#jacqueline patterson

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Jacqueline Patterson

Jacqueline Patterson is currently the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. With a Masters in Social Work and Public Health, Patterson has worked on an endless list of issues including but not limited to: women’s rights, HIV and AIDS, violence against women, racial justice, economic justice, and environmenal justice. She has also served as co-founder and coordinator of Women of Color United, an organization whose goal is to end violence against all women and their communities. Patterson served in many roles across the globe before being director, working for groups such as ActionAid, IMA World Health, John Hopkins University, and was a Peace Corps volunteer. She ties the issues of climate justice, racial justice, and women’s rights into all of her work, leaving a lasting impact and paving the way for future generations.

Read an interview with Patterson here. 

Listen to a conversation with her here. 

[wocinsolidarity]

Well, there’s one story I tell to help people understand intersectionality: There’s a picture I show of this young boy named Antoine, who lives in Indiantown, Florida, 3 miles from a coal-fired power plant. He has severe asthma. There’s a picture of his bag of medicines that show what he depends on to get by from day to day. And there’s a picture of him as a young boy watching other kids play in a fountain. Another one shows him looking out the window and watching kids go to school. Not him—there’s so many poor air quality days that would put his life at risk if he went. I talk about the connection between the very facility that is driving climate change and the increased concentration of pollutants that come from climate change. And the kids who can’t go to school. Or have a hard time paying attention because the other things that come out of smokestacks [are] lead. Or they might be drinking it from their water supply. I want people to see all those levels of risk kids have from these impacts. And then I overlay it with the maps that show these same communities are food insecure—more likely to get Doritos and Cheetos than kale or quinoa. And I overlay that with the fact that when you have this many problems, including living next to a toxic facility, on average your property values are 15 percent lower. So that affects the quality of their schooling because they’re less resourced—fewer tax dollars. And then I show an image of a child standing on a milk crate being fingerprinted. If you’re not on grade level by grade 3, you’re much more likely to enter into the school-to-prison pipeline. And then the same entities that fight against the regulations to help the air are the same entities pushing forward punitive criminal justice measures, and privatizing our prisons, and so on. People see that through the lens of an actual child, how all those systems come into play. How they come into play against his chance to be a thriving adult.

Jacqueline Patterson, the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, “Climate Justice Is Racial Justice Is Gender Justice” (August 2017) 

[emblematik]

It’s funny, I was just talking to some friends about their condo complex where people were always fighting. They said their best memory of being in that condo was when “Snowmageddon” hit, and people had to suspend all these different battles and focus on the fact that it was an emergency. They had to eat together and shovel together, while trusting that they were all working toward these common aims. They had to work through any roadblocks, literally and figuratively. We need some kind of acknowledgement that that’s where we are, in an emergency.

Jacqueline Patterson,  Climate Justice Is Racial Justice Is Gender Justice

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From Patient to Advocate, Seth Green Becoming a Voice in Tennessee

From Patient to Advocate, Seth Green Becoming a Voice in Tennessee

Seth Green (second from left) with others at a recent medical cannabis rally.

In Tennessee, a seriously ill seizure patient can get a doctor’s recommendation for medical cannabis, but can’t buy from a state-licensed dispensary or cultivate his own marijuana. In fact, patients must obtain medical cannabis oil lawfully in another state and transport it back to Tennessee and the oil must contain no…

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on http://fsrn.org/2015/03/u-s-supreme-court-considers-limits-on-toxic-power-plant-emissions/

U.S. Supreme Court considers limits on toxic power plant emissions

The U.S. Supreme Court handed ruled Wednesday that pregnant workers qualify for workplace protections, reviving a claim by a UPS worker that she was discriminated against when she was not afforded light-duty on the basis of her pregnancy. The case now goes back to the lower court for another look. The Court also ruled in an Alabama redistricting case, saying that drawing voting districts that consolidate black to dilute their voting power elsewhere is unconstitutional.

The High Court also heard arguments, including Michigan v. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – a case that pits public health against private profit. In 2011, the EPA issued limits on toxic emission from coal-fired power plants known as MATS – Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The EPA estimates that the new rules would prevent between 4 – 11 thousand premature deaths in the U.S. attributable to air-pollution from power plants. But the electric industry and some states argues that the EPA did not adequately consider the costs of implementing the standards and that doing so could cripple the energy sector. Jacqueline Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. FSRN’s Nell Abram spoke with Patterson just after the oral arguments to discuss the case and what’s at stake in the outcome. Download Audio

Nell Abram: First, talk about the legal origins of the limits set by the Obama administration in 2011. Under what authority did the EPA undertake setting the MATS emission limits, and what exactly do the limits cover?

Jacqueline Patterson: The authority under which the EPA is working is under the Clean Air Act and so the Clean Air act allows the EPA to set certain standards or rules for protecting out air. This particular rule is for mercury and air toxics standards which looks at the level of toxins such as mercury and arsenic that comes from coal-fired power plants, and set standards in terms of maximum allowable allowable amounts of these these toxins that can be emitted from these power plants.

(more….)

  As the EPA considers even more rules to limit pollution that contribute to climate change, environmentalists and industry interests alike are anxiously awaiting the outcome of this case to get an idea of which way the Court leans on the overarching issue. A decision is expected in June.