THRESHOLD CONVERSATIONS

Robert Bullard

AMY: Welcome to Threshold Conversations, I’m Amy Martin, and my guest today is Dr. Robert Bullard.

ROBERT:  I see this as a moment in time to say, OK, we going to have to fight these converging threats simultaneously. And to see this clearly articulated, it's like, it's about time.

AMY: Robert Bullard is a transformational figure in the environmental justice movement. Trained as a sociologist, he was one of the first Americans to name and begin to quantify the concept of environmental racism. Dr. Bullard has devoted much of his life to documenting how racism puts Black people and other people of color at higher risk from pollution, natural disasters and other environmental threats, while also depriving many people of their basic rights to clean water, clean air and other environmental benefits. Currently Dr. Bullard is a distinguished professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, but his work has always extended far beyond the academy. He co-founded the National Black Environmental Justice Network, the HBCU Climate Change Consortium, and he has written and edited 18 books, including Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality, which is considered required reading in many college classrooms. His contributions to environmental thought have been recognized by major organizations such as Newsweek and the National Wildlife Federation. In 2013, Dr. Bullard became the first African-American to win the John Muir award from the Sierra Club. The next year, that organization created an award named after Dr. Bullard to celebrate achievements in environmental justice. And as we’ll hear, the fact that national conservation organizations like the Sierra Club have begun to see racial justice as intrinsic to their mission is in large part because of Robert Bullard’s life and work. I spoke with Dr. Bullard in early July 2020, in the middle of the summer surge of covid-19.

AMY: Dr. Bullard, thank you so much for joining me today on Threshold Conversations. 

ROBERT: My pleasure. 

AMY: Where where are you in the world today as we're speaking? 

ROBERT: I'm in Houston, Texas, ground zero and the hot spot for covid-19. We are experiencing a tremendous surge in the number of hospitalizations and deaths. And it's frightening. 

AMY: Yeah.

ROBERT: It's ironic that Houston has the world's largest medical center. The Texas Medical Center is the largest in the world. And we are being swamped right now with illnesses that are coming in and showing up and people that are needing help and health care. 

AMY: Well, I hope I hope you stay safe and I want to dive more into covid-19 and how it is intersecting with so many other issues in just a bit. But if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to your childhood for a minute. And my understanding is you grew up in a small town in southern Alabama. Is that right? 

ROBERT: Yeah, I grew up in a little town, Elba, Alabama, right on the southern part of the state. I'm just not that far from Florida. And grew up in a time when everything was segregated and Jim Crow put a racial footprint on education, housing, employment, voting. Even access to something as simple as having a grocery store or paved streets. And so, you know, I saw all of that growing up. 

AMY: Mm hmm. What was your experience with this thing that we've come to call the environment? As a kid, did you spend a lot of time outside? And what was your connection with the outdoors like? 

ROBERT: Well, you know, I, I as I said, I grew up in a small town, and it meant that we spent a lot of time outside. And it was not something that you thought about. You know, my father hunted and fished and I would go along with him. And so the nature was something that was part of our life. My mother had a garden and my grandmother had chickens and and we grew vegetables and everything. And so it was a matter of being very close to nature. But it was not something that we thought about or just, you know, join a group to be part of. Cause in that period of time, you know, Alabama was very segregated and many other environmental groups that operated in the, in the state operated as well as white clubs and integration and mixing was not something that was commonplace. So. So even though we cared about, you know, having clean water, well, we took the fish out of the rivers or the streams. We cared about having clean air and playing outside. You spend most your time as a kid. You outside. Was it was it inside? As a matter fact, we were kicked outside even when it was 90 degrees outside. You know, you go outside and play. You know, we did. We're thinking about playing games and on the couch with a you know what I bet or or if that was not available, then. So it was it was you were you were very close to nature and you were very close to things that that that meant something in your life. In terms of as a kid, you know, we collected Coke bottles or soda bottles and got a penny for them and took them back. That was recycling. We didn't know a thing about recycling. I mean, it was part of what you do. It was just you make a few dollars in doing those kinds of things. It was not until later that that the environment as an institution and a structure and a relationship in terms of a movement came into my life. But like being aware of the physical environment was always the case. 

