posted April 25, 2008
I would like to thank Mayor Littlefield and our city's Green Committee for calling together the public to discuss the issues of environmentalism in Chattanooga. A public input meeting is being held Thursday night at the Chattanoogan at 6:30, and the issues surrounding this discussion are some of the most exciting on the table today.
The Green Movement and this Green Committee are beginning to shake the foundations of Chattanooga, and I applaud the mayor for his leadership in this area.
Yet we must remember that these ideas remain democratic and just. Our environmentalism must be equitable for all Chattanoogans.
In other words, if the greening of our city does not help our poor neighbors, then it is neither democratic nor truly sustainable.
"A lot of wealthy, educated people wanted to take action as a result of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, but most low-income people and people of color I know had no interest in seeing the movie in the first place,'' states Van Jones, in a recent issue of The Sun. "They already have enough problems. They don’t need new crises to worry about.
"So if you have a house and a car and a college degree, then, yes, you should hear about global warming, or peak oil, or dying species. But poor and low-income people need to hear about opportunities. They need to hear about the expected reduction in asthma rates when we reduce greenhouse gases. They need to hear about the wealth and health benefits of moving to a sustainable economy. Otherwise you are just telling people who are already having a bad day that they should have a worse one.''
Jones, who grew up in Tennessee, now runs the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Center umbrellas itself throughout Oakland seeking opportunities and justice for poor people of color, and its major campaign is for Green-Collar Jobs: "to ensure that this green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.''
"We are standing on the verge of a new economy in the U.S., and we need to think about who this economy will include, and who it will exclude,'' Jones claims. "Will we be satisfied with a sustainable economy that, at the end of the day, is eco-apartheid? Is a green economy only about reclaiming throwaway stuff, or is it also about reclaiming throwaway communities, throwaway people, throwaway children?''
Eco-apartheid is a reality in Chattanooga and should be a major concern for the mayor, the Green Committee and all involved in the greening of Chattanooga. It means little if our downtown condominiums are sustainable if our ghettos are still polluted.
For example, there is a direct connection between our city's infant mortality rates (20 per 1,000 for black babies; 2 per 1,000 for white babies) and the environmental character of our neighborhoods. Great forces in our city are working towards evaporating the ''urban food deserts'' _ a term for the lack of quality healthy produce in poor neighborhoods _ by planting and teaching citizens the principles of organic gardening.
The Green Jobs movement is built on such a premise. Instead of outsourcing our labor, why not elevate _ through job-skills training, support and employment _ our disadvantaged youth to create a new WPA-ish movement where the new technologies of the future _ alternative energies, green architecture, community development _ are built with their hands.
Otherwise, we're left with more a new segregation. Not black and white, but green and brown.
“If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you visit Marin County, you’ll find hybrid vehicles, solar panels, organic food, organic everything,'' says Jones. "If you then get in your car and drive twenty minutes, you’ll be in west Oakland, where people are literally choking on the fumes of the last century’s pollution-based technologies. That’s eco-apartheid, and it’s morally wrong, because we should deliver clean jobs and health benefits not just to the wealthy, but also to the people who need them most. Eco-apartheid doesn’t work on a practical level either, because you can’t have a sustainable economy when only 20 percent of the people can afford to pay for hybrids, solar panels, and organic cuisine, while the other 80 percent are still driving pollution-based vehicles to the same pollution-based jobs and struggling to make purchases at Wal-Mart.''
Surely the greening of our city will include the major downtown area, but will it also include the low-income housing neighborhoods nearby?
Which area needs it more?
The federal government recently passed the Green Jobs Act of 2007 which puts $125 million at green-collar job training for many poor, unemployed and disadvantaged Americans. Jones calls it "green pathways out of poverty.'' Another $1 billion is being sought by a new group Green for All for further training.
How does this translate to Chattanooga?
Instead of focusing so much on attracting an outside investor for Enterprise South, why not create a Chattanooga Green Corps training center there? The creativity in this city is enormous, and a program could be designed to build solar panels for low-income housing, to create sustainable and agricultural landscapers for our many neighborhoods, to teach and train all our youth to be national leaders in the Green Movement.
We could attract not oil-dependent car manufacturers but the leading investors in our green future.
As the Ella Baker Center says: "We can create good jobs, safer streets and healthier communities for ourselves while showing the country the way toward curbing global warming and oil dependence.''
As Van Jones says: "The path to peaceful streets and true community safety is not more prisons, but ecologically sound economic development.''
Chattanooga can say the same thing.
(David Cook is a former journalist for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. He currently teaches American history at Girls Preparatory School and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)
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David Cook asserts that any environmental endeavors in Chattanooga should be democratic and just. In order to avoid confusion, he should have said that they be Soviet democratic to ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We live in a free market economy. If the poor want to buy in to the boondoggle that is the green movement, they should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps so that they can afford to buy a Prius and put costly, under-performing solar panels on their roofs.
