Caption: Peter Gillbert, Naeema Muhammad, Elizabeth Haddix, & Don Cavellini at NCEJN’s Annual Summit
Peter Gilbert, Supervising Attorney at Legal Aid of North Carolina, and NCEJN Board Co-Chair.
I am honored to return to service on the board of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network. While NCEJN has grown and changed dramatically in recent years, it has remained true to the mission of empowering communities affected by environmental racism and injustice; every annual summit feels like a homecoming where I see the EJ warriors who have led this fight for decades.
I first met the NCEJN through one of its founding community members, Black Workers for Justice, in 2004 through organizing for the Million Worker March in Washington, D.C. At the time, I was an intern-organizer with the UFCW working to organize the Smithfield Foods pork packing house in Tar Heel, N.C., the largest pork processing plant in the world. While companies often pit social justice movements against each other, particularly fostering divisions between environmental campaigns and worker justice campaigns, NCEJN’s long history of worker solidarity would not allow that. In those days, every summit included a panel on worker justice, usually led by Saladin Muhammed, in keeping with NCEJN’s broad definition of “environment,” which most definitely includes the workplace. As the workers in the plant were from the same communities impacted by the hog houses and lagoons plaguing EJ communities in southeastern NC, the solidarity was natural, but it required NCEJN’s leadership to unite these struggles for justice.
My collaboration with the network continued through law school where I interned with, and later worked for, the UNC Center for Civil Rights in representing underbounded and excluded communities denied access to water and sewer and disproportionately burdened with landfills, waste transfer stations, and other polluting facilities. In collaboration with the network, I was able to represent network members across North Carolina, including Rogers Road, Royal Oak, Lincoln Heights, and others in successfully preventing new solid waste facilities, closing others, and gaining at least some access to water and sewer.
My favorite memories in my career are from the long monthly planning committee meetings, or when Naeema would call and say something like “We’re going to Northampton County on Wednesday” and we’d drive hours to sit in someone’s living room, church, or a funeral home to see how the network could help: sometimes through connections with lawyers, scientists, or demographers, but more often by connecting them with communities who had succeeded in their struggles. I didn’t get paid much, but I sure ate well.
After I left the Center and was no longer actively representing member communities, in 2015 I was asked to join the board. The network was going through some difficult transitions in staff and funding, and I got to work with some amazing leaders to help us weather that transition and set the organization up for its current success. I served in that capacity until the fall of 2021; I rotated off after Ajamu and Rosa joined the board because I knew the network was in such good hands.
Usually, I am grateful to have things off my plate, but I really missed having a close relationship with the board and staff of the network. I continued to attend summits and quarterly meetings, and to collaborate and advise on various struggles, but I missed feeling like I was really in the middle. When I was approached about rejoining the board, I said yes right away. It will feel different, not seeing Steve and Don at every meeting, hearing Saladin’s booming talks at every summit, and driving across the state with Naeema every week, but their spirit continues to guide us and infuses everything we do.