AMY: Oh, yeah. You went on to graduate from Alabama A&M, where you studied government and then you served in the Marine Corps, after that you began to study sociology. And I'm just so curious about the connection between these different things. Government, Marine Corps, sociology. How did you get there?  

ROBERT: Well, you know, I went to Alabama A&M University, which is a historically Black college university. And during that period, time from 1964 to 1968 was very turbulent times in terms of civil rights. Graduated from college and my first job was in St. Louis, Missouri, teaching at a high school, and I taught from August until November. Then I got drafted in 1968 and spent two years in the Marine Corps. Ooh-rah! But I always knew I wanted to be a college professor. And my parents, they valued education. That was a great boost for me in understanding that education can take you to places that you never thought you could go. 

AMY: Were your parents teachers, or was one of them a teacher?

ROBERT: No. No, my, my, my. Both my parents finished high school, but they never went to college. My mother was a housewife and she took care of the kids. And my dad was a worker. He was a blue collar worker. And he, and he was a hard worker. He's always say, boy, if you always make sure you have two jobs and a hustle. You say you have one job. If you get fired from that job, what you got? That second job. What you get fired from that second job? That was the hustle. My dad worked two jobs and he was very entrepreneurial. And he basically took care of the family. And my parents made sure that that we took advantage of opportunities. As I said, I went to an all Black elementary school. All Black middle school, all Black high school, all Black undergraduate college. But we have very good teachers. And they inspired us and they challenged us to do our very best and to excel. We were never trying to be equal. We were trying to be better. We were trying to be the best that we could that we could be. And it, that that kind of hard work and that work ethic. It kind of like it was drilled and and is still with me right now. 

AMY: Yeah, well, and speaking of that work ethic, you went on and earned your PhD in sociology from Iowa State University while your wife was earning her law degree from Drake University, and then eventually you moved to Houston. And that’s where you both became involved in an issue that really kind of changed the course of your lives it seems like, and it started with a woman named Margaret Bean. Who was Margaret Bean and what did she do that ended up affecting your life? 

ROBERT: Well, Margaret Bean was one of the residents who lived in Northwood Manor, which is a subdivision in northeast Houston. And she was part of a group of residents that that approach my wife to file a lawsuit on their behalf. Fight this sanitary landfill permit that was being proposed for this predominantly Black middle class suburban community in Houston. Now, I just gave you all the characteristics of the neighborhood, and this would not be a likely place to put a landfill. I'm sorry, sanitary landfill. And we know there's nothing sanitary about a garbage dump. And so the idea was to challenge this landfill that was going in this Black middle class suburban neighborhood. Nothing out there except trees, housing, houses, single family homes, and Black people. And so my wife took the case and one day she came home and she said, Bob, I just, just sued the state of Texas. I worked for a state university. So technically, she sued my employer. And I said, You did what? She said yeah, I sued the state of Texas. And I need somebody to help me find out what the landfills are and put it on a map so I can go into court in 10 days. And I said, you need a sociologist. She said, that's what you are, right? I said, Yeah. But I said, that's a lot of work. That's it. So she said, you're it. You all I got. What could you say? You’re all I got. And so that's how I got drafted and I and I had 10 students in my research methods class at Texas Southern University where I am now. So I had to design a project with my students. And we collected the data. We had to find the data, archival data. We went to the library getting data from the city, the county, the state. It was a laborious process because it was nothing was computerized. And it was a fact that here Black people trying to get information from city to county in the state that they were reluctant to give it to you. And so we had to basically get the information anyway. And we did. And and that study that I did was in 1979. Houston Waste study, Solid Waste study in the Black community. What we found was astonishing. Amazing. Not something that I anticipated. But what we found is from the 30s and up until 1978, five out of five of the city of landfills is 100 percent located in Black neighborhoods. Six out of eight of the city owned incinerators ran Black neighborhoods and three out of four of the privately owned landfills in Houston located in Black neighborhoods. So from the thirties up until 1978, eighty two percent of all the garbage solid waste dumped in Houston was dumped in Black neighborhoods, even though blacks only made up twenty five percent of the population. For me, that was an aha moment. Wow. Aha. We got the data. We got the statistics. We got the numbers. How can you get eighty two percent of anything in one place unless somebody is deciding to put it there. Bean versus Southwest and Waste Management Corporation was the first lawsuit in the United States to challenge environmental racism using civil rights law. 

