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  1. Majora Carter’s Visit Should Herald Start of Citywide Conversation Wednesday, September 16, 2009

    I’ve just come back from a day full of big, inspiring ideas; a day whose richness I can attribute directly to Majora Carter, environmental justice advocate and all-around rock star.

    That last comment reminds me that I shouldn’t disguise this as a blog post written from CreateHere’s often cryptic (I have only myself to blame for this) authorless Marketing Speak. It is my own impassioned view.

    Naïve at times, yes, but I’ve heard more than once that naïveté is a crucial component in change-making. And it is a quality that Carter at some point reveled in, as well, as she described in her lecture tonight. “I never knew who I wasn’t supposed to talk to,” she said regarding the community of experts she helped form at the launch of her sustainability initiatives in the South Bronx, the neighborhood she grew up in and lives in still. Obstacles to knowledge transfer between people invested in their communities should be readily breakable. It’s a lesson for all of Chattanooga, too.

    Carter’s time in Chattanooga started this morning with a tour through downtown, the Southside, Highland Park and Alton Park. Touching on past, present, and especially future, guides from River City Company, Neighborhood Impact, the St. Andrews Center, and the Enterprise Center lead Carter through the city’s victories, and shortcomings.

    Reverend Mike Feeley of the St. Andrews Center discussed the methodology for implementing a neighborhood garden in a Highland Park, which will soon expand. “We drove around the neighborhood and found houses where people were growing food, where they were cooking for their neighbors. We found out what they were eating, how they were cooking, and what languages they spoke.” With this knowledge in hand, the Center was able to launch a community garden that reflected the interests of the surrounding area, and as a result, the project has flourished.

    It was talk of similar successful projects across the city that lead our group to talk of Alton Park. Maria Noel of the Enterprise Center discussed the very dire environmental depreciation of the area, which for decades was red-lined by banks and investors, and as a result, has come to bear the brunt of ecological damage following major industrial decline.

    The area holds eight Superfund sites, several capped landfills,  and a dubiously named “Residue Hill,” a site so contaminated that the EPA has made it clear its contents—completely manmade—will never be explored. Residents have been evacuated twice in the past thirty years because of chemical contamination. Noel told us about a school, now demolished, where teachers were struck with fits of nausea and vomiting, directly attributed to waste from a nearby chemical factory. While it isn’t completely clear what made the teachers sick, theories abound, including one that states the plant produced materials included in Agent Orange.

    The residents in this neighborhood are separated by huge stretches of land, occupied by factories, both abandoned and functioning. Construction of any kind requires an EPA grant for cleanup, and even in spots not contaminated with hazardous materials, there are issues of access and transportation that contribute directly to an average income significantly lower than the rest of Chattanooga.

    It is staggering.

    There is hope, though, and Carter’s visit provided an ideal opportunity to start a citywide conversation that can find sustainable, community-owned solutions to the problems all Chattanoogans experience daily. A luncheon following the morning’s tour focused us on The Bethlehem Center, a beacon in the community, and on the Neighborhood Environmental College, which claims 300 graduates in the area. Literacy and marketable skills were at the forefront of the discussion with Carter, who has pioneered the Green Collar movement.

    In her lecture at UTC, Carter touched on what inspired her to work in environmental justice initially. “It started with my family, and with my neighborhood,” she said. “Movements start when conditions are no longer tolerable, when people decide they will fight for the freedom to do something they couldn’t do before.”

    In the South Bronx, Carter has trained a green collar workforce to work on projects that help locals reclaim public spaces. A waterfront development project and greenway are underway this year, as well as projects in Detroit, North Carolina, and New Orleans. “You have to unlock the potential of places,” she said.

    My deep hope, and I suspect it is also the hope of anyone familiar with the depth and thoughtfulness of Carter’s work, is that this is the start of a much larger conversation for our city. A culture of opportunity, one that doesn’t leave the fate of our neighborhoods up to chance, is a real possibility.

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