Press Release: New Jersey Sets National Precedent with Environmental Justice Bill Signing Today

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, September 18, 2020

CONTACTS:

Kim Gaddy, Clean Water Action, 973-914-2449

Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Ironbound Community Corporation, 201-978-6660

Ana Baptista, Ironbound Community Corporation, 973-342-6056

Melissa Miles, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, 347-553-3338

Nicky Sheats, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, 609-558-4987

(Trenton) – After decades of local struggle and grassroots advocacy, New Jersey made history today when Governor Murphy signed into law a first of its kind Environmental Justice Bill (S232 – Singleton/McKeon/Weinberg/Ruiz). The law will direct the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) to deny or condition certain permits due to cumulative, disproportionate impacts of pollution in environmental justice communities. This bill is the realization of countless efforts by environmental justice communities from Camden to Newark that have long called on the state to protect already overburdened communities. It is a beacon for environmental justice communities across every state and can pave the way for comprehensive national legislation.

“This new law gives the state the power to ‘just say no more’ pollution in my neighborhood. My children can look forward to breathing cleaner air as they recreate in Weequahic Park. Thanks to Senator Singleton, Assemblyman McKeon and Governor Murphy, New Jersey now has the strongest EJ law in the nation and demonstrates that Black Lives Matter,” said Newark resident Kim Gaddy, Environmental Justice Organizer, Clean Water Action. “Environmental justice communities like mine have suffered far too long.After more than 10 years of fighting for this legislation, our voices have finally been heard. Our communities will receive the right environmental protection for our complexion.”

“S232 gives us hope. Hope that our pleas for the right to breathe will be heard next time we face off with polluters who have been targeting Black and brown neighborhoods for decades. We can’t end environmental racism with one bill but we’ve now taken this historical first step,” said Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Deputy Director, Organizing and Advocacy, Ironbound Community Corp. “Newark has a fighting chance to breathe easier thanks to this law”…

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Press Release: White House Announces Environmental Justice Advisory Council Members

The White House

Today, the White House announced the members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The advisory council will provide advice and recommendations to the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council on how to address current and historic environmental injustices, including recommendations for updating Executive Order 12898.

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) was established by President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad to fulfill his and Vice President Harris’s commitment to confronting longstanding environmental injustices and to ensuring that historically marginalized and polluted, overburdened communities have greater input on federal policies and decisions.

“We know that we cannot achieve health justice, economic justice, racial justice, or educational justice without environmental justice. That is why President Biden and I are committed to addressing environmental injustice,” said Vice President Harris. “This historic White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council will ensure that our administration’s work is informed by the insights, expertise, and lived experience of environmental justice leaders from across the nation”…

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Press Release: Governor Murphy Signs Historic Environmental Justice Legislation

Nation’s Strongest Measure to Protect Overburdened Communities from Pollutants

Fulfilling a commitment to enact sweeping protections for environmental justice communities, Governor Phil Murphy today, alongside U.S. Senator Cory Booker, Mayor Ras Baraka, Senator Troy Singleton, Assemblyman John McKeon, and environmental advocates, signed legislation (S232), which requires the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate the environmental and public health impacts of certain facilities on overburdened communities when reviewing certain permit applications. New Jersey is the first state in the nation to require mandatory permit denials if an environmental justice analysis determines a new facility will have a disproportionately negative impact on overburdened communities.

The bill defines an overburdened community as any community where 35 percent of the households qualify as low-income according to the U.S. Census, 40 percent of households are minority, or 40 percent of households have limited English proficiency. There are approximately 310 municipalities with populations totaling approximately 4,489,000 that have overburdened communities within their municipalities…

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Unequal Access to Local News Undermines Democracy

Truthout, Sept. 1, 2015

By Peter Montague

A new report on community access to local news in New Jersey has revealed one more way democracy is being undermined by economic inequality: Judging by access to critical local news and information, poor communities are “dramatically under-served” compared to wealthier ones, the report concludes.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has described “critical information” that community residents must have for democracy to work – and this study reveals how low income communities and communities of color are being shut out.

