THRESHOLD CONVERSATIONS

Peggy Shepard

AMY: Welcome to Threshold Conversations, I’m Amy Martin, and my guest today is Peggy Shepard.

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AMY: Peggy Shepard is a pioneer of the environmental justice movement. For more than 30 years, she has been shining a light on the ways environmental issues and social justice issues intersect. Her journey into this work began in the 1980s, with a battle over a sewage treatment plant which was polluting her neighborhood of West Harlem, in New York City. She went on to co-found and lead WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a community organization with the mission of ensuring that the right to clean air, water and soil extends to all people, no matter where they live, what color their skin is, or how much money is in their bank accounts. Peggy has helped to lead and train citizen groups working on a wide range of issues, including pesticides, climate change, indoor air quality and more. She's also recognized as a national leader in building partnerships between scientists and citizens, working together to solve real-world environmental health problems. Many of the environmental protections she helped to fight for in her community have later been scaled up to the national level, benefitting  people around the country and even around the world.

Peggy has been honored with many awards, including the Heinz Award for the Environment and two honorary doctoral degrees. But she says she didn’t plan to have such a public-facing leadership role. As a young girl growing up in Washington, DC and New Jersey, she was quite introverted, she says, and her goal was to become a writer and a magazine editor.

PEGGY : I think my love of, of, of writing began, uh, reading magazines that my mother used to subscribe to at home. She was always an avid reader, especially of current events. And I remember current events was one of the favorite subjects I took in school. Right then back then it was the Mideast crisis and I was totally compelled with what was going on. My mother dabbled in politics in New Jersey as well. So I always had that interest. And then when I got to high school I remember Gloria Steinem was a freelance writer and she was writing for Glamour magazine and Playboy magazine. And I followed her career and wanted to do that kind of writing for, for magazines that could really, you know, issues that could talk to women about what was going on in our lives. And, so, my mission after school was to become a magazine editor. And so my first job out of school was at the Indianapolis News, I was the first black reporter there and you're going to laugh, but I worked for the women's page and most people today would not know what that is.

AMY: Yeah. Describe it. Describe the women's page.

PEGGY: So, in average newspapers, there was a women's page that had articles that, of course you had weddings and engagements, but then there were feature articles of concern to women. And so when I started with the Indianapolis news, they had just brought in a new women's editor from the Detroit Free Press, which was a major newspaper at that time. And she had been a strong editor there and she had been brought in to revitalize the women's pages. And so, I met a friend of hers socially who said, “Oh, you know, Barbara,” her name was Barbara Veronica, I still remember, she said, “she's looking for some younger people to really, you know, get this section started.” And so I got an interview and all I had to show were a book of poems that I, you know, just poems that I'd been writing. And so I brought my portfolio of poems and interviewed and I got the job on the spot.

AMY: Wow, those must have been some good poems!

PEGGY: You know, I was not an accomplished poet, but, you know, but, apparently it showed enough for her to hire me and take a chance. And it was really interesting because at the time this was the early seventies and the Black Panther Party was having those breakfast programs. And, as long as I did some of that on my own time, she would run the stories. So on Saturday, I'd go to the Black Panther Breakfast program and do a piece and I'd bring a photographer along and the story would run on the women's pages. I did stories on sex education, which was quite controversial back then, especially in Indiana. I did pieces on women migrants, because again, there were a lot of migrant farming in Indiana. And so all of those articles actually ran in the women's pages. I, I remember a particular issue that I, I will never forget. There was a local department store, you know, the main upscale store in Indiana, it was called LS Ayers. And at lunchtime, they had a women's line for the restaurant and they had a men's line. And so I took a photographer and we showed that the women's line that had all of these professional women who worked and needed to get in and out for lunch was like around the block. And the men's line was very short. And so, you know, I was making a point about women's rights. And by the time I got back to my office, the newspaper, the store had called the managing editor and killed the story.

AMY: Oh my gosh.