AMY: And although you weren’t able to win that case, my understanding is it really carved a path in terms of connecting these two things...civil rights and environmental issues. 

ROBERT: We lost in court, but we won the battle when it comes to challenging environmental racism and discrimination and to let people understand that this is not a random act. These are acts of of willful and on purpose to put things in Black neighborhoods and communities of color and say, well, that's the best place this should go. And that is that was racism then, in 1979, and it's racism now when communities of color, poor communities get overburdened with pollution and health threatening kinds of operations. And we could not in 1979 up until 1985 we could not get a single environmental group, a white group to work with us on this environmental issue, when we when we approached them about this case and gave them the statistics, we got back, “well yeah, that's...isn't that where the dumps are supposed to be?” And of course, we were shocked. Again, these were environmentalists who basically didn't work on race. They didn't work on justice. They basically worked on, quote, the environment. We even approached the national civil rights organizations, and they gave us the same kind of argument that, “we don't work on environment, we work on housing discrimination, we work on employment discrimination, we work on voting.” And so it took twenty five years for the environmental, white environmental community. And it took the same twenty five years for the black civil rights community to understand that breathing is civil rights and breathing is environmental justice. And so that's the trajectory and the years and the decades that it took to get people to understand how the environment is everything. It's where we live, work, play, worship, learn, as well as the physical and natural world. And that the environment should be healthy and sustainable for everybody, not just people who have money and power. That was the realization that I came to after the Bean case.

AMY: When you went to the, the white led environmental organizations to tell them about what was happening in Houston. What specifically did they say? It's hard, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how that could not have clicked into...we need to be involved in this. What was the line they were giving you? 

ROBERT: Well, again, we go back in history, and they just didn't see or understand the connection between racial justice and the siting of a landfill and incinerators and garbage dumps as something that was environmental, they saw that as a social issue. And that's what they told me. We don't work on social issues. And so a lot of the environmental one, environment groups saw the issues that Black people and people of color were raising as social issues. And our position was breathing is not social. Breathing is natural. Breathing is something that you have to do. You can't decide next Wednesday that I'm not going to breathe. Fighting for clean water and making sure that that water is clean and not contaminated with lead, or making sure that lead paint and houses are not, you know, poisoning our children. These are not social issues. But they but the groups themselves saw this as social because the environmental movement during that period of time was very segregated. Their boards were white, their staffs were white, their agendas were white. And again, the white environmentalists basically reflected the larger society. The larger society did not see dumping poison on Black people as a major issue, since most Americans were not getting poison dumped on them, and so they never saw it. Out of sight. Out of mind. You're not, you're not members of my organization. You don't write checks to my organizations. And therefore, what you're working on is not part of what we see as our priority. Now, some of that exists today in 2020. And so we have not unpeeled all of that from the history of the conservation and environmental movement in this country, in the United States, because a lot of the birth of a lot of the conservation and environmentalism came out of racism in terms of kicking native indigenous people off the land, taking the land for the sake of what we are preserving it and all this. And the way that they operated in terms of who could be members and in terms of their priorities, in terms of their work. So, so, again, we're talking about a society that was very separate and apart, was segregated. Our society was a racist. And so. America was segregated and so is pollution. And when I would explain to that to a lot of the groups, I didn't have that saying name because I didn't have all the data, I had the data on Houston and I and we've approached the groups as saying this could be a test. A major test case. We could use, you know, major environmental groups. We could use major lawyers to work on this stuff with us. We could use health professionals. And they said no. And again, it was too soon to raise this with white groups, but it was not too soon for Black folks to understand. No. This is what's been happening to us all along. We always get the free raise run through our neighborhood. We always get the landfills and the incinerator. We always get, you know, our neighborhoods built in the floodplains. Over the years, I've documented a lot of stuff and we've done a documented in Dumping in Dixie, documented in none of the other 18 books that I’ve written showing the connection between housing segregation, housing discrimination, land use, planning issues of transportation. All these things are connected. But I can you know, for the first I'd say the first 10 years I was working on this stuff. I could count the number of people on one hand and have you know, fingers left over that were doing this in a way that was working toward eradicating environmental racism. 