The new report, from Rutgers University, compares access to local news and information in three cities in New Jersey:

Newark: Population 281,000; 26 percent white; median household income, $34,000 per year;

New Brunswick: Population 57,000; 45 percent white; median household income, $40,000; and

Morristown: Population 19,000; 62 percent white; median household income, $71,000.

Among these typical New Jersey cities, economic disparity correlates with an astonishing gap in access to essential news and information.

For example, relatively wealthy Morristown supports six journalism sources per 10,000 residents; New Brunswick has 3.5 and Newark has 0.6. In other words, the wealthiest (and smallest) of the three cities supports 10 times as many sources of news and information (per 10,000 residents) as the poorest of the three.

Not surprisingly, this disparity in number of news sources translates directly into disparities in journalistic “output” (total combined stories on the web, plus postings on Twitter and Facebook).

During the seven days that the Rutgers group analyzed, news sources in Morristown produced 541 stories per 10,000 residents, compared to 181 in New Brunswick, and only 26 in Newark. Of these, in Morristown, 461 stories were deemed “original” (not rehashed from other sources), compared to 145 in New Brunswick and only 20 in Newark.

The situation looks even worse when examining journalism that focused on local issues. In Morristown, 42 percent of stories had a local focus; in New Brunswick, 28 percent, and in Newark, only 15 percent.

Members of the New Measures Research Project at Rutgers used “content analysis” to examine the routine output (plus social media posts) of standard news outlets – radio, TV, online and print – in the three cities. All together, they analyzed 2,679 stories (1,028 on the web and 1,651 on social media) during seven non-consecutive days selected at random during the month of January, 2015.

As we have seen, the Rutgers group analyzed the defining aspects of the “local journalism ecosystem” in each city: (1) how many local news sources exist; (2) the quantity of journalistic output by these sources, plus the extent to which their output is (a) original and (b) about local issues.

Importantly, the Rutgers group also analyzed the quality of local journalism, to judge how well local sources are meeting the “critical information needs” of residents.

“Critical information needs” comprise the information that is essential for citizens of a functioning democracy, as defined by the Federal Communications Commission. For details, see Table 1.

These “critical needs” include news and information about:

(1) policing, public safety and public health hazards;

(2) local conditions of health and health care (comparing different neighborhoods);

(3) quality of education and educational opportunities (again, comparing city districts);

(4) local transportation systems – who is served and how well;

(5) environmental conditions (air and water) plus land-use and planning issues (in various parts of the city, compared);

(6) economic development, employment data, employment and training opportunities;

(7) civic information: local service organizations and their services; and

(8) political life – who’s who, what’s what and opportunities for residents to find out what’s going on and participate.

From the viewpoint of generally meeting a community’s critical information needs, in Morristown, 329 stories per 10,000 residents (61 percent of all stories) measured up; in New Brunswick, it was 104 stories (58 percent of total); and in Newark, 10 stories (38 percent of total).

Analyzing for stories that met critical information needs about local conditions, Morristown had 187 stories (35 percent of total) per 10,000 residents; New Brunswick had 35 stories (19 percent); and Newark had 3 stories (12 percent).

Although this study examined only three cities, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, if you are a person of color or of low income in New Jersey, you are likely being deprived of the critical information you need to participate effectively in a democracy. Is New Jersey unique? It seems unlikely, but no one can say for sure. One of the main purposes of the Rutgers report was to develop and describe a standard way of analyzing a “local news ecosystem,” which could then be applied anywhere. Other college journalism departments could take up the challenge and replicate this study in their own locales. Then we could know whether New Jersey’s distorted “news ecosystem” and degraded democracy are typical of communities across the US.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

 

The videos that are putting race and policing into sharp relief

On July 30, 2015 the New York Times published ten videos, some taken by police cameras, some taken by bystanders, documenting recent interactions between citizens and police.   One has to wonder how much of this kind of violence has not been caught on camera.
Warning to readers: These videos include graphic scenes of violence.
Click on this link to the New York Times and then scroll down slowly to see each of the ten videos: http://goo.gl/JB7HmQ