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Exciting June Events + Follow us on Social Media!
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Hello, it’s been a minute! We’ve been putting together our NCEJN team (look out for intros to our new staff soon!) and are excited to share what we’ve been working on. On June 3rd, we’re hosting a collaborative workshop on Environmental Justice in Durham. And on June 10th we’ll be launching Spidey Sens-r, an accessible air quality monitoring project Dr. Chris Hawn founded, with a Spider Party co-hosted by NOTRA!
Look below for more details about registration and these events.
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We are also now on all social media platforms!! Click below to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tiktok and keep up with us in between newsletters.
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UPCOMING NCEJN EVENTS
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all times noted in Eastern Standard Time
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June 3rd, 10AM-1:30PM at the People’s Solidarity Hub in Durham: Join us for a collaborative workshop, starting with learning from the Durham County Department of Public Health and Omega, Brenda, and Ayo Wilson with the West End Revitalization Association. Afterward, we’ll break into groups and share visions and outlines with an intersectional approach for the first-ever Environmental Justice chapter in the Durham County Community Health Assessment (CHA).
In 2021 the West End Revitalization Association and its founders Omega and Brenda Wilson wrote the first-ever Environmental Justice chapter in the Alamance County Community Health Assessment. Gov. Cooper has pushed this effort out to all 100 counties, and NCEJN is very excited to bring folks together for an intersectional environmental justice approach for this work as a model to be used state-wide.
Workshop breakout topics include: legacy sites and cumulative impacts; housing practices, gentrification, and evictions; affirmative EJ issues, including public transit, democracy, and informed decision-making; and other issues, including police injury and incarceration.
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June 10th, 9AM-2PM at the Philippi Church of Christ in Greenville: Come out to our Spider Party with NOTRA. We’ll be collecting funnel spider webs for the first ever Spidey Sens- r collection event in North Carolina! NCEJN is co-hosting this community sampling event with North of the River Association (NOTRA). NOTRA will share concerns about current sources of air pollution in Greenville. Then we will use Spidey Sens-r to help measure and address them.
Dr. Chris Hawn, co-director of Research and Education, founded Spidey Sens-r in 2018 and NCEJN is very excited to officially launch this project! “Spidey Sens-r” is a network of air quality monitors using spider webs. Funnel spider webs are horizontal, tightly woven, abundant, and quickly rebuilt. Because of this, their webs collect trace metals, dust and settled air particle pollution from industry and heavy motor traffic (car exhaust) that can cause respiratory diseases. We can use these webs monitor air quality in areas where there are no air quality monitoring sensors, which are often Black and brown neighborhoods. With spider webs as bioindicators, we can detect differences in air quality at the neighborhood level.
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UPCOMING LOCAL EJ EVENTS
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Farm to Fork Dinner
Host: Yadkin Riverkeepers
Date + Time: May 20, 4:30-8:00pm
Location: River Ridge Farm, 2932 Hauser Road, East Bend, North Carolina
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Rights of Nature Info Session: Greensboro
Host: 7 Directions of Service
Date + Time: May 21st, 3-5pm
Location: Barber Park Shelter #3, 1500 Barber Park Dr, Greensboro
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No MVP Southgae Dan River Paddle
Host: 7 Directions of Service
Date + Time: May 27th, 11am-5pm
Location: Dan River Access Boat Launch, 763 S Fieldcrest Rd, Eden, NC 27288 US
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Southeast Environmental Justice Summit
Host: Southeast EJ Summit
Date + Time: June 7-11
Location: Grand Hyatt Atlanta, 3300 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 3030
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EJ NEWS
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Demonstrators gather outside Enviva’s Raleigh office to protest wood pellet industry
Lisa Sorg, NC Newsline, May 18, 2023
Crowned with colorful hats, their aprons studded with protest buttons, a half dozen members of the Raging Grannies charmed their way past security — “we’re just going to our cars” — and took an elevator to Suite 1020 of the Bank of America building in midtown Raleigh.
They assembled outside the glass doors of the Enviva offices. The lights were off, the desks vacant. Soon an Enviva official opened the door, but blocked the entrance with his body.
“We’re here to deliver a letter,” the Grannies said.
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Kasey Kinsella, 7 Directions of Service, April 24, 2023
Raleigh, NC – On April 18, legislation was introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly’s House of Representatives to recognize the rights of the Haw River. The Rights of the Haw River Ecosystem Act, H.B. 795, would be the first state-level Rights of Nature law in the U.S. Rights of Nature laws elevate the status of nature from “property” to a rights-bearing entity, like a person, and recognize the rights of ecosystems–and the human and natural communities that depend on them–as having legally enforceable rights to exist, regenerate, flourish and be free from pollution. It is a rapidly spreading legal framework, rooted in Indigenous values, that has been adopted in 12 countries and counting, including over three dozen cities, towns, counties and tribal nations in the U.S.
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Unchecked Poultry Farming in North Carolina Violates Civil Rights, Residents Say
Lisa Held, NC Newsline, May 3, 2023
Last week, lawyers at the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of residents of three counties in rural North Carolina.
The complaint includes a number of residents’ detailed descriptions of the ways that chicken farms are affecting their lives. For instance, resident Henry Brewer described living next to mountains of chicken litter—a mixture of feces, urine, sawdust, and other particles—that industrial-scale chicken farms remove from barns and spread on fields.
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New EPA data shows NC released 59 million pounds of toxic chemicals in 2021, ranks 17th in US
Lisa Sorg, NC Newsline, April 12, 2023
More than 59 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the environment in North Carolina in 2021, according to new EPA data, the largest amount since 2015.
Averaged across the state, that amount is equivalent to 1,046 pounds per square mile.
The 2021 “Toxics Release Inventory” tracks discharges and emissions of nearly 800 harmful chemicals from many industries, including paper mills, chemical plants, plastics manufacturers and slaughterhouses. The TRI, as it’s known, requires facilities to report the data — which covers air, water, land, offsite disposal and chemical recycling — every year. (There is a time lag between the reporting deadline of July and EPA’s publication of the TRI.)
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Chris Miller, Stanly News and Press, March 23, 2023
Workers at Alcoa in Badin achieved a milestone whenever they became part of the “25-year Club.” They received a week off and a check, according to West Badin resident Valerie Tyson, an Alcoa employee for many years. But unknowingly, these employees, many of them Black, were also possibly being poisoned, as they were in constant contact with hazardous wastes, including cyanide, fluoride, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), that were buried in the ground for decades without regulation.
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Lisa Sorg, NC Newsline, March 20, 2023
The stench punched them in the face. People scurried across the parking lot of the Snow Hill Missionary Baptist Church, trying to escape the clammy miasma that had descended over the neighborhood.
“It’s the landfill,” neighbors told the newcomers. “Some days we can’t even sit on our front porch.”
The Sampson County landfill, operated by GFL, is the largest in the state. It ranks second in methane emissions in the U.S. and first in North Carolina for vinyl chloride. But most of the time, it just stinks.
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EJ JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
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Every bit helps so thanks for being a link in the chain!
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Engage with us between newsletters via social media and our website’s blog:
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