental justice definition broadens to a national level. Ms. Johnston said that environmental justice had to do with privileges, power, and rights allowed to communities that faced issues concerning their environmental health. She believes that affluent communities get more power than poor communities or communities of color and that environmental justice would allow for all communities to get an equal say in protecting everyone's homes from environmental hazards such as power plants.

Ms. Grant and Ms. Johnston are truly remarkable women, nurses, leaders and representatives for the City of Cambridge and the fight for environmental justice. They are humble educators that are working for positive change in their community. Can you imagine if we had more people like them who truly reached out to people in their communities, to help solve public health problems? We often overlook issues that we believe do not affect us, yet what great strides we would make towards environmental justice if we all gave time, love and patience to recognize, examine, and resolve the problems affecting communities nationwide!

 

 

1 Cole, Luke W. and Sheila R. Foster. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. (NYU Press: New York, 2001: 11)

2 Ibid. 16.