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

BREAK

AURICLE PROMO: Membership drive, Torrey Davis

AURICLE PROMO: Travis Yost promo, feat. Travis

AMY: Welcome back to Threshold Conversations, I’m Amy Martin, and this is the voice of Dr. Robert Bullard, from a 1993 series called “Earthkeeping: Toxic Racism,” produced by WGBH in Boston.

CLIP from Earthkeeping: Toxic Racism (WGBH): 

DR. ROBERT BULLARD: The whole environmental justice movement as a movement really took off in Warren County because this was a case study where people basically drew a line in the dirt and said no more.

IRA FLATOW: For nearly four years, the residents of Warren County have been protesting the state of North Carolina's plan to transport PCB-contaminated soil to a landfill in their community.

AMY: Fans of Science Friday might recognize the voice of Ira Flatow as the narrator. He and Dr. Bullard were recounting the events of the late 1970s and early ‘80s in Warren County, North Carolina. Warren County was one of the poorest counties in the state at that time, an agricultural area with a predominately African American population. When a landfill for soil that had been contaminated with harmful chemicals was sited in the county, the residents rose up in protest, and the term “environmental racism” began to enter the national discourse.

ROBERT: ...that was the word environment. This is environmental racism, you’re dumping all this poison on Black people, it’s environmental racism. That was the term that almost like a shot that was sent around the world. And and and what we have to do is to convey, even today, convince people that environmental racism is real, just like people don't believe climate change is real. That is happening. There are people that still believe, well, the reason why they put the landfill over there, every reason why they run a pipeline through this reservation or this neighborhood because the land is cheap. They are excuses and they are always trying to rationalize other reasons, trying to say, well, oh, you know, it is just poverty, it’s just people don't vote, no. Race is the most potent factor that determines who gets dumped on and where facilities are sited. And which communities get things that make them healthy versus things that make them unhealthy. And so the idea that this is not a justice issue is pretty unbelievable. If you look at the facts.

AMY: But in the 1980s, with the Warren County conflict, that idea started to take hold. And then it seems like the organizing around that was part of what led to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991, correct?

ROBERT: Let me say, before the Summit, people were somewhat skeptical of whether or not people of color could number one pull off a summit. And number two, whether or not environment was something of interest to people of color, see because there's this whole myth. Well, people of color are not concerned about the environment, black people are not environmentalists. And, well, of course, we are not members of these white organizations. Of course, we didn't write checks to these white groups. And, of course, in terms of of our agendas, our agendas were more dealing with social justice and dealing with racial justice, dealing with economic justice agendas that were foreign to the environmental organizations and the conservation organizations that were primarily white. And we had white sociologists that call themselves environmental sociologists that were doing surveys and a lot of their surveys asked questions that somehow people of color who worked on these justice issues and these civil rights issues defined this out of being, quote, an environmentalist. And so you add if you ask a question, have you contributed to an environmental group or are you a member of this environmental group? And if you say no, then if you say no to one out of two or two out of two, then you're not environmentalist. I mean, it's like, whoa. Hell, no, I'm not a member of these groups, though, that, you know, they're not dealing with issues that I'm really concerned about. And and they have a history of racism. So why would I join something that's racist? And so so a lot of our surveys early on contributed to the myth that people of color and poor people are not concerned about the environment. If you work that another way, you ask the question, are you aware of an environmental issue near you? If you ask that question to white people and you ask that question to Black people, they'll say, yes, I know what a down landfill is. I know what incentive radio is. I know where the petrochemical plant is, I know where the refinery is. And you start naming all those things. Are you concerned about water quality and the concern about, you know, the river? Do you fish? Do you catch the fish? Are you an angler? They say, no, I'm not an angler. Do you catch and release? No, I don't catch and release. I catch it clean and eat. So the idea of how we define a whole population out of environmentalism and how we define environmentalism and how we define the environment, the environmental justice movement, redefine what the environment is, the environment is everything. As I said, whet, so when we connect the neighborhoods and the jobs in and all those other things together that were left out by the conservation environmental groups. You can see how our movement really started to attract the most. I guess the groups that have been hit the hardest by pollution and environmental degradation and and being left out. 