PEGGY: So these are sort of arcane things that most of my young staff would not even understand today. 

AMY: Yeah. But isn't that so great that issues can have moved enough in, in your lifetime that it is like, it's almost like “What? Like, that happened?”

PEGGY: This is being done on a typewriter. Yeah,

AMY: Yeah, yeah. That's, that's truly amazing. So, you eventually moved to New York and you were having a pretty interesting career in publishing. But then in the mid-80s you started to veer off in another direction. So, can you connect those dots for us? How did you get from writing and publishing into politics and environmental justice?

PEGGY: Yeah. So I kind of made the transition from, from a publishing career because I, I finally came to New York where I was working for Red Book and Essence and Black Enterprise Magazines and Time, Inc. and began to work in political campaigns. And so the first campaign was the Jesse, first, Jesse Jackson campaign for president, which was a very exciting time and gave me a chance to work with communities all over New York CIty. But in doing that, I had the opportunity to get a sense of advocacy in different neighborhoods. And I really began to see how their advocacy translated into community benefits. And so after that campaign the campaign manager, Bill Lynch, who was a major political operative in New York City said, do you want to be behind the scenes or do you want to be out front with your own ideas? And that really gave me something to think about. You know, at the time I was a fairly introverted, quiet person, and I thought about, my God, I'll have to give speeches and, you know, have to do all of this public-facing work. And I decided to go ahead and take him up on that. He said why don't you run for democratic district leader in West Harlem, which is where I was living. And the first issue that the community brought to us was a sewage treatment plant that was beginning to operate and was making people sick.

AMY: What were you hearing, what were people telling you?

PEGGY: They said there's a sewage treatment plant in the Hudson River, right across the street from Riverside Drive and it's spewing emissions and odors that, the odors were just incredible all over the community. And then of course, we realized that there were air toxics that were really exacerbating asthma and making people sick. And so, as a result, we began a six year campaign working to hold the city accountable for the operations of this plant. Now, mind you, I did not have an environmental background. I had a journalism background, but I guess it taught me to ask the right questions. And, so we began to hold accountability, monthly meetings with the mayor. Back then it was Mayor Koch, who was not very friendly to uptown communities of color. And, we began to hold those meetings. And when David Dinkins became the first, first he became borough president and then the first black mayor of New York city, he said, there's an issue here and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. And so he appointed a real environmentalist to the Department of Environmental Protection, and we began to work on the issue of the emissions. We found out that former Mayor Koch had not been honest in saying that odor control equipment was there. And all of the latest equipment was there; it was in fact not there. And so we began working with the city, but then we reached out to the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC. And they began to come to our meetings and realize that we needed to file a lawsuit against the city to ensure that this plant would be fixed. Now, it couldn't be shut down because at that time, if you flush the toilet on the west side of Manhattan, it all went into the Hudson River. So the federal government had come in and mandated a sewage treatment plant to be built, to clean up the affluent into the river.

AMY: Wh..I, I'm sorry, I just have to stop you for a second. So you're saying that people went to the bathroom, flushed their toilets, and that went in directly into the river?

PEGGY: Mmm-hmm.

AMY: Wow. Okay.

PEGGY: So this plant was a huge investment. And so we had the unintended consequence, you know, we were cleaning up the river because at that point it was not swimmable the fish, the ecosystem was dying. So you've got this plan to clean up the river, but now what's happening is that it's emitting air toxins

AMY: Cleaning up the river, but dirtying up the neighborhood.

PEGGY: And it was coming online just as I became the district leader. And we decided that we had to sue because David Dinkins would not always be in office. And so we needed a mandate on how this plant would be operated. And so we filed a public nuisance suit basically saying that residents did not have the, the use of their property, because they had to keep their windows closed. And, you know, it was a community nuisance. And so on the last day of the Dinkins administration, the administration settled our lawsuit for $1.1 million environmental benefit—never anticipated that—and also made my organization, WE ACT, and the NRDC, monitors of a five year agreement to fix the plant and $55 million committed to fix what was a brand new plant.

