Climate justice organizers called for an end to environmental racism at a Climate Week NYC panel last week.

The hour-long workshop, titled “First and Worst Impacted, then Forgotten: Black Communities and the Climate Crisis,” was held in a Midtown office building and organized by two international grassroots climate organizations, Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism.

The panelists spoke about the impact of environmental racism, especially for Black, Latino and indigenous communities who are more likely to live near pollution and toxic sites. In particular, studies show that African American communities generally suffer the most when natural disasters strike.

A 2024 report from the Harvard Kennedy School revealed that Black Americans receive less Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief on average than white Americans, and that recovery in Black communities is slower.

Similarly, a July article in the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, showed that hazardous waste sites are disproportionately located in low-income and Black communities, leading to poor air, water and soil quality. 

“The same societal problems that led to oppression — which is greed, fear, terror — are the same problems that lead to the destruction [of the planet],” said Jennifer Holmes, an organizer of the event and a native of Houston, Texas. 

Holmes, who works for both Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism, said she witnessed environmental racism in September 2008 during the cleanup of Hurricane Ike, one of the costliest storms to strike Texas with property losses totaling upwards of $43 billion.

At the time, Holmes was the executive director of the Fifth Ward Community Center, one of the oldest African American community centers in Houston, previously named the Julia C. Hester House. 

“When Ike struck, the law enforcement was dispatched from the poor communities to the wealthier areas of town, which left us completely vulnerable to vandalism,” said Holmes. 

A group of people broke into the community center and stole every computer, along with food from the pantry, said Holmes, adding that she blamed the looting on the lack of police presence. “Reports like this did not happen across the city…” she said. “It’s part of institutionalized racism.”

Mike Markovits, a climate activist on the panel, spoke about the disparities in Stamford, Connecticut, his hometown. During an interview with The Midtown Gazette, he referenced a map that showed the communities most at risk of lead paint exposure, certain cancers, and hazardous waste. 

“Lo and behold, the predominant places where pollutants are produced are in areas that are disproportionately lived in by people of color,” said Markovits. “I was awestruck by how stark it was in my city.”

Tammy Tucker, a Sustaining All Life member who organized the event, spoke about “sacrifice zones” — a term environmentalists use to describe areas where marginalized communities are exposed to high levels of pollution. 

She referenced an article published in the Environment and Society journal,”Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America.” Researchers looked at 44 states in the U.S. and found that 40 of the sacrifice zones they discovered were in predominantly Black communities.

“When I read the research around the number of sacrifice zones… I started to cry,” Tucker said. “My heart literally ached.” 

Mike Ewall, a climate activist who attended the event, cited Chester, Pa, as a sacrifice zone. The Philadelphia suburb is a predominantly low-income Black community and home to the Reworld Delaware Valley, a waste management facility. Much of New York City’s trash ends up at this incinerator, which burns up to 3,500 tons of waste daily.

“That’s a big problem because they’re pretty bad polluters,” said Ewall about incinerators. He founded Energy Justice Network, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that helps communities threatened by pollution.

Tucker stressed that everyone, regardless of their background or income, deserves equal treatment. “A brain is a brain, a lung is a lung, and a heart is a heart,” she said. 

Tucker, who suffered a brain aneurysm during the panel, is recovering from surgery, said a Sustaining All Life representative in an email.