AMY: And tell me about the People of Color Environmental Groups Directory which you created because that seems like one of the ways you pushed back against that.

ROBERT: When we developed in 1992, the Environmental Groups Directory. There were some folks who said to us, you can't find all Black and brown, native or Asian, Pacific Islander environmental groups in this country. And as I challenge them, I said I can, because I know some folks who are working on this. They may not have environment in their name, but they work on issues around lead poisoning, they work on issues around landfills, work and issues around transportation issues. You have all of these groups all over the country. We found groups in 48 states. And it's not by accident that 75 percent of the people of color and indigenous organizations that we found were led by women. Women of color. And and that was curious to me because and I asked I said, why is it that 75 percent of our people of color and indigenous organizations are led by women? And and I got back is that women of color are concerned about family, home and community, and it's intergenerational. These little old grandmother in tennis shoes, take no prisoner, tough as nails Marine Corps type, they are adamant about protecting their grandchildren and these little old retired school teachers. They are adamant about children and those populations that are most vulnerable to pollution that has transferred into our movement for racial justice, who are out there fighting, who are out there leading. Whereas if you look at the traditional mainstream environmental and conservation groups, they are led by white men. And so so so it's just the opposite of environmental justice. Environmental justice also is racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, you know, eliminating that racism and that sexism. Now, we have not done that in our environmental justice movement. We still have it, but we have come a long ways, and I think our environmental justice framing, and our environmental justice lens that that we use racial justice, gender justice, economic justice can be very useful for the mainstream and the green groups and all those other groups that are that are working on these issues and and talk about inclusion. And we say inclusion and racial justice starts at home. You can have a great racial justice statement, green group. But if but if you are not practicing that at home, the statement is just the statement. It's just a baby step. It starts at home. And that's what we're saying. 

AMY: Mm hmm. And can we talk about some of the impacts of living in close proximity to environmental hazards. I mean, one of the definitions that I read that you had written about what environmental justice is is, “some communities getting more than their fair share of the bad stuff.” So what happens if you are living next to some of the bad stuff? What are some of the ways that environmental justice actually impacts people's lives? 

