The Preferential Option for the Poor beyond Theology

Chapter 7: Liberation Science and the Option for the Poor: Protecting Victims of Environmental Injustice

120 C h a P T e r 7 liberation science and the Option for the Poor Protecting Victims of Environmental Injustice krisTin shraDer-FreCheT Te robbins, illinois, is one of the poorest towns in the united states. Part of south side Chicago, this african american community is full of small, old, clapboard houses, narrow front yards, and cracked sidewalks . its unemployment and poverty levels are far above the national averages, and its per capita income is about $7,000 a year. robbins’s seven thousand minority residents are too poor to support a single gas station, laundromat, or fast-food franchise in their community. its thirty-four churches outnumber its twenty-six tax-paying businesses. Partly because local property taxes generate only $250,000 each year, robbins is $6 million in debt. although its residents are socially, economically, and educationally powerless, the town leads the nation in one area. Besides being home to some of the highest-polluting chemical industries and manufacturers in the united states, it is host to dozens of incinerators that burn waste, trucked in from wealthier communities in the east. robbins, illinois , is like many other poor communities in the united states, and it is an example of a place where the option for the poor could be lived out but is not. instead, robbins is an example of how environmental injustice is yet one more scourge of poverty and how it may run rampant in poor liberation science and the Option for the Poor 121 communities. in this essay we will see how this is so and the effects it has on residents, then we will see another example of how people of good will, exercising the option for the poor, can stop environmental injustice before it happens. Because south side Chicago has some of the worst pollution in the united states, more than a decade ago the american Public health association recommended that no new incinerators be built there. But state environmental Protection agency (ePa) officials continue to ignore these recommendations, and five new incinerators are planned for this poor, minority community. while wealthy neighborhoods can pay attorneys and scientists to help them avoid such health threats, robbins’s residents cannot. in their community, heavily polluting facilities are sited near retirement homes, public housing, and even schools. The latest robbins incinerator was opened in 1998 by a Pennsylvania company to burn Pennsylvania garbage. it alone annually spews out 1000 pounds of lead and 4400 pounds of mercury, as well as cadmium, other heavy metals, dioxins, and furans into robbins’s air. The result? Many poor, minority children in south side Chicago are born with cancer. They are at least six times more likely to be hurt by this pollution than adults. Overall in the united states, children of color (aged five to fourteen) are four times more likely than white children to die from diseases like asthma. They are three times more likely to be hospitalized for it, despite their lesser access to health care. Their cancer rates also are disproportionately higher, partly because they are forced to breathe dirtier air and drink dirtier water.1 wealthy people can pay to keep incinerators out of their neighborhoods . They can pay for electrostatic air filters on their furnaces and for reverse-osmosis filters on their water systems. Their lower cancer rates show the effects of their economic protections. even average-income people can pay for pitchers with Brita water filters. living in the dirtiest areas and working at the dirtiest jobs, the poor have none of these protections . social structures thus oppress them twice. First, they render them poor and powerless through educational, economic, and tax policies. Second, preying on their poverty and powerlessness, oppressors expose them to disproportionate pollution—health-threatening wastes generated in producing products, mainly for the wealthy. Oppressors first steal the labor and income of the poor. Once they are powerless, oppressors next steal their very lives and health. 122 Kristin Shrader-Frechette Overview: liBeraTiOn sCienCe anD envirOnMenTal inJusTiCe how should believers respond to this dual oppression? liberation theology is one answer. it is the gospel response and reflection of those who have committed themselves to a prophetic option—expressing preference for, solidarity with, and compassion for the poor and the powerless. liberation theology “has its point of departure in an experience,” an experience “of dehumanizing poverty and of social and political oppression” suffered by the poor—like...