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Environmental Justice
Past, Present, & Future
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Casting your Ballot for Environmental Justice
This event brings together Social Justice and Civil Rights scholars and advocates to discuss the intersection of voting, civil disobedience, and environmental justice. As we come up on midterm elections in the U.S., this program highlights two things: the history and interconnectedness of voting rights and environmental justice in this country, and the ways in which movements have used other methods, such as protest, when the electoral processes have failed to promote equity and public wellbeing.
Event partners include the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, The Southern Environmental Law Center, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, The Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, and the Duke POLIS Center for Politics
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Kay Jowers
Kay Jowers is Director for Just Environments, a partnership between the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Her work focuses on analyzing state regulatory and policy approaches to addressing environmental issues and engages with environmental equity, ethics, and justice in particular. She co-directs the Environmental Justice Lab, a collaboration with the Duke Economics Department.
Moderator
Panelists
Jennifer Lawson
Jennifer Lawson is a Civil Rights and Voting Rights advocate and television producer. She has worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) where she has worked on self-empowerment programs for rural women. In 1989, Lawson was hired by PBS as their first chief programming executive, making her the highest ranking black woman to have served in public television.
Allison Riggs
Allison Riggs leads the voting rights program at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, an organization. In March of 2020, she also took over as Interim Executive Director of the organization, and in March of 2021, became the permanent co-Executive Director.
Her voting rights work over the last decade at SCSJ has been focused on fighting for fair redistricting plans, fighting against voter suppression, and advocating for electoral reforms that would expand access to voting.
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Kym Meyer
Kym Meyer is a Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, and Leader of SELC"s Government Accountability initiative. Kym litigates on a wide range of cases in both federal and state court. Kym is the lead attorney challenging President Trump's rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act. She successfully argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court for the North Carolina NAACP in a groundbreaking case that challenges whether a racially gerrymandered legislature can amend the NC constitution. Kym has been involved in many cases involving climate change, including reaching a ground-breaking settlement with the North Carolina DOT which resulted in unprecedented environmental protections, and a number of new statewide climate change policies.
Recalling Warren County
Discussing the Birth of a Movement
Discussing Where Protest Fills Gaps in Electoral Process
The 1982 Warren County protests saw people, independent of race, come together to combat systemic injustices and environmental racism. Those who joined the weeks of protest did not know a larger movement would launch from their fight for basic human rights. And yet, these now famous efforts are hailed as the launching of the Environmental Justice Movement.
Join us for a discussion of the protests, the birth of the EJ movement, and the future of the movement from the perspectives of those who participated.
Event partners include the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, The North Carolina Black Alliance, The Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, The Warren County Environmental Action Team, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke.
La'Meshia Whittington
Professor La’Meshia Whittington is the Principal and CEO of Whittington & Staley Consulting Group, LLC. Professor Whittington serves as the Deputy Director for Advance Carolina and the North Carolina Black Alliance Deputy Director of Programs. Professor Whittington is the co-convener of the NC Black & Brown Policy Network, former National Democracy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth, former Chairwoman of the FRENC Fund Administration, Founding member of Democracy Green, member of the Board of Directors for Cape Fear River Watch, the former N.C. spokesperson on fair courts for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and a community liaison for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Professor Whittington leads work on intersectional democracy and environmental justice. Appointed by Governor Roy Cooper and Sec Elizabeth Biser, Professor Whittington now serves on the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice & Equity Advisory Board.
Moderator
Panelists
Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is an African American Civil Rights Movement 64-year veteran leader and icon. He is an author, chemist, United Church of Christ ordained minister, and PBS TV Executive Producer of The Chavis Chronicles. He is currently President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He also chairs the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, Thurgood Marshall Center Trust, We Are Digital and the Energy Action Alliance. As a member of the Wilmington Ten he spent the majority of the 1970s incarcerated as a modern-day political prisoner for a crime for which was ultimately pardoned. At the request of his longtime friend Nelson Mandela, Dr. Chavis co-founded Diamonds Do Good. In 1982, he was the first person to coin the term “environmental racism” during civil rights protests of racial and environmental injustice in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1993, Dr. Chavis was the youngest person to be elected as Executive Director and CEO of the NAACP. He was featured in the movie Belly alongside Nas and DMX. He worked side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as Youth Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. Chavis has earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina, Duke University and Howard University.
