Environmental Racism in Shell Bluff Georgia

Adriane Harden

Environmental racism occurs when hazardous industries and facilities are placed in and near poor, minority communities.  Environmental racism can also be connected to the exclusion of minority groups from the decision-making process in their communities.

Construction is underway for new twin nuclear reactors in Burke County, Ga. at the Vogtle plant. According to Southern Company (which is building the reactors), the creation of the nation's first new nuclear reactors in 30 years will result in new Jobs and more economical resources for the poor and mostly black communities around Shell Bluff and other Burke County cities.

But some residents are asking, if nuclear reactors are really the solution.  Why is Burke County still one of the poorest corners of the state a quarter century after Southern Company brought its first pair of local reactors online in 1987? They also want to know: If the old and new reactors will be safe, why won't Southern Company or the federal government pay to monitor radiation levels in Burke County? And most of all, why are cancer rates more than 50 percent higher in communities near existing reactors, according to the Centers for Disease Control?

Trading clean energy and jobs for the health of poor black citizens without investigating the long-term effects fits the definition of environmental racism precisely.

"Some people did get jobs," former Shell Bluff resident Annie Laura Stephens states. “But a lot of us got something else. We got cancer. I lost sisters, brothers and cousins to cancer, and every family I know has lost somebody to cancer."

Since the early 1980s, Burke County residents have experienced a veritable cancer epidemic. Located along what is already the fourth most toxic waterway in the nation, Shell Bluff is across the Savannah River from a former nuclear weapons manufacturing plant. Nearby Waynesboro residents rely on wells for bathing and drinking water, which makes them highly vulnerable to the radioactive contamination of local ground water.

On February 11, 2012, Bobbie Paul of Wand, Reverend Samuel Mosteller, President of the GA State Unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The Peace and Justice Coalition, Dianne Matheowitz, AIC, Burke County Residents and supporters joined for a day of remembrance of the nuclear disaster at Fukishima in Japan on February 11, 2011, and to warn about the dangers of nuclear radiation and the effects that two new reactors would bring to Burke County.

Bribing poor communities with jobs in exchange for sickness and death. Is this what environmental racism looks like?

The NRC and Southern Company have stated that the plants in Burke County are safe. It is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s policy to allow plants to monitor themselves.

Rev Al Sharpton speaks in Montgomery after the Selma March

Selma march will not end in Montgomery

“Selma march will not end in Montgomery”

Adriane Harden

Montgomery, AL- Demonstrators rallied at the Alabama State Capitol on Friday afternoon, after completing the final leg of the 54-mile, week-long march between Selma and Montgomery. Marchers protested Alabama's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law, workers' rights issues and laws in 31 states requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls.

Reverend Al Sharpton, president of the civil-rights group National Action Network and host of the ''Politics Nation'' on MSNBC also said Alabama's immigration law is inhumane.  ''The only voter fraud that we can find is the statement that there is widespread voter fraud,'' the Rev. Al Sharpton said. ''The fraud is to use non-existent widespread voter fraud to try to suppress and stop people from voting.''

''You have imposed Jim Crow laws in the name of immigration and then you turn around to the black community and get some confused, running around about, 'Latinos took our jobs.' "

''We didn't have no jobs for them to take,'' Sharpton said. ''Didn't nobody take our jobs. We were unemployed double-digit before anybody ever came across the Mexican border.''

''Our fathers beat Jim Crow,'' Sharpton said. ''We're going to beat James Crow Jr. We have awakened again. Black, white, Latino, Asian, workers, union members, young folk, old folk.''

Rev. Jesse Jackson of The Rainbow Push Coalition, voiced support for a federal bill that would provide paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.

''Democracy is a path to citizenship, not deportation,'' Jackson said. ''Democracy is the path of the DREAM Act, not the nightmare act of racial-profiling, violence and family separation.''

Jackson stated the next step is to organize a mass, targeted voter registration drive in Southern states. "Right now, there are 300,000 Alabamians who are not registered to vote," Jackson said. "There are 400,000 in South Carolina; 600,000 in Georgia."

Martin Luther King III told the crowd that he thinks his father would have opposed voter photo-ID laws being passed or considered in many states.

"I think my father would be greatly disappointed in our nation," he said. King also quoted his father when he said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but bends toward justice."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize the march, said his group plans on protesting in other states with voter ID laws. "You aren't trying to stop voter fraud, you are identifying who you want to vote," Sharpton said. "This (march) is not a celebration of the past; it's a continuation of right now. “Thousands of supporters say they won't let their demonstration die in Montgomery — they're planning to go home and fight these laws that require citizens to prove their identity at the polls.

For more information, please contact Adriane Harden@ 678-653-2012 or email amharden@gmail.com

Selma to Montgomery March 2012

Thousands joined arms and marched thru Selma, Ala., during the 47th anniversay of the "Bloody Sunday" Selma to Montgomery civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday, March 4, 2012. Thousands crossed the bridge in the 19th Annual Reenactment, with hundreds of those planning to make the 50-mile walk to Montgomery over the next five days, ending with a Friday rally at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.