AMY: Wow. Well, so the plant, when it was installed, had these issues, it wasn't like it had been installed 20 years before, and it was like installed in a way that was going to pollute the neighborhood.

PEGGY: That's right. There was no odor equipment which is supposed to happen. And, they had, it had a design of arches that were open. So you could even look through the arches and see the settling tanks of sewage. So those arches were covered, you know, were cemented in. And, there were a number of odor control equipment that was installed in the plant. And so after five years that was done and, you know, sewage treatment plants, you know, they smell from time to time, but it's been a better neighbor since. That was our first major organizing campaign. And I think that six year organizing campaign really helped the community begin to understand environmental issues. Because we all had to learn, we were learning together. We would bring air pollution experts. We started a partnership with the Columbia School of Public Health. So we had all of these scientists coming and talking to us. And so we were learning. Once that plant was, was fixed and retrofitted, we had a cadre of community residents who really understood these issues. You know, what I realized and said, once you understand or see an issue like that, you begin to see all the others. You begin to say, well, gee, it looks like we have one of all the diesel buses in New York city in uptown neighborhoods. 

AMY: And, and for people that are not familiar with New York, when you say uptown, explain what that means and what, how it overlays with racial dynamics in the city.

PEGGY: Of course, yeah. Most people know Manhattan, you know Times Qquare and Broadway and Midtown where all the offices are. Well, once you get above the upper West side, which is a residential community, and you get up into the Columbia University area, just above that at 125th street is Harlem.

AMY: So when you say that a third of the bus depots in the city are uptown, that means that they were in primarily black neighborhoods, yes?

PEGGY: Black and Latino neighborhoods. Yes. So uptown neighborhoods above 96th are primarily all African American and Latino. Of course there's gentrification. And so there, you know, there is certainly a white population as well. But it's primarily African American and Latino.

AMY: So to get back to the point of what you were trying to say is that you were starting to make these connections like, Oh, wait a minute. Why are all the bus depots up here? And what does it mean to have a bus depot in your neighborhood?

PEGGY: Well, at that time, they were using the worst diesel fuel. And we know today through a variety of research that diesel fumes are pollutants, they're air toxins, that they're made up of a number of, of pollutants that can exacerbate asthma and heart disease. Within a diesel emission, you have very fine particles that are very easily breathed into your lungs, but very hard to expel. So, that kind of diesel soot really can exacerbate asthma. So as we were understanding that, we decided to reach out to the Columbia School of Public Health to understand whether they were seeing more asthma, hospitalizations or emergency room visits from our zip code. So we were trying to, to make the link between environmental exposure and health outcomes. And, these studies take awhile. So two years after making that request, we get a very excited call from the head of pulmonary medicine at Harlem Hospital, who was also a professor at Columbia to say that the study was showing that the incidence of asthma in Harlem was three times that of any other community in New York city. 

AMY: Wow. Wow. 

PEGGY: And so that was amazing. It kind of confirmed what we were thinking could be possible, but there we have the data. And so that really armed us with what we call the evidence base to develop our campaigns. And so we began to work with Columbia, developing research on air quality, monitoring the air quality at different intersections, monitoring air quality near schools. And some of that data was used by the EPA to develop the Fine Particulate Standard. 

AMY: The standard that exists for the whole country?

PEGGY: Yes. And so I, I want to make the point that local community issues can affect the… when you address those issues, you address the whole city or the whole state, or the whole country. You can't do just legislation for my neighborhood. So if you help the most vulnerable, you're helping everyone. 

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AMY: We’ll have more with Peggy Shepard after this short break.

