Grassroots Protest Targets Lack Of EPA Action To Prevent Cancer Clusters
This article excerpt features an event sponsored by Government Accountability Project, and was originally published here.
“Grassroots organizers are gearing up for a protest march on EPA headquarters next week to call attention to what they say is the failure of EPA and state and local governments to keep communities safe from chemical pollution that has led to cancer clusters, hoping the protest will help spur federal action on the issue.
‘Realistically I think the first thing that has to happen is, again, acknowledgment of how broken the system is and how much change has to happen. I don’t believe these people will change that, and so I do believe moving forward we almost have to constantly expose this issue, I think we constantly have to be aware of this as a problem,’ Susan Wind, organizer of the SAFE EPA Protest, told Inside EPA.
Wind said people from groups spanning 36 states will be in attendance, and that representatives from organizations such as Move to Amend, CleanEarth4Kids, Government Accountability Project, Sierra Club, and others are also planning on marching.
The protest is a means of “delivering evidence” of the need for greater EPA oversight of chemical pollution throughout the United States, Wind said, adding that state and local officials have repeatedly dismissed her concerns for the effects of these pollutants on her community’s health.
‘All the environmental groups . . . have been asking for these demands and begging for clean water, clean neighborhoods, clean uniforms, for decades. So it’s not like this is new . . . I’m hoping to start a movement and bring awareness’ that EPA has dismissed these concerns ‘and not put the environment or the people first all these decades, and now you have a crisis,’ Wind said.
Wind says EPA has failed to respond in a constructive way, with the agency declining to meet with activists ahead of the protest.
An EPA spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.”