Trinity Colón grew up believing that everyone had asthma.
Growing up in heavy industry on the southeast side of Chicago, Colón had no reason to believe otherwise: her entire family and neighbors had the same respiratory problems. The rituals that went with it – like closing windows to ward off billowing clouds of petroleum coke – seemed ordinary.
She remembers being driven to the clinic once or twice a year by her mother if her bronchitis went away, to receive treatment that her family often couldn’t afford.
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Now Colón, 17, is concerned that the health problems she and her community are facing will get worse. In December, a recycling company called Reserve Management Group (RMG) closed a century-old scrap metal plant in a prosperous, white part of the city after numerous environmental violations, and now the company is about to open a new metal recycling plant in Chicago’s Southeast Side. , where many black and brown people live. In an effort to prevent the city from granting RMG its final permit, community activists have now announced a hunger strike.
The new recycling plant will house a metal shredder, which uses machines known to produce hazardous dust particles that can cause serious heart and lung problems.
When Southside Recycling opens, that fine dust “will be inhaled through the noses, throat and lungs of my students,” said Chuck Stark, a high school science teacher who took part in the hunger strike last week.
Chicago’s southeast side is the most industrial part of the city, home to businesses that dump more than a million pounds of toxins into the air every year. In August 2020, the city released an air quality report stating that the south and west sides are “congested” by “high concentrations of industry”. And yet organizers say local officials have characterized their campaign to stop RMG from operating in their neighborhood as making a mountain out of a molehill.
“If [a metal shredder] is not good enough for the North Side, “said Gina Ramirez, referring to the area where RMG previously operated General Iron,” then it is not good enough for the South Side. “
The southeastern end is a fenceline community – a term used to describe neighborhoods that are adjacent to polluting industries or amenities. In this case, the community lives next to multiple cement kilns, warehouses and toxic dumps. The area is home to two Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, which together cover 154 acres and are heavily contaminated with toxic metals. The area has also had major problems with petcoke (petroleum coke), manganese and lead.
RMG’s new recycling plant would pose additional health risks. The ZIP code 60617, which covers most of the southeast side, already had the highest number of asthma-related emergency calls in 2017 (for people under the age of 19). On this front, RMG’s track record isn’t exactly clean – residents are organizing against General Ironing for years over EPA violations and complaints about noise, toxic air and health problems.
And the health consequences aren’t just physical: Multiple studies have shown that even the visual effects of industrial life – drifting diesel trucks, plumes of smoke – can cause “higher prevalence of depression and anxiety,” said Dr. Susan Buchanan. professor of public health at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Residents say the city government allowing Southside Recycling to open is another example of Chicago prioritizing profit over people’s needs – and meeting the needs of white residents over black and Latino communities. In recent months, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the EPA have launched civil rights investigations into whether housing discrimination and environmental racism may have played a role in the move.
For the past two years, organizers on the southeast side have held town halls and led protests to raise awareness of the dangers of industrial pollution. They allege that Mayor Lori Lightfoot has encouraged RMG to move south to make way on the north side for Lincoln Yards, a controversial mega-project that is expected to add luxury businesses and luxury homes to the area.
“It appears the city acted as a janitor for General Iron,” said Ramirez, who has lived on the East Side her entire life.
A city spokesman said it had “been working with stakeholders – including groups representing the Southeastern side – to create new and tougher rules for major recycling facilities.” It aims to help communities hardest hit by pollution and would “continue to work to address residents’ concerns,” the spokesman said.
Ramirez’s family has deep roots in the city; her great-grandfather emigrated to Chicago in the 1930s for a job at US Steel, where her grandfather and father later worked. She has seen environmental racism perpetuated in her community for years.
“Other parts of the city are turning green and [getting] sustainable infrastructure – changes over time – and my neighborhood is stuck in the industrial revolution, ”said Ramirez, who works as Midwestern Outreach Manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Ramirez’s mother developed asthma after living near US Steel for years, and Ramirez still has to tell her immunocompromised son to roll open the window while she is driving.
“It smells awful in here and you don’t know [which] industry it is, because there are too many to count. There are cycle paths next to Superfund sites. There are constant asthma vans outside our schools. At the end of the day, it is a scary place to live. “
It is no exaggeration to say that the workers who came from Chicago’s southeast side built the city.
Until forty years ago, Chicago’s southeastern side was an industrial powerhouse. By the early 20th century, the area had become a major manufacturing hub, rival cities like Pittsburgh with steel-making jobs that drew immigrants to the region with the promise of stable work and good wages. The John Hancock Center and Sears Tower are made of steel from South Works, a former steel mill in the South Chicago neighborhood.
But the promise of work came at a price. “You couldn’t breathe, it used to be so polluted,” said Dominic A Pacyga, a Southeast Side historian. “Women hung up laundry and it would be covered in silicone dust.”
When production moved overseas in the 1980s, the Chicago steel industry basically disappeared overnight, Pacyga says – and the Southeastern side, which is now predominantly black and Latino, has struggled ever since without adequate investment from the city and the local business community. The neighborhood is characterized by high voltage power lines, bridges built for diesel trucks, an elevated six-lane highway and several brownfields to be remediated.
Today, activists believe that industry and urban leaders are taking advantage of the Southeast Side’s economic situation – using the promise of jobs to cover up the environmental and health impacts of living next to a major polluter.
In a statement to the Guardian An RMG spokesperson, Randall Samborn, said that “the neighborhood’s racial, ethnic and income demographics” had no impact on the location of Southside Recycling. He said the metal recycler would create about 100 jobs for “mostly minorities earning main pay,” calling the facility “state-of-the-art”.
But Olga Bautista, co-founder of the local environmental group Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke, has called RMG’s claims “greenwashing.” Nearby, George Washington’s high school has observed the highest cadmium levels in the state since construction began, and Colón says her peers are applying to high schools for selective enrollment further north to flee the area.
The nature of these companies makes it difficult to fully control emissions, even with regulations.
“In general, these industries … should not be located where people live,” said Dr. Buchanan. “It shouldn’t matter what kind of house it is, what color they are or what their income is.”
Crystal Guerra, who was inspired last year to create the Bridges / Puentes community group after planning local protests against police brutality, sees pollution on the Southeast side as a matter of racial justice not unlike movements like Black Lives Matter.
Instead of social services and incentives for green businesses, city resources go to institutions that harm its community, Guerra argues. “We want positive investments, not punitive investments.”
The hunger strike, now entering its eleventh day, may seem extreme – but the organizers were inspired by education activists who refused to eat solid food for 34 days in 2015 and successfully lobbied for the reopening of Dyett high school in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
The Southeast Side organizers have asked other community organizations to support them by conducting a one-day hunger strike, and have shared updates on TwitterA total of six people have committed to hunger strike until the city of RMG refuses its final permit – however long that may take.
But the physical consequences of a hunger strike are real. All participants were medically examined and taught how to monitor their vital signs before starting the liquid-only diet. Oscar Sanchez, co-founder of Southeast Youth Alliance and born in the Hegewisch neighborhood, said he was haunted by self-doubt for the first few days.
“Am I doing enough? Do I tweet enough? Are we sticking our faces there enough?” He said, on his fifth day on a hunger strike.
Sanchez said he has since been acclimatized, and the community support he has received has only underlined the importance of the hunger strike. “If we have to risk our lives,” Sanchez said, “we do it because it is for our current generation, for our generation to come, and for our ancestors.”