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Sponsorship 1: Humanities MT, read by Shamim Graff

Sponsorship 2: Clearwater Credit Union, read by Joe Loviska

AMY: Welcome back to Threshold Conversations, I’m Amy Martin, and I’m talking with Peggy Shepard, one of the founders of the environmental justice movement in the United States. The organization Peggy co-founded and leads, WE ACT for environmental justice, has successfully advocated for notifications of pesticide use, removal of harmful chemicals from baby bottles and pacifiers, and, as Peggy was describing before the break, reduction of pollution from the bus depots in New York City, many of which are located in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods.

PEGGY: We took that on for 18 years. And I’d say, one of our victories also was when the city decided to, or the transit authority decided to renovate an old depot teared down and rebuilt. We developed a community task force that worked with the transit authority for six years to build the first LEED-rated depot, and LEED stands for leadership in energy and environmental design. So it means that it was, you know, very, very green. And we were able to, to insist that every bus be inside that depot and that the vents that, that, that the diesel out into the community had screens that could screen out those fine particles. Because our theory of change is really if you engage the most affected residents in environmental decision making, that that will improve public policy. 

AMY: One thing that, that stands out to me in addition to what you're saying about how thinking and working on various specific local issues can translate into large national policy, is also that the persistence that these are not battles that you can go out in the street rally around for a couple of weeks. And then, then we're done. I mean, you're talking, I mean, the shortest campaign that you've mentioned here was six years. So, so I, I'm curious about that as your, I know you've been, you know, a real leader in, in bringing up other people in this work. And is that something that you have learned how to educate people on how to, how to do this in a marathon style and not the sprint?

PEGGY: Yeah, so we try to let people know that a lot of environmental infrastructure costs multi-millions, if not billions of dollars. And so, you really have to understand that and know that everything can't be shut down. That some things you simply have to work to have them retrofitted or enforced, or to ensure compliance by the polluter. So a lot of this work is very nuanced. It can take having the right set of circumstances in the country, in the public consciousness, to move certain issues forward. 

AMY: I want to, I want to talk about race and how that inner inner faces with everything here. My understanding is if, if you're a white person in America, you are far less likely to live next to a sewage treatment plant, a landfill, an incinerator than if you're a person of color. And, I'm wondering, you know, what your understanding is of why that is the case and what effects does that have on, on populations and on the possibilities for change.

PEGGY: Exactly. I think today, with the resurgence of, of a racial dialogue, we now understand that systemic racism is on a continuum. It's about segregated education and poor schools in certain neighborhoods. It's about housing segregation and how the GI bill and government policies help to create that segregation. It's about communities and disinvestment in certain communities. It's about zoning and how communities of color have been steered toward the areas that have the most pollution or are in manufacturing zones zones that are, are, are zoned for industrial use. A lot of times people will say, well, the depot was there before the community was there. And sometimes yes, that is true. And then we say, but yes, now that the community is here, you need to think differently about how you're using that land. 

AMY: Well, and just going back to this idea that like, well, the depot was there before the people. And so, you know, I hear people making those kinds of arguments on, in all kinds of things. And I, and I feel like what gets missed so often with that question is the deeper question of, well, why? Why does this group of people feel like this is their best option? Why, you know, why aren't more white and affluent people moving in here? You know, what choices did they have that maybe a Native American community, or Latino community, Black community doesn't have. And, and do you feel like that there's a way to, to push the dialogue into that level where we can, it's not just so simple of like, Oh, I guess they want to live in a polluted area. I mean, nobody wants to live in a polluted area.

PEGGY: You know, if we just talk about Manhattan and I think it would be similar to other cities around the country, black people used to live in lower Manhattan down in the financial district. They kept getting pushed out. They used to have a settlement in Central Park. They were pushed out to make way for a renewed Central Park. And so they kept getting pushed to other areas. Then you have realtors who simply won't show a black family a house in a white community. And so what happens is that the only place you're steered to by realtors is a community of color or a changing community. They're also communities that have codicils that say you cannot sell this property to a person of color or a black person, and those still exist in this country. 

AMY: Oh, I thought, isn't that illegal? 

PEGGY: It's illegal if it's challenged 

AMY: Uh-huh.

