A coalition of environmental and health groups is pushing for more community decision-making power when it comes to reducing pollution.
The organizations recently launched the Freedom to Breathe campaign in Allegheny County to address the disproportionate impact of air pollution on Black and brown communities.
They held listening sessions in Clairton, where U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works is located in the Mon Valley.
The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple spoke with Archbishop Marcia Dinkins, founder and executive director of the Black Appalachian Coalition, or BLAC, about their campaign.
LISTEN to the interview
[A longer audio interview will be published on Friday.]
Kara Holsopple: One of the goals of the campaign is to hold decision-makers accountable. You’re urging the Allegheny County County Council, the [county]Health Department, the Board of Health, and the Air Quality Advisory Committee to make some changes to the Clean Air Fund. Community groups and municipalities can apply for grants for projects to improve air quality in the county. The money comes from the penalties paid by polluters.
What kind of changes do you want to see?
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins: One of the things we would like to see is that the dollars are moved from the Clean Air Fund – that a percentage of those dollars go into what we call a community justice fund for participatory grantmaking. So what that means is that the people who are directly impacted are running a fund that would then make grant decisions on where those dollars go. Yes, the funds are collected. However, the disconnect is the communications and outreach.
And number two, what are some of the ways in which we can look at the regulatory portions of that with respect to ensuring that polluters are truly held accountable for the harm that they make with respect to the community?
Another thing that we would like to see is that dollars increase for the Allegheny Health Department so that they can address some of these other issues with respect to polluters getting away with continuously polluting the community.
Kara Holsopple: What are some of the other goals of the Freedom to Breathe campaign? What will it look like on the ground?
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins: What we’re doing is building out a coalition of individuals and organizations to be able to look at some of our low-hanging fruit.
So on the ground, increasing the fines that polluters pay with respect to the pollution that they put in the community. So this would look like the community members coming together — our hope is that we can work with the necessary agencies — to be able to push those things and make sure that they pass.
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins is the founder and executive director of the Black Appalachian Coalition (BLAC.) Photo courtesy of Archbishop Dinkins
Another thing would be looking at the ways in which this coalition can amplify the stories of what’s going on in the community.
We want to be able to equip individuals with respect to how to organize within a community. How do you organize an issue such as this? How do you get involved on boards and commissions? We’re hoping to train people to be a part of the boards and commissions so that they would have a say. We’re hoping to be able to move industry from the seats that they’re sitting in on those decision-making tables and put the community voices there.
Our ultimate goal is to make sure that the campaign becomes a national model, and that other communities who are also confronted with the issues around air and water quality actually have a replicable tool or a model that they can go in and utilize within their communities as well.
Kara Holsopple: There are nonprofit organizations that are working in Allegheny County on air quality and environmental health issues. What are they missing that your organization is stepping in to try to fill a gap?
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins: What I’ve been told just within talking to people within the community and in various organizations is the element that BLAC brings really is our storytelling – amplifying the voices of Black people within the community, amplifying their lived experiences and also fighting for health as a human right, which brings a broader umbrella.
“BLAC brings really…our storytelling – amplifying the voices of Black people within the community, amplifying their lived experiences and also fighting for health as a human right”
Kara Holsopple: Will it be meetings or podcasts or written materials? What kind of things do you envision?
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins: We actually have a podcast where we’ve been bringing those stories up and it’s called “BLAC Re-Membering,” highlighting the heavy and the hope. We want to do a speakers bureau where people are trained to be able to scale up their stories and to repurpose those stories. It would look like going in and knowing how to use their story to even testify.
And one thing that we want to ensure, because what I found in all of my years of doing this work is that we’re always dealing with this tension of, ‘This pays my bills’ [or] ‘I really want to say something, but I can’t say something.’
We also want to create safe spaces for people to share their stories and to feel comfortable in doing so and realize that on the podcast, we’re not asking you to identify yourself. In some of our written material with respect to your stories, we’re not asking you to identify yourself – just creating those safe spaces for those stories to be heard. And we also use their voices in our policy papers or our BLAC papers, as we call it.
Kara Holsopple: Safe spaces, meaning that these are industries where people have jobs and there are lots of people in the community who take issue with some of the organizing around trying to shut them down or get them to comply with environmental regulations?
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins: Exactly. It’s not our goal to shut anybody down because I’ve learned over the years being in really distressed communities – you never put that tension there.
What we need to look at is this is the truth. We can acknowledge the truth, but what are the ways in which we can make it better? What are the ways that we can hold local elected or, you know, hold U.S. Steel accountable to turning to do like clean energy or think about green steel or, you know, decarbonization?
What are the ways that you can kind of clean up your act that will also help to clean up the community? But it’s still giving people a job. It’s still providing health benefits and helping them to meet their needs because, again, we don’t want people to lose. The overall thing is to gain and to just be reminded we want to be healthy.
Archbishop Marcia Dinkins is the founder and executive director of the Black Appalachian Coalition.
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The Allegheny Front asked the Allegheny County Health Department about the Freedom to Breathe campaign’s goals. It said in a statement:
“We appreciate the support of air quality advocates. The resources of Clean Air Fund derive entirely from penalties collected by the Air Quality Program and contains no county tax dollars. The Allegheny County Health Department administers the Clean Air Fund to support activities and projects that:
- Improve air quality within Allegheny County by reducing, eliminating or preventing the creation of air pollution
- Broaden understanding of air quality effects through health studies concerning air pollution
- Educate the public on issues concerning air pollution
- Provide special purpose ambient air monitoring
- Lend their special expertise to the county (when requested) by providing consulting services or research and develop pollution-control technologies
- Complete any other project consistent with the provisions of Article XXI(PDF, 2MB) and the mission of the Board of Health
Importantly, the Clean Air Funds cannot be used by regulated entities as a means of meeting air quality regulations. Use of Clean Air Funds are formally approved by the Board of Health.”
