South Baltimore has some of the most polluted air in the country. Local teenagers are fighting polluters back, and slowly building toward climate justice.
Students give a presentation at a construction site in South Baltimore. The student activists, who formed the group Free Your Voice, are fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change.Students give a presentation at a construction site in South Baltimore. The student activists, who formed the group Free Your Voice, are fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change.
The mountains of coal are the focus of a growing opposition movement called Free Your Voice, led by South Baltimore teenagers — young people of color who are spearheading a call for climate justice.Taysia Thompson is part of a group of student activists fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change.
Incinerators generate electricity by burning trash, and in the process they release hundreds of pounds of mercury and lead each year, plus soot that can get into people's lungs. On top of that, the incinerator would have added traffic and exhaust fumes from the tailpipes of trucks carrying in the waste and carrying out the burned ash.
This fight is way harder than the fight against the waste incinerator. It's against a bigger, more entrenched opponent — an operation has been there for more than 100 years, and that's part of a multibillion-dollar industry with huge political power in the U.S.Taysia Thompson first learned about the activism in her neighborhood from her older brother, who was part of the incinerator movement.
There's a strange contradiction happening: McIlwain, who is the top environmental regulator in the state, acknowledges that people in the neighborhood are breathing in coal dust. But she also says someone — either the agency itself, or someone else — needs to prove it in order to get rid of it. The goal is to eventually get the state regulators to deny the permit that CSX needs to operate, or at least require the company to enclose all the coal, or at the very least put water onto all of it so there's less dust blowing around. But no matter what, they want CSX to pay the community a lot more for the damage that the pollution is causing. McIlwain says that the state is considering all of those requests.The students now have support from their community.
Plus they're using new tactics. Free Your Voice's action team is risking getting arrested for putting up protest banners over the highway. One of their recent approaches was placing bags of coal on the front steps of City Council members' homes, demanding that they publicly support efforts to reduce air pollution.
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