As the city of Milwaukee continues to grapple with addressing unsafe levels of lead across public schools, experts are calling it an environmental justice issue and are urging reform of the systemic causes driving the problem.
At least three Milwaukee schools have closed and about a handful of students were exposed to unsafe levels of lead. As city officials continue to investigate, they are forced to do so without federal support usually available in crises like these.
Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, said Milwaukee was already facing a lead poisoning crisis from other sources and finding hazardous levels in schools can easily overwhelm city departments working with limited resources.
"Milwaukee has the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning of any community in the state," Wilkin Gibart pointed out. "That problem is primarily driven by the fact that inner city Milwaukee has been historically subject to redlining, housing discrimination, and disinvestment."
Wilkin Gibart noted inner city kids may be going from homes with lead hazards to schools with lead hazards. Poor families and children are disproportionately affected.
Lead paint was banned by the federal government in 1978 but the majority of buildings in Milwaukee were built before the ban. Wisconsin prohibits municipalities like Milwaukee from requiring rental inspections before occupancy, leading to poorly maintained units and potentially overlooked lead presence.
Marty Kanarek, professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said research now shows no amount of lead is safe for children.
"It slows their growth and development, it affects their learning and behavior," Kanarek outlined. "It even can affect their hearing and speech, lowers their IQ, decreases their ability to sit still, to pay attention, and unfortunately, these effects can be lifelong."
Exposure potentially leads to juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior later in life, he adds. Kanarek noted families can take preventive measures like testing homes for lead, cleaning or covering windowsills, which often contain high levels of lead paint, and having your doctor regularly test children's blood levels.
He cautioned addressing the issue at large will require political and financial investment.
"It's a question of money and political will to spend the money to take the paint out of those houses and to take the paint out of all the schools," Kanarek explained. "That's the issue: Political will to get the money to do the job, to do preventive medicine, primary prevention, to get the lead out."
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By Angela Burke for Civil Eats.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
A towering, two-story arch, trimmed in barrel tiles with an all-caps marquee, makes it very clear where you are: "BIENVENIDOS A LITTLE VILLAGE." The structure rises high above bustling 26th Street in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, where independent restaurants, retails, and street vendors make it one of the highest-grossing commercial corridors in Chicago. This is the threshold of the Little Village neighborhood, home to many immigrants from Central America as well as the largest community of Mexican Americans in the Midwest.
At the base of the Little Village Arch, a group of protesters gathered earlier this month. Braced against the biting winter chill, they loudly decried the raids of immigrant communities ordered by the incoming Trump administration, which aimed to arrest and deport an estimated 2,000 immigrants across this sanctuary city, and more nationwide. In this climate, members of this tight-knit community must rely on each other now more than ever.
One of the strongest advocates for the neighborhood is the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). For decades, the nonprofit has fought to protect Little Village's land, air, and the life in between. Its multifaceted, community-led food justice program includes hot meal dropoffs, backyard garden startups, and a new farm, just a few blocks from the arch, where fresh produce can be picked up for free. LVEJO is now also a landmark for Little Village.
Last December, LVEJO received the national Food Sovereignty Prize, awarded for "grassroots, agroecological solutions from the people most harmed by the injustices of the global food system," according to a press release from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. "I felt so glad that the Food Sovereignty Prize committee really got what the team was trying to do here," says LVEJO's deputy director, Juliana Pino. "It's not just about simply growing food. It's really about committing to the land, defending and protecting each other in the land, and showing up for a community in ways that are really rooted."
LVEJO's role in the local food system was years in the making, and it began with environmental activism. Pino recalls how, in 1994, a group of parents forced their local elementary school to restrategize renovation plans after some children suddenly became ill, likely from toxins released during the renovation process. That foundational group of parents would soon expand to include other community leaders and go on to tackle environmental injustices neighborhood-wide as Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.
Over its 30 years, LVEJO has shuttered two local coal power plants as well as an asphalt roofing manufacturer, Celotex, which was deemed a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and took the better part of a decade to remediate; now it is a 21-acre neighborhood park.
Viviana "Vivi" Moreno grew up near the neighborhood, hearing these stories. "I knew people whose family members were affected by the coal power plants," she says. In college, while elbow-deep in a detailed case study about LVEJO in her environmental health class, she fully connected the dots, and began to see "the legacy that polluting industries have in communities of color and immigrant communities of color."
Moreno joined LVEJO as a volunteer more than a decade ago, and has evolved alongside the organization. Now LVEJO's senior food justice organizer, she helps facilitate a multigenerational network of neighbors who offer essential insight on traditional farming practices and foodways. Pino sees the work as a multitiered form of sustenance: "A number of those folks . . . had a really hard time sustaining employment due to racism and disrespect for their skills and undervaluing the knowledge that they have. And on top of that, they were looking for ways to sustain the ancestral practices that they had back from their origin countries, as well as feed their families." Such cultural knowledge risks being lost if it isn't transferred to the next generation.