PEGGY: Yeah, it would take somebody purposely challenging that. And so yeah, some of that still exists. I'm sure it's against the law, but again, it has to be challenged. And I think, you know today, you know, you see it in the newspapers and the media where a white person goes to for an apartment. And they're told the apartments there, the black person goes, they have the same credit, and they're told the apartment's gone. I mean, it still happens today. 

AMY: Mmm-hmm

PEGGY: And so there are systemic ways that black families have been steered towards certain communities, because those are the only places that would rent to them. And so when you have segregation, you then have, you have a system where, well, where are we going to put the pollution, where are we going to put the sewage plant or the bus depot, or the waste transfer station, or an industrial facility. It's going to be where the land is cheaper. Why is the land cheaper? Because people of color are there.

AMY: And also where people for, in, in so many ways, have been disempowered, so it's harder to fight back. I mean, the, the, the example with the sewage treatment plan, as I understand it, it was supposed to be cited in a white community first, right?

PEGGY: It was supposed to be started down in the Upper West Side. Developers got together and went to the city planning commission and got them to, to move it further Uptown. And, and the interesting thing is that our water system in New York works, the pipes work by gravity and Uptown is actually the highest at the highest geographical point in Manhattan. 

AMY: So they're pushing the waste uphill. 

PEGGY: Exactly.

AMY: I mean, the, the, the it's like the symbolism and the reality come, come together in a pretty disturbing way. It's literally, and excuse my language, but like, let's put the shit on the Black people. Like, we just like, we're going to just, we don't want to deal with it. We don't want to have to look at it, see it, smell it. So we're going to put it out here where people can't, are less likely to have the resources to fight back effectively. And I, I feel like that kind of gets into something I wanted to ask you about, which it feels to me that there's this deeper thing going on around the country where, where communities that have more power, just seemed to kind of have an immature attitude that they don't ever have to look at or deal with their, their waste, or with the, the downside of their consumerism, you know, the landfills or whatever, and that somebody else can always, somebody else will always take care of that. Almost like, oh, my maid will deal with this. You know, and I'll, I'll, I don't have to be the one to actually do that, that dirty work. And I, I wonder if, if there's a way that you see yourself as being in charge of like, trying to make America grow up, to be like, you actually do have to clean up your own messes, no matter how much power you have.

PEGGY: Exactly. And, you know, in the environmental justice movement, we feel that we should be addressing solutions so that no community has to bear the brunt. However, we are willing to take our fair share, but not the lion's share. 

AMY: It kind of, it, it leads me to something I wanted to ask you about the way that we think about environmental issues. I feel like that a lot of people are walking around with the idea of social justice issues are in one box in their mind and environmental issues are in another box. What's wrong with that paradigm?

PEGGY: What's wrong with that paradigm is that systemic racism, again, cuts across all issues and all sectors, whether it's housing, education environment, all of those issues. And as we know, your zip code can almost predict your health outcomes and, you know, that's a startling thing to understand. Why is that possible? Well, generally because of segregation, you've got certain people in certain zip codes. For instance, we can talk about just the life expectancy between someone on 125th street and somebody on 94th street, which has a different zip code, the life expectancy can be at least 10 years difference.

AMY: Because of the exposure.

PEGGY: Because environmental exposure contributes to health disparities. It is not the whole picture. I, you know, I want to clarify that, but it is a contributor. It's a social determinant of health, and we also understand that health disparities also exist because of stress. Stress is a significant modulator of disease. So if you have a cancer and you're, you have additional stress, that could make the cancer more serious and the stress of racism is an everyday stress. 