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Dollie Burwell
Dollie B. Burwell was born, raised, and attended public schools in Vance County North Carolina. In l982 Dollie led her community in a protest against the state of North Carolina in what the Washington Post called the greatest civil rights movement since the l960's. Arrested and jailed five times and spent nights in jail when she blocked trucks carrying PCB laced soil that was to be put in a dump in her community by lying down in front of the trucks. This was the beginning of the “Environmental Justice Movement.” Stories of her life and work have been published in several books including, “Crazy for Democracy, Women in Grassroots Movements,” Temma Kaplin, “The Politics of Motherhood, Activist Voices from the Left to Right,” Alexis Jetter, Annelise Orleck and Diana Taylor, and “Women Reshaping Human Rights, How Extraordinary Activists Are Changing the World,” Marguerite Guzman Bouvard and many other documentaries, tv shows and newspapers including the Soledad O’Brien Show and the Washington Post. She served as Chair of the Joint Warren County/State PCB Landfill Working Group, a task force that worked to secure more than 25 million dollars from the state of North Carolina to detoxify the Warren County PCB Landfill which was successfully completed in 2004.
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Wayne Moseley
Raised from birth in Warren County from parents who were lifelong residents.
Attended Warren County Public Schools, graduating in 1967.
1973 Graduate Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College)
September 15, 1982, among the first of many Warren County Citizens to be arrested protesting the construction of a toxic dump site in the county.
Co-directed “Warren County - Birth of a Movement” a historical documentary produced by Michael Pierce to recognize and honor the sacrifices and contributions made by the citizens of Warren County
Retiring in 2019 after 47 years working in post-secondary education.
Currently living in Raleigh and continues to advocate for social justice.
Keynote: Environmental Justice: Past, Present, & Future
Rev. William Kearney
Owner of Bill Kearney & Company Consulting, LLC - sponsor, coordinator & facilitator of the Warren County Environmental Action Team and the Warren County African American History Collective. Reverend Kearney is a partner in several University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill community-engaged research partnerships and advises and consults with universities, organizations and partnerships across North Carolina and the United States.
Reverend Kearney serves as Associate Minister and health ministry coordinator at Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church and Vice President of the United Shiloh Missionary Baptist Association Church Union. He is employed as a Research Associate and Community Outreach Manager at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
Reverend Kearney has co-authored numerous research manuscripts and articles and has co-produced various video and audio documentaries.
Jenny Labalme
Jenny Labalme photographed the 1982 Warren County protests as part of a documentary photography class she took when she was a student at Duke University. Shortly after graduating from Duke, she received a grant to publish the photos in a small book called, A Road to Walk.
Labalme spent almost two decades working as a photojournalist and journalist for The North Carolina Independent (now INDY Week), the Mexico Journal (in Mexico City, Mexico), The Anniston Star (in Anniston, AL) and The Indianapolis Star.
She currently is the executive director of the Indianapolis Press Club Foundation, a non-profit organization that raises and manages funds to provide journalism awards, scholarships, and paid summer fellowships for deserving students at Indiana colleges and universities. Labalme has two adult children and lives with her husband in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Former Rep. Eva Clayton
The first African-American woman to represent North Carolina in Congress, Eva Clayton also became the state’s first Black Representative since 1901. From her post on the House Agriculture Committee, Clayton advanced the interests of her rural district in the northeastern part of North Carolina and called attention to the economic inequalities that affected African Americans nationally. She served in the House of Representatives from 1991-2003.
Join the conversation at Duke University on Sept. 15 for an important public event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Warren County protests in North Carolina. The nonviolent protests in 1982 surrounded the state’s disposal of soil laced with PCBs in the predominately Black community. The protests were considered among the earliest for environmental justice in the United States.
The Robert R. Wilson Distinguished Lecture will feature the Rev. Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., who is credited for coining the term “environmental racism,” which he declared from his prison cell after being arrested during the protests. Chavis will discuss the past, present and future of environmental justice with Catherine Coleman Flowers, activist, recent McArthur Genius Grant awardee, and member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
The two will discuss the present moment surrounding environmental justice as well as the future outlook of the movement with growing concerns around climate change and sustainable growth.