ROBERT: Well, if you look at the fact that, in America, all of our communities are not created equal. There some that are more equal than others. And if you happen to live in a community that's physically located on the wrong side of the tracks, the river, the canal or the levee, or you live in an area that has been unofficially zoned for pollution, then you receive less protection. You're being, you receive, you’re over-polluted. And what happens is, is the fact that these results show up in health outcomes. And so you talk about communities that have historically been dumped on, various kinds of environmental degradation. You can see that elevated asthma rates, and I'm talking before covid, African American adults are three to four times more likely to be hospitalized or die from asthma. African American children are 10 times more likely to die from asthma than white children. And so we start comparing who lives where. For example, in 2007, if you look at the clustering of toxic waste facilities, it's almost seven out of every 10 person who lives within a two mile radius of the nation's most dangerous hazardous waste facilities are people of color. People of color make up only about 40 percent of the U.S. population, so we’re over-polluted. And it's not a, it's not a poverty thing, it can't be reduced to just, oh, low income families and in low, low property values. Middle income African-Americans who make fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year are more likely to live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than whites who make ten thousand dollars. Yes. Why is that the case? It's easier for a low-income white family to leave a polluted neighborhood and go to a neighborhood that's not polluted than it is for a middle income Black person to lead that polluted neighborhood because of housing discrimination, because of residential segregation. And so you get this this piling on and it ends up in high asthma rates. It ends up in high diabetes rates. It ends up in high in terms of strokes and heart disease. You end up having elevated health disparities in those neighborhoods that you have a saturation of pollution.  We call those environmental sacrifice zones. And what we say is that the way the system is designed, it's designed to poison, pollute and kill people of color. Whether intended or unintended, the results end up having differential impacts on children and differential impacts on women, particularly women of childbearing age. That's why it is so cruel to not address environmental racism when we see it and and when we can do something about it and not just kind of poo through it or or just, you know, kind of like say, oh, that's not real. That you're just making that up. The environment affects everybody in the same way. That's what we got in 1979. And now some people are saying, well, climate change is affecting everybody the same way. No, it's not. And what we say is that climate change and climate policy. It's about more than parts per million and more than greenhouse gases. It's about justice, climate justice, it's about racial justice, it’s about economic justice, it’s about gender justice. All these things are converging into one movement for racial justice and dismantling systemic racism and this whole ideology of white supremacy. Those are the kinds of things that we are redefining, how our environmentalism is practice and how it’s being presented. And it's not being presented as it was in 1979. That's not our issue. We don't work on social issues. And again, we're saying, you know, we know there's no white air. There's no Hispanic air. There's no there's no native indigenous peoples’ air. There's air. And so when we talk about clean air, when we make the air clean for our most vulnerable population, we provide better quality of air for everybody. When we place our most vulnerable communities and population at risk. We place everybody at risk. Now, we know that for a fact.

AMY: And I feel like this moment this year is giving us so many examples of that. Everything from, you know, COVID-19, which is dramatically affecting people of color and dramatically disproportionate numbers. And then, there seems to be maybe that we're at some kind of tipping point where where the idea that environmental justice is some kind of subcategory of the environmental movement or as a whole is is is kind of, it seems to me, fading away in that that we're getting it, that it's one thing. And yet, I just have to read you a paragraph that I found on the Department of Energy's Office of Legacy Management website. It is referring to the argument about waste siting decisions. So it says, quote, “Critics to studies have presented arguments supporting different conclusions for waste siting decisions. Some argue that the cost of land and favorable business climates are greater predictors of waste siting decisions”—meaning than race— “others have argued that minority and low income residents have moved into neighborhoods hosting a waste facility due to the cheap cost of land. Regardless to the reason, a clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little, if any, power to remedy their dilemma. Correct or incorrect, this is the position from which many environmental justice activists make their environmental justice decisions.” So this is on the government website. And I just, I'm sorry to provoke you, but I also want to give you a chance to respond to that. What... what is your response to that? 

ROBERT: My response to that is that is just total bullshit. That that needs to come down because we have studies after studies after studies showing that race is still the most potent factor. And that’s not a matter of opinion that we have empirical evidence to show you exactly where these facilities are located. And as a matter of fact, there's study after study after study. That that particular paragraph probably predates many of these studies, and it's almost like saying, oh, we're in 1979. The facts are overwhelming. And when you start tracking the kinds of data, imagery facilities again and looking at who lives where, the data is overwhelming in terms of race is the best predictor. And just to pick apart that point. Yes, some people move around facilities in terms of people of color. But you have to dissect that. And if you look at the systemic racism involved in housing patterns and location of facilities. In many cases, houses that may be built and are affordable are located in those areas and they're pretty much designed for and built for people of color. So what's driving it is racism. So let's be very clear. And as I gave you the data before, in terms of Black people who make fifty to sixty thousand dollars versus white people will make ten thousand dollars. A driver behind that disparity is not poverty. The driver is racism. A Black person making sixty thousand dollars should be able to move into a neighborhood of quality. We have study after study after study that shows that race is embedded in all of those decision making. So that paragraph is is like the paragraph left in the Constitution of these southern states that still has language about the separation of the races and Jim Crow. So that's one of those residuals of the past. And it's there, but it has no merit. There's nothing to back it up. 