AMY: Yeah. What kind of pushback have you gotten when you try to make people see and understand these kinds of connections who have not thought about that before, or are resistant to thinking about it? What, what kind of arguments do you hear back? And what do you say,

PEGGY: Well until the past month, there's been no real conversation about race. When I, you know, in the past, when I've talked to college students, say years ago, I would make the case about environmental racism and they would say, oh no, isn't it really about income? And I would say, no is not really about income. Because of segregation, a lot of high income black people live in the same community as low income black people. There really hasn't been much discussion about race people. You know, if we talk to green groups, for instance, you know, they're concerned about improving the air quality nationally. They're concerned that the national air quality index continues to show improvement. They're not concerned that the air quality of my block is bad. They're not concerned that the air quality across from a school in my neighborhood is bad. In many ways, we are the original community-based environmentalists. And just to give you an interesting example, we, at one point had a dry cleaner project where we were working on the issue of a perchloroethylene which is highly toxic. And when we started getting a little media about it, guess where we were getting calls from? The Upper East Side, affluent white communities, because guess what, they have more dry cleaners. And in New York, dry cleaners are located on the ground floor of apartment buildings. The perc was permeating the ceiling of the dry cleaner into the floor of the apartments above. So we actually had women testing for perc in their breast milk. So they were calling us about that issue. They couldn't call NRDC or the big green groups because they don't work at that level, at a local level like that. So I think letting people understand the studies that continue to be clarified year after year, that the first indicator of where a toxic waste site is, is a community of color and secondarily a low income community. 

AMY: And it's also climate change. I mean, it's so clear that real world effects of climate change right now are already affecting communities of color, low income communities, low income countries, more than, than wealthier and whiter places and people. And I wonder, you know, what you have learned from your work so far that could be translated into that movement to help make those connections in the climate discussion as well.

PEGGY: When we're thinking about climate policy, we really have to think about how we support people who have to migrate from their homes because of extreme weather. We see in New Orleans where the lowest income communities, where in the lowest lying areas of the city, and were totally wiped out in Katrina in a way that created total civil disruption. So you had hundreds and thousands of people who literally had to become a migrant, a climate migrant, moved to another state, and guess what did not have the right of return. Because if they tried to return their housing was not rebuilt. Those who lived in public housing, all the public housing was torn down. You know, to, to a lot of people, climate change is about, you know, carbon reduction and that's it. And I'm thinking well to reduce carbon, all of these other things have to happen. We have to transition people out of certain jobs. That's an equity issue. Certain people in certain geographies are going to be more impacted. That's an equity issue. So the concept that climate is simply, you know, our messaging that it's really about, we gotta reduce this carbon by this amount by 2050 and that's it. That is not it. It affects the whole continuum of our lives and our future generations.

AMY: So I'm imagining that there are some people hearing this who are inspired by what you’re saying, and I imagine people thinking, “OK, what can I do in my community?” From your perspective, what's the best possible next step for that person, after they hear this and hear you, who wants to do something? What would you hope that person might do, either in terms of personal reflection or taking part in something in their own community?

PEGGY: I think they need to be advocates when they can and where they can. They need to think about the diversity of perspective. If they're at a meeting about a particular issue, ensure that you've got people of color there who may have a different lived experience who can bring valuable expertise to the discussion that you're having. Diversity of experience and perspective is very, very important when we're developing solutions. That's one thing I would certainly say and begin to have these conversations. 

AMY: Are you, are you feeling hopeful?

PEGGY: I am feeling hopeful. I think to be an advocate, you have to be an optimist because you know that these things take years and take changing hearts and minds, and also take a political window of opportunity.

AMY: Well, thank you again, Peggy Shepard for, for your work and for your time, your thoughts today, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you.

NICK: This episode of Threshold Conversations was funded by the Park Foundation, Montana Public Radio, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. We’re also funded by contributions from our listeners. Join our community at thresholdpodcast.org/donate.

PROMO SWAP: The Wild read by Amy

AMY: The Threshold team includes Eva Kalea, Nick Mott, Caysi Simpson, Angela Swatek and Taliah Farnsworth, with help from Caroline Kurtz, Dan Carreno, Hana Carey, Kara Cromwell, Katie DeFusco and Matt Herlihy. Our music is by Travis Yost.