Event partners include the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and the John Hope Franklin Center.
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Cameron Oglesby
Cameron Oglesby is an environmental justice advocate, ecologist, artist, and multi-media storyteller who is passionate about the integration of community-driven, place-based perspectives in conservation, environmental policy solutions, and corporate decision-making.
She is a 2022 Uproot Project Environmental Justice Fellow, a 2022 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis, a 2021 McKinsey Achievement Award recipient, a 2021 Memorial Foundation Social Justice Fellow, and a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar alumna who has written for Grist, Southerly, Scalawag, Environmental Health News, The Wilderness Society, and the 9th Street Journal/INDY Week. She is also the creative lead and project coordinator for the Environmental Justice Oral History Project, a developing storytelling hub at Duke.
Cameron is currently a graduate student at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
Moderator
Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is an African American Civil Rights Movement 64-year veteran leader and icon. He is an author, chemist, United Church of Christ ordained minister, and PBS TV Executive Producer of The Chavis Chronicles. He is currently President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He also chairs the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, Thurgood Marshall Center Trust, We Are Digital and the Energy Action Alliance. As a member of the Wilmington Ten he spent the majority of the 1970s incarcerated as a modern-day political prisoner for a crime for which was ultimately pardoned. At the request of his longtime friend Nelson Mandela, Dr. Chavis co-founded Diamonds Do Good. In 1982, he was the first person to coin the term “environmental racism” during civil rights protests of racial and environmental injustice in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1993, Dr. Chavis was the youngest person to be elected as Executive Director and CEO of the NAACP. He was featured in the movie Belly alongside Nas and DMX. He worked side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as Youth Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. Chavis has earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina, Duke University and Howard University.
Panelists
Catherine Coleman Flowers
Catherine Coleman Flowers is an internationally recognized environmental activist, MacArthur “genius” grant recipient and author. She has dedicated her life’s work to advocating for environmental justice, primarily equal access to clean water and functional sanitation for communities across the United States.
Founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ), Flowers has spent her career promoting equal access to clean water, air, sanitation and soil to reduce health and economic disparities in marginalized, rural communities. Flowers sits on the Board of Directors for the Climate Reality Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as serving as a Practitioner in Residence position at Duke University. In 2021, her leadership and fervor in fighting for solutions to these issues led her to one of her most notable appointments yet — Vice Chair of the Biden Administration’s inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
As the author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, Flowers shares her inspiring story of advocacy, from childhood to environmental justice champion. In the book, she discusses sanitation and its correlation with systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that affects people across the United States. She and her work have been profiled by CBS’s 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, PBS Newshour and more.
Environmental Justice in the Latinx Community
September 29th, 2022 @ 5:30pm EST
Virtually via Zoom
During Hispanic Heritage Month we should be asking ourselves how climate affects current situations for many Hispanics in the country today. Join us for a discussion between community organizer Bryan Parras and journalist Stephanie Elizondo Griest about how environmental justice affects the Hispanic/Latinx community, and how you can take action on the issue.
This event is hosted by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.
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Bryan Parras
Bryan is an organizer with the Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign and a longtime environmental justice advocate based in Houston, TX.
Panelists
Ana Ramirez
Ana Ramirez (T’20) graduated from Duke with a B.A. in Environmental Sciences & Policy and Religious Studies. During her undergraduate career, she co-founded Duke Define America, an immigrant student advocacy group, and was co-president of Mi Gente, Duke’s Latinx Student Association. Ana’s academic passion lies at the intersection of environmental justice, spirituality, and human rights; she always found unique ways to engage all three, like participating in Duke Engage Kauai, Duke in Alaska and Bass Connections. She currently serves as a Spark Fellow in Duke’s Office of Undergraduate Education. She works with Sophomore Spark, a new initiative that provides a coordinated approach to supporting sophomore students. Originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador, Ana immigrated to the United States with her family in 2001 and has called Hollywood, Florida her hometown ever since.
Moderator
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her five books include the memoirs Around the Bloc; Mexican Enough; and All the Agents & Saints. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Believer, and Oxford American. Among her honors are a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton and a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting. Currently Associate Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed as a Moth storyteller.