LVEJO's multi-pronged food justice program is offered free of cost and is communicated primarily through word of mouth. Eight food justice staff members and 50 to 80 volunteers run the program, which includes the pandemic-born Farm Food Familias project, created in collaboration with Getting Grown Collective. The project has served more than 50,000 meals so far, using produce donated by and purchased from local urban farms.
"What we noticed with this mutual aid program is that it wasn't just COVID, it was an economic issue," says Moreno. "A lot of folks lost their jobs because of either contracting long COVID or losing family members, and were having a hard time getting back to an economic space where they could provide for their families. So, that's where some of the meals came in and they were really beautiful and healing." Funding for Farm Food Familias and LVEJO's other food initiatives, as well as for the organization as a whole, comes largely from private foundations that have supported LVEJO for years, as well as individual donors.
Food justice staff member Taryn Randle organizes Backyard Gardens Little Village, a program that supplies residents with education and materials-including plants and garden beds-to activate their own gardens. About 20 homes participate so far. Meanwhile, Moreno is helping to develop a blossoming 1.3-acre greenspace, La Villita Park, which opened in 2014 on a portion of the converted Celotex site.
Semillas de Justicia (Seeds of Justice), a half-acre community garden and farm, sits just outside the park. A series of painted vignettes adorn the garden's fence: people gardening together, whimsical hearts, the landmark arch, and messages affirming the neighborhood's existence: "Defiende La Villita!" and "Let us breathe!"
During the growing season, Semillas' garden beds are fully occupied by 70 households. The adjoining vegetable farm hosts a weekly free farmers' market, offering produce freshly harvested from the site. LVEJO collaborates with community members in deciding what to grow, to ensure that the land offers agency to the people of the neighborhood while fortifying their connection to culture and heritage.
This includes several varieties of tomatoes, corn, beans, pumpkin, medicinal herbs, and edible flowers such as marigolds, a key element of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations in the fall. Last year, between the community garden and the farm, LVEJO collectively harvested and distributed nearly 16,000 pounds of produce and about 1,000 fresh eggs during a time when the price of eggs and other groceries had spiked.
LVEJO's farm manager, Nateo Carreño, says it isn't uncommon for elders to stroll by during the growing season and offer a hand. Every interaction is a chance to pass down ancestral knowledge, and sometimes, a pat on the back. Carreño recalls, "A señora just [told] us, 'I walked to the park to tell you guys that your potatoes taste like they have butter in them.'"
Both of Carreño's grandfathers were farmers, and Carreño sees the soil as a wonderland of living, breathing organisms that can heal itself over time if given the proper support. Years after being reclaimed and cared for by LVEJO, the soil here not only produces bountiful harvests, but also teems with beneficial bacteria like Mycobacterium vaccae, which get absorbed through the skin and trigger serotonin, the "happy hormone," in the brain. "I love soil, that's my jam," says Carreño. "There's just something in you that wakes up when you start working with plants and start working with soil."
For now, in the stillness of the winter, the land sleeps. Meanwhile, its caretakers keep planning. When the new season begins, LVEJO will continue to sow its mighty vision for Little Village.
Angela Burke Stevens wrote this article for Civil Eats.
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As U.S. government website purges continue, one nonprofit is racing to track and save as much data as possible.
The Open Environmental Data Project is one of several organizations working to preserve public access to federal climate science and environmental justice data and tools. Their efforts are a direct response to the Trump administration's orders to scrub government websites of information and references related to DEI and climate change, among other topics.
Katie Hoeberling, director of policy initiatives for the project, said people rely on data to support critical research, advocacy and policy, and litigation work.
"Everyone who has paid taxes in the last two decades helped create this information," Hoeberling pointed out. "So the fact that it's been taken down, not only is it kind of erasing the history of our country, it feels like theft."
In Illinois, environmental data has spurred action through such initiatives as the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act and policies to address environmental justice issues and climate change effects.
When it comes to environmental justice, Hoeberling acknowledged there are always multiple burdens but said climate science datasets and tools help aggregate key information to address them and serve as a widely accepted body of evidence to help hold polluters accountable, aid in climate-change planning and guide agencies in prioritizing funding for disadvantaged communities.
"The data removals are just part of this larger effort to not just stop supporting communities that need support but to hide the impacts that we are inevitably going to feel and are already feeling," Hoeberling contended.
Cathy Richards, data inclusion specialist for the project, said she tries to focus on how challenging times have presented an opportunity to rebuild in better ways.
"One of the big things that's in this process I've been thinking a lot about is developing platforms and data portals in ways that make it a lot easier for people to access things, a lot more resilient generally," Richards explained.
Along with focusing on high-priority federal website information, the project is looking at "lower-risk" data from nongovernment websites to save and house on its website. People can also nominate a website to be archived.
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