[Above: Truax/East Madison Community Center teens with MEJO leaders in early 2020 near Starkweather Creek where we tested PFAS in sediments because the city, county and military refused to do so.]
“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when ‘every valley shall be exacted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.’” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967
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In Part I of this essay, I wrote about the forgotten lessons from the last years of MLK Jr.’s life, and in particular, his harsh critiques of capitalism and militarism, and their intimate connections with racism. According to Dr. Jared Ball, an MLK Jr. scholar, after King’s assassination, the powers-that-be purposely “rebranded” him, whitewashing these more radical messages, sanitizing him into a less threatening figure.
As I wrote in 2021, extreme materialism, militarism, and racism—the “giant triplets,” as Dr. King called them—are alive and well in Madison, and have been central drivers of the city’s politics and decisions since its beginnings in the mid-1800s. In my 24 years of environmental justice work in this city, they have been daunting—and usually successful—barriers to achieving environmental justice.
It’s not easy to describe the pervasive, systemic influences of the Triplet Gods. They shape politics quietly, stealthily, and mostly behind closed doors. Their power is insidious, difficult to document and pinpoint. They influence what is not said and not addressed much more so than what is.
They are “elephants in the room” in almost all city politics—ever present, yet verboten to discuss openly or explicitly. They shape which questions are asked and not asked by city leaders and elected officials, and which are answered or ignored.
What policy options are on the table? What options are unspeakable? How much funding is allotted to various options, if any? Who is invited to the table to discuss the problems and solutions? Who is not?
And