Better yet, maybe it would be best to keep the underprivileged poor so that they must walk, ride bikes, and use public transportation. By keeping them in a welfare state, we could better control pollution.
Ted Jameson
tedjameson85@yahoo.com
* * *
It seems to me that Mr. Cook is only contributing to the global warming problem we hear so much about. Every time he opens his mouth more hot air is released into the environment.
His latest piece is much like all the others he pens - lacking in credibility as he urges us to do not as he does, but as he says. Just as he most likely has yet to open his own home or neighborhood to the homeless while looking down his nose at the rest of us, I doubt very seriously that one will find solar panels, etc. gracing the roof of his own domicile.
Except for a very few of the ultra-liberals in town, his op-ed attempts are a serious waste of bandwidth.
Dennis Norwood
catherder@bellsouth.net
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What is most annoying about the responses that David gets is that obviously the people who respond don't really read his articles. Either that or they are too ignorant and spineless to actually argue against David's perspective. How foolish you all are to just attack David personally and not even mention the topic being addressed. It seems you all are simply using David as a scapegoat for your own emotional rants. What a pity.
I don't always agree with David, but I have great respect for his compassion and his willingness to give a voice to the poor in Chattanooga. I also know for a fact that he does more than just release "hot air." He has worked very hard giving up his time and talents as a writer so that we all might be more educated about the homeless of Chattanooga. He has gone to great lengths to advocate for the poor and their situations, and has helped me and many others to view them as mothers, sisters, brothers and fathers. In other words, they are human beings who deserve our respect and compassion.
It is disappointing that people feel the need to release so much anger and hatred in their responses. Your ignorance only proves how valuable David's voice/message is.
Marty McClain
* * *
Regardless of global warming, or political sniping by unimaginative
hit-men, it only makes sense to reduce our consumption of resources. What the McCarthy-style communist reference has to do with that, I don’t know. Simple economics support the idea that if we can bring our output closer to balance with our consumption then we can realize a higher profit. (For those who have trouble seeing past $$$ when they read the word “economics”, understand that this equation applies to the resources for which Dollars are simply a symbol. But I digress.)
The truly important point being made is one of community. Business that
employs the community to improve the community builds solidarity. Solidarity breeds interaction and suddenly criminals have a much harder
time committing crimes because people start looking out for each other.
Creating real jobs, blue collar labor jobs, in turn, vigorously stimulates a small local economy. The long term result of a localized stimulation is localized prosperity for the entire community. If in the process, we also improve or even rebuild our city’s infrastructure in such a way as to use less energy, resources and goods the resultant city budget surplus can be applied toward improvement of and investment in the city. The benefits keep expounding.
Oh, but if everyone is prospering, then it must be Communism. This absurd neo-Con propaganda in support of the betterment of the Elite at the expense of the Poor, shrouded in the veil of “Free Market Capitalism”, should disgust anybody with any hope for Chattanooga’s success as a community. Like Christians often quote “As you do unto the least of these…”
Judging by these responses, it’s very important to some that they can drive through Chattanooga’s ghettos in their SUVs with locked doors so they can feel superior when they go home to their gluttonous gated enclaves.
Jack Rairden
lovelle75@comcast.net
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I am negatively impressed by the nasty and offensive expressions against Mr. Cooks efforts to raise awareness of needed changes in our national culture and that of our city. The attacks on Mr. Cook are being served up with venom and selfish pomposity by correspondents attempting to express opposition to the ideas presented by Mr. Cook yet they stoop to the low level of personal attack on Mr. Cook himself. Can these writers put nothing positive into words?
While I am neither a “Liberal” or a “Greenie,” the social problems, misdirection of resources, and moral weaknesses pulling down the culture of our city and country Mr. Cook makes effort to address are apparent with even the most shallow reading of daily news. Each day our society diminishes in possibilities. Personal attacks upon writers of good will serve no good purpose.
Those like Mr. Cook, who would make some effort to alter the sad state of affairs plaguing our city and country should not be reviled and attacked for trying to raise concern about those in our society in need, the ongoing deprivation and depletion of our resources (physical, monetary, and moral) and the pronounced vacuum of imaginative positive leadership should not be attacked by those who would mock positive change and are themselves unable to offer improvement on the concerns presented by Mr. Cook and like minded others.
An important teacher of the moral basis of Western civilization said, “whatsoever you have done to these the least of my brethren you have done unto me” another said, “do not do to others what is hateful to you.” I would suggest some consideration of those who would address matters concerning positive changes in our city and nation be heard out with the gentleness of spirit and good manners in which the ideas are tendered.
E. Lindberg
Chattanooga
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