
{"id":1645,"date":"2008-01-10T08:29:38","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T16:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/01\/10\/who-will-tell-the-people\/"},"modified":"2011-12-12T10:06:51","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T15:06:51","slug":"who-will-tell-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/01\/10\/who-will-tell-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Who will tell the people?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Taylor Sisk<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This story is the seventh in a series that examines issues related to environmental justice and to the fight of the Rogers and Eubanks roads community to be relieved of what they allege to be an undue burden. To read the stories in this series and for other resources, go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/rogers-road\">www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/rogers-road<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lest you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d come to doubt, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Democracy does still work in America. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alive and well, in fact, and toiling away right here in Orange County. But pack a lunch; a change of socks. Plan to stay late. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll then see it well at work.<\/p>\n<p>Of course we all knew this. We were aware that democracy still works when people are willing to work at it. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nice to be reminded \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as we have been by our county commissioners, by the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism (CEER), by CEER\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supporters and by the people they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to represent who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve refused to be quiet when confronted with what they perceive to be unjust treatment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by those who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve stayed late to see that it works. When people are heard, and done deals are no longer quite so done, thank the folks who stayed late, and consider democracy being done.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--> Consider it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but not for long. Because nothing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yet settled.<\/p>\n<p>After 35 years of carrying what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s felt to be a solid-waste overburden for the good of our community at large, the Rogers-Eubanks community has successfully lobbied the Orange County Board of Commissioners to reconsider their decision to site a waste transfer station on Eubanks Road at the location of the current landfill. A search is now underway to determine the best site for a transfer station. Eubanks Road is not off the table as a potential location.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that particular order of business, though, is the question of whether the county should have a transfer station at all: Should we be shipping our garbage out of county for someone else to deal with?<\/p>\n<p>And: If we were to site another landfill (or landfills), where should they be placed? Are the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where the majority of our waste is generated, prepared for a landfill in their own backyards?<\/p>\n<p>And: What are our long-term plans for reducing our waste and for alternatives to both landfill and transfer?<\/p>\n<p>But at least we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s democracy at work.<\/p>\n<p>So what does a community at large \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that portion not immediately affected by hazards and\/or inconveniences \u00e2\u20ac\u201c gain from dialog of this nature?<\/p>\n<p>Plenty, says Gary Grant, a director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but most importantly, a more fully realized understanding of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Grant says that while people generally think in terms of their trash being dumped at the end of a road, and not within a community, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly now more difficult to think that way in Orange County.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcA smile on its face.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How progressive are we as a community?<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This community is always patting itself on the back for being progressive,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <em>The Citizen<\/em> quoted Carrboro Alderman Joal Hall Broun as saying in an earlier installment of this series. But, she suggested \u00e2\u20ac\u0153maybe we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not as progressive as we really think we are. Does what we say really comport with what we do?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>We pride ourselves, rightly, on our efforts in improving racial relations. But charges of environmental racism were leveled by Eubanks Road landfill and transfer station opponents.<\/p>\n<p>Omega Wilson of Mebane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s West End Revitalization Association talked to <em>The Citizen<\/em> about his organization\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thus-far successful efforts to keep a highway bypass from dissecting an African-American neighborhood (and thereby destroying an historic church and cemetery) and of the racial tensions that were brought to the fore in that Alamance County community \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a community some 25 minutes from downtown Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153A lot of folks said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWell, we thought that stuff was dead and gone,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wilson says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And of course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not dead and gone. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very alive and well. It just has a smile on its face sometimes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Regarding Jim Crow, Chapel Hill-based community-development advocate John Cooper says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the legacy lives, and so you have to take all that into consideration.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>What role has race played in the treatment of the Rogers-Eubanks community over the past three decades plus?<\/p>\n<p>As Broun said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think it was a combination of race and economics. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to separate; I think they are tightly wound together.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Neloa Jones of CEER agreed:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think that class certainly is an issue, but I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intersection of race and class. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 [H]ad we been an affluent African-American neighborhood, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that they would be dumping it here \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think any of this would have been here to begin with.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting, also, to look at the intersection of environmental justice concerns with the concerns of advocates for what we more generally think of when we think of environmental issues \u00e2\u20ac\u201d essentially, protecting the Earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been a tension between some groups who see things very narrowly as environmental issues and others that are trying to recognize the economic deprivation of an area,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Bob Hall, director of the Durham-based Democracy North Carolina and editor of the book <em>Environmental Politics: Lessons from the Grassroots<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, former OWASA board chair and community activist Mark Marcoplos believes that over the years many local elected officials have taken a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tunnel-vision stance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d too narrowly focused on the environmental justice issue (e.g., 35 years of the landfill on Eubanks Road and then the prospect of a transfer station there) while losing sight of a long-term solution \u00e2\u20ac\u201d more effective waste reduction, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, says that in raising environmental justice concerns, the most effective way of resonating the message throughout the broader community is to clearly enunciate the public health concerns \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which the Rogers-Eubanks community has done quite well, describing, for example, traffic-safety concerns associated with the transfer station \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and to connect the dots between environmental and public health.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of who comes on board from the broader community \u00e2\u20ac\u201d well, that too has been a topic of sometimes heated discussion. There are those who believe the support provided to CEER and the Rogers-Eubanks community by more recently arrived residents in and around the community \u00e2\u20ac\u201d mostly white and middle or upper-middle class \u00e2\u20ac\u201d has been a cynical attempt to lash back at local government by those who were annexed against their will into the town of Carrboro.<\/p>\n<p>Neloa Jones is not sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s necessary to get to the very root of supporters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 motivations: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel like if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re willing to give us that kind of support, we should take it. