U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, and U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, Thursday introduced legislation that would develop a nationally-coordinated, interactive mapping tool of environmental violence.
In a Zoom media briefing, the two politicians came together with several activists to introduce the Environmental Justice Mapping and Data Collection Act of 2021. The measure would establish an interagency committee to develop universally used research methods and mapping of air quality, fossil fuel infrastructure, police violence and other issues that disproportionately impact Black, brown and poor people.
The data collected would be used to help determine how to distribute 40% of the Biden administration’s investment in a clean and climate-safe future into areas that have been harmed by racist and unjust environmental practices.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, is also a main sponsor; the bill has support from more than 70 grassroots and environmental organizations.
“We are bringing St. Louis to the forefront because our environment has long been under studied — we can see the consequences when people show up sick to our emergency rooms, killed by police violence or are forced to turn to predatory payday lenders to cover their disproportionately high energy bills,” Bush said during the briefing.
She cited statistics from a 2019 Washington University report on how environmental injustices impact minority communities at disproportionate rates, including that Black children in St. Louis are 2.4 times more likely than white children to test positive for lead in their blood and that they visit emergency rooms for asthma issues roughly 10 times more often than white children.
She also noted that in St. Louis, majority Black neighborhoods experience most of the city’s illegal trash dumping and are disproportionately affected by high energy burdens.
In an interview after the briefing, Bush made the distinction between climate and environment, noting that environment encompasses all things that impact a person’s quality of life. This, she said, is why things such as police violence will be measured alongside more scientific issues such as air quality.
“If we fix those things, but if we continue to have this stressor, this situation, where the police can just murder us disproportionately and without impunity, then did we fix our environment? Is our environment now safe?”
The bill has a list of cosponsors in the House, and Bush said she anticipates more representatives supporting the bill moving forward. She is optimistic it will pass through the House.
“We definitely did not create this to be symbolic or create this to start the conversation,” she said. “The conversation has been going on, and the Biden administration has opened up a door for this to actually happen, and opened up a door so that funding actually touches down in communities like ours. And so this was needed to be able to make that happen.”
Joining Bush and Markey on the Zoom call were Karisa Gilman-Hernandez, Community Empowerment Organizer for St. Louis-based Dutchtown South Community Corporation; Anthony Rogers-Wright, director of environmental justice at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest; and Maria Belen-Power, associate executive director of Greenroots, a community-based organization in Chelsea, Massachusetts.