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October 25, 2002
Pioneering
Environmental Activist Lois Gibbs at MHC October 30
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Photo:Center for Health,
Environment and Justice
Lois
Gibbs put Love Canal on the map.
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Love
Canal had yet to become a household name in 1978, the year that
Lois Gibbs, a twenty-seven-year-old homemaker, discovered that
her son's elementary school had been built atop a 20,000-ton
toxic-chemical dump in Niagara Falls, New York. Gathering her
courage, she knocked on doors throughout her neighborhood, sharing
information and concerns with other residents. After a two-year
struggle, the Love Canal Homeowners Association Gibbs founded
succeeded in persuading the federal government to relocate 833
families from the area, signaling the first major victory in a
grassroots environmental movement that would launch the federal
Superfund program for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
Gibbs, now the executive
director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an
organization she founded in 1981, will visit MHC Wednesday, October
30, to give a talk titled "The Love Canal Twenty-Five Years
Later: What Have We Learned?" Her talk begins at 7 pm in
the art building's Gamble Auditorium. The Center for Health,
Environment and Justice has assisted more than 8,000 grassroots
groups nationwide with organizing and technical and general information.
Most recently, the center in March released a report finding that
1,185 public schools in Massachusetts and four other surveyed
states are within a half-mile of a toxic-waste site. The report,
titled "Creating Safe Learning Zones," claims that more
than a half-million students are unnecessarily exposed to harmful
toxins in their schools, putting them at higher risk of developing
asthma, cancers, and other diseases linked to pollutants.
"We are thrilled
and honored to have Lois Gibbs at Mount Holyoke," says Stephanie
Sorge, the campus organizer for the Massachusetts Public Interest
Research Group, one of the sponsors of the talk. "Now, more
than ever, we need more Lois Gibbses to organize to protect the
public interest, and it is our hope that her presentation will
inspire and motivate more people to get involved." Other
sponsors include the Office of the President, the Center for Environmental
Literacy and the Campus Conservation Coalition.
Gibbs has appeared
on 60 Minutes, 20/20, Oprah, Good Morning America, the Today
Show, Now with Bill Moyers, and the McNeill-Lehrer Report,
among other programs. She is author of Love Canal: The Story
Continues . . . (New Society Publishers, 1998). Among her
many awards are the 1990 Goldman Environmental Prize, Outside
Magazine's "Top Ten Who Made a Difference,"
and an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York
College at Cortland.
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