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have no way of knowing whether their concern is genuine. [But] I think that when you go to a board of commissioners meeting and you drive to Hillsborough, or wherever you drive, and you make these presentations and you speak these words and you send these emails and you write these letters \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genuine or not if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to help the cause.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too na\u00c3\u00afve politically to know any better, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care [as long as] it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that helps us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Obliged to reconsider.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no question that the Rogers-Eubanks community has helped the broader community by raising the questions it has about how we deal with our solid waste.<\/p>\n<p>County Commissioner Valerie Foushee acknowledges that the community members have certainly helped her:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Board members are representatives of the people. And when the people say you need to take a look at this \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or you need to look at this in this way, in addition to how you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve viewed it previously \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for me, I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m obliged to do that.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now, if I do that and my thinking changes, then I need to say my thinking changed. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you find that the decision you made was not the best decision and you have the opportunity to change it, why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also important to keep in mind that a number of decisions were made over the years, some of which were made in the eleventh hour, when options were limited, that today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s county commission has had no option but to deal with \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for example, the decision not to site another landfill elsewhere in the county when the present one is full, or the failure to better articulate and implement a more aggressive waste-stream reduction.<\/p>\n<p>Joal Hall Broun says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just not the county commissioners that should bear the brunt of the decisions. Because there were a lot of players that came to play in these decisions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Getting to the next step means, for Foushee, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that the board has to take some responsibility in ensuring that what begins now is the right process and that we take the resources that are available to us to get this right. I hope that people understand that no neighborhood is going to accept a waste transfer station. And this is still going to be a tough process.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Barry Jacobs has encouraged the town governments of Chapel Hill and Carrboro to take part in the decision-making process that lies ahead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Informing discretion.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Who will tell the people what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in their own best interests? The people, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reminded, will tell the people.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you think that regular citizens aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intelligent enough, wise enough to make decisions that affect their well-being, the remedy is not to take the power of decision-making away from them but to inform their discretion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says John Cooper.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper agrees with those who insist there can be no more effective tool in the advancement of informed public policy than to make information available to those whose lives are in question, and to allow them to interpret it as it applies to the situation at hand, and to articulate the issues in a public forum.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What I can do that would be most invaluable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Cooper, imagining himself in the position of a public official or a policy advocate, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is to give the people all the information, tell them everything that I know, let them have every piece of information that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been collected, whatever they ask for. If they have questions that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the data for, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work together to figure out the answers.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve found is that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a Ph.D. to make a wise decision. You can take information and digest it and distill it. You may need some help in interpreting certain data. But once it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s explained, people can interpret it, and they can use it and make wise decisions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Of the work of the Rogers-Eubanks community, Gary Grant says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It goes to show you that once a community has access to information, they themselves can be about protecting themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch of the NAACP recently has provided valuable guidance to the Rogers-Eubanks community. And the Democratic Party of Orange County has been a vocal and influential advocate.<\/p>\n<p>Most critically, though, says Bob Hall, is that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be rooted in the community. They can draw on technical support or outside groups. But the heart and soul and the leadership has got to come from the community. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s huge. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sustain it otherwise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Rev. Robert Campbell has long been such a person within the Rogers-Eubanks community. Neloa Jones has emerged as an effective spokesperson. Numerous others have assumed particular roles.<\/p>\n<p>The message is nailed down within the community and then disseminated, and the task is then, as Rev. Campbell says, to convince the broader public that the community in question is not only those who are affected by, for example, their proximity to a landfill, but also \u00e2\u20ac\u0153those who are impacting the community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which is to say, all of us.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of the democratic process to say,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Broun says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe want the same quality of life that our neighbors have a mile down the road. We have borne the brunt of being adjacent to waste facilities that have benefited the entire community, and now it is our turn.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the democratic process \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to be able to persuade your neighbors that you shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to bear the burden of this anymore.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nA \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcparadigm shift.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cooper says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s optimistic about a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paradigm shift in the way the environmental justice movement is operating,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d saying that communities are becoming more proactive \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they are in fact at the table when decisions are being made; they are in fact determining which questions are the right questions to ask.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But, in the words of Ringo Starr, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come easy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d You have to stay late \u00e2\u20ac\u201d figuratively and literally.<\/p>\n<p>Many who have attended commission and council meetings to speak out on the landfill and transfer station have objected that, for whatever reason, their item has very often come somewhat late on the agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Valerie Foushee has said she would like the commission to be mindful of such timing issues. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Some people are trying to work, to make a living, and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have enough energy once you work a 10-hour day to come out and talk,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, she says that elected officials \u00e2\u20ac\u0153need to be mindful of not just the people who come out and talk with you about an issue, but be mindful of the people who cannot come out and talk about an issue. We all, as elected officials and policymakers, need to remember that.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think that sometimes you think that because people didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come out \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not entitled to change the outcome.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all part of the learning process. The discussion continues. Stick around.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nIn next week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s issue of The Citizen: Considering our options.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Taylor Sisk Staff Writer This story is the seventh in a series that examines issues related to environmental justice and to the fight of the Rogers and Eubanks roads community to be relieved of what they allege to be an undue burden. To read the stories in this series and for other resources, go&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22330,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/22330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}