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Fresno Bee November 20, 2001  For more information, contact:
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Activist for clean air starts early By Erin Kennedy Travis Jackson came to environmental activism on his own. Until Saturday, the 10-year-old Bakersfield boy had no clue that his grandmother had circulated petitions or that his mother had marched and held signs at government meetings to help drive a potential polluter out of Alpaugh. "We never talked about it with him," grandma Sandra Meraz said apologetically as she told a group of young people, including Travis, how the tiny community stopped a planned toxic-waste incinerator in 1992. She was speaking at an all-day conference put on in Fresno by the Central California Environmental Justice Network. But Meraz didn't have to tell Travis about those protests or the reasons for them. Travis knew that he wrinkled his nose every time he passed the mega-dairies on the way to his grandmother's in Alpaugh. He coughed when tractors in that southwest Tulare County town kicked up dust. And his eyes burned and his throat ached one day when a plane sprayed fertilizers on nearby fields during the rain. But it was the wheezing little boy next door -- not his grandmother's and her example -- who finally spurred him to action, Travis said. Out of earshot, Meraz confided that Travis "cried and cried about how unfair it was." Curiosity about asthma sent Travis to the library to study air pollution. That led him to read further about water pollution. When he told his grandma what he'd been researching, she took him to one of her environmental network meetings to tell the adults what he had learned. "I found out that since we have so many dairies, when cows, um, use the restroom, all that, um, that stuff that contaminates the water goes down through the ground and hits the groundwater and messes up what we might drink," he said. Saturday, as adults attended workshops on pesticide drift, genetically engineered foods, factory farming and clues to deciphering water-quality reports, Travis joined 16 young people to talk about environmental racism and to create protest art and poetry. The kids learned that two-thirds of California's worst toxic dumps are in farmworker communities and that cows in Central Valley dairy farms produce more waste than do all the people in Los Angeles. "That's whacked," agreed Juan Chavez, 16, of Shafter. The kids already knew they lived in a polluted world. "We hear about pesticides in the water on the news," said Elena Reyes, 14, of Shafter. They just didn't realize how unequal it was. It doesn't have to be that way, said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction, which put on the youth workshops. Even the smallest protesters can help turn things around. "At the Alpaugh meeting to decide on the incinerator ... kids took signs and stood up in front of the government people. They told them to sit down, but the kids would not listen. The company went packing." Juan Chavez nodded at those words. He already helps clean up city parks, but said he's willing to hold up signs and march if he has to for clean air. In a speech to conference participants, Travis said, "I'm dedicating my time to see that the children of the world go to youth camps and not asthma camps like my friend Nicholas." He has a good start on his goal -- and help from 16 fired-up kids who now know how to organize. |