Environmental justice, a New York imperative

The children in Mott Haven are coughing. The Bronx neighborhood is nestled in a plume of vehicle exhaust emanating from cars and trucks driving on the Major Deegan, the Bruckner and the Cross Bronx expressways that triangulate the neighborhood. Children visit the emergency room in Mott Haven for asthma-related emergencies at triple the citywide rate.

In Red Hook not too long ago, high school and amateur soccer, softball and baseball leagues brought families and friends together on afternoons and weekends. Now the remains of the fields are full of weeds and have been mostly untouched since 2015 due to lead contamination. The community lost its space to recreate, and the $107 million restoration project is still in progress.

It is not a coincidence that communities experiencing severe trauma due to industrial pollution, low floodplains or lead poisoning have majority Black and Brown residents. Communities of color in New York City suffer from the impacts of environmental hazards at alarmingly high rates. These dangers severely reduce quality of life and make our great city a dangerous one for many of our residents. Government can no longer shrug its shoulders at this de facto racism.

Environmental racism is a pebble thrown into a placid pond; it ripples through every aspect of its communities’ health, wellbeing and quality of life. Asthma attacks prohibit people from performing physical jobs. Floods cause housing instability. Time in the emergency room tending to a loved one is time away from climbing the economic ladder.

This week, we were tragically reminded again how linked the fights for environmental, racial and criminal justice are. Derek Chauvin’s defense tried to argue that George Floyd’s preexisting health condition precipitated his death, not the knee on his neck. Obviously, a pre-existing health condition is not a free pass for state-sanctioned murder, and we need to call these fringe claims out for the dangerous streams of thought that they are.

But this argument also is not unique. People questioned whether Eric Garner died because of asthma, not a chokehold. When people learned that Freddie Gray had suffered from lead poisoning as a child, many speculated about whether that exposure started a series of events that led to his killing at the hands of police. There is something particularly insidious about hiding behind structural environmental racism to excuse structural racism within our criminal justice system. But we also need to take steps to eliminate the environmental determinants that seed these racist ideas.

I believe taking care of our planet means taking care of our people. As mayor, I will stop treating environmental racism as a latent product of development and take specific and bold steps in partnership with local environmental justice organizations to actually address this crisis. COVID-19 has presented an opportunity to rethink and reimagine New York City. We need to take dramatic but common-sense steps to make our city greener, keep our neighbors healthier, and do our part to adapt to and protect ourselves from the impacts of climate change.

My plan looks to the distant future, taking significant steps to meet or even exceed New York State’s mandate for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. My administration will:

cut carbon emissions from energy-producing buildings by investing in solar panels, wind turbines, and other forms of renewable energy;

empower community residents to be innovators, planners, and decision-makers on using and creating energy that is local and renewable;

reimagine street space to make us less reliant on cars, buses and trains; and

update our waste management system to keep burnt garbage out of the air and create new jobs.

Access to clean air and water is a right, but for some, it is more like a privilege. I will launch a citywide Asthma Action Plan to address the air quality issues affecting communities like Mott Haven, Brownsville and Jamaica. Our city has the laws and many of the programs in place to keep our air clean, but many of these laws are not enforced.

I will expand the Asthma-Free Bronx program to public hospitals around the city so every child can receive personalized care in the event of an attack, enforce the Asthma-Free Housing Act so landlords annually inspect homes of residents suffering from asthma, and finally implement the Commercial Waste Zones that Mayor de Blasio promised in 2019.

No one should have to live in a cloud of smog, not in New York City, not anywhere.

For all of the beauty that we behold in New York City, we can no longer pretend not to see the too many New Yorkers who cannot breathe easily, or play safely or live secure in the notion that they will not be flooded out because the development of our great city did not account for their well being. That changes when I am Mayor.