AMY: Yeah, I, I probably shouldn't have been, but I was pretty, pretty shocked, honestly, to come across that. Just say, I mean it just to reduce the whole question of environmental justice to “some people feel this way,” as opposed to that there are facts that we're dealing with. It's pretty disturbing. 

ROBERT: Yeah. Yeah, but not not but not unusual. The idea that environmental justice is a feeling that's this like the folks who don't believe in climate change, that climate change is a belief. It's not a belief, it’s science and it's real. What's happening is real. It's like saying, I don't believe in gravity. Not believing in gravity has nothing to do with the law of gravity. You know, if you climb a 40 story building and jump out and say, I don't believe in gravity. Your belief has nothing to do with gravity kicking in and you hitting the ground splat. So belief has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And again, we could care less if somebody believed that that environmental racism was real. We know. We know is happening. We know climate change is happening right now. And and communities are feeling the pain right now. And we know which communities are feeling the pain. It’s not theory. We don't spend a lot of time arguing with those people because if we did, we could waste a lot of time and energy trying to debate that. And we don't, there's some things we don't debate. We don't debate whether or not slavery was evil. We don't debate whether or not the Holocaust is real. We don't debate those things. Those are things that we know are real and not to spend any time and energy trying to go back and forth and give equal time. No. 

AMY: Yeah. By putting them in the category of something that's debatable, you're elevating them.

ROBERT: Yes, yes you are. 

AMY: Well, I know we need to wrap up here, but I just have to ask you what gives you hope, what gives you energy and motivation to keep working here?

ROBERT: Well, you know, what gives me hope is, is the fact that the issues around justice now have merged and and we have intergenerational mobilization around justice. And for me to see the whole issue around the environment, race and justice come from nothing, no acknowledgment except for two people who are fighting on the ground, to have an it recognized globally. And to see young people, even young people who are not even old enough to vote out there protesting and voicing their opinions, vehemently opposed to injustice, racial injustice and, and social injustice and the racism, systemic racism. I see this as a moment in time to say, OK, we are going to have to fight these converging threats simultaneously. And even if your area and your issue and your expertise was not criminal justice reform, “I can't breathe” resonates across environment. It resonates across the issue because if we can't breathe, then then that's a threat to our humanity, whether it’s climate change, or whether these other threats. And so to see this clearly articulated, it's like it's about time and that you see all these folks out there saying. Now is the time. That to me sends a message of urgency, the urgency of now, right now. And not 20 years from now, not 40 years from now, but right now, that we need to make some transformative changes in our society to eradicate and dismantle this system that has created so much inequality and so many disparities on so many levels. And I think that the fact  that so many people recognize this today. It is not you know, it is not now being defined as a fringe. We're talking majority. We're talking a majority of the population now saying, you know, the country is out of control. So how we get control back is to focus on these issues and make racial justice a priority in all of the things that we do, because racism was stamped in America's DNA from the very beginning. And so in order for us to address it, we have to acknowledge it, and we have to work toward dismantling that. I think we're in a wave where we've got to get some action. We've got to demand some action. Not baby steps, but giant steps to get this change. I am as I said, I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic. But I know we must marry the resources, the findings, the data and follow the science. We also have to marry that with action and and and an action that is happening not just in one isolated community, but all across this country. And I see that happening all across the country and not just in the U.S., but also globally. When you go to these international meetings or global meetings, environmental justice is something that people are talking about no matter where they are. They're talking about environment, justice, they are talking about climate justice. No matter where. So. So I think this is contagious in a good way in terms of wanting to do right. And as Dr. King said, the time is right to always do the right thing. This is the right time to do the right thing. And I will say that and I believe that from the bottom and the depths of my heart, I believe it. 

AMY: Well, it's been a real pleasure and an honor to talk with you today. Thank you for taking the time. 

ROBERT: My pleasure.

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 threshold podcast dot org slash donate.

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