“Cancer Alley” in L.A., in a mostly African American area, is rife with refineries, plastic plants and chemical facilities. Photo: Gines A. Sanchez
“To be poor means that you are living in environments that you don’t control,” said Donna Givens Davidson, president and CEO of Eastside Community Network in Detroit, and a new faculty member in the Earth Institute’s Master of Science in Sustainability Management program. “And it means that people who have more power and money have a way of using those environments for dumping, using those environments for waste. And then, because you don’t have political capital, you don’t even have the means to say, ‘Let’s create buffers and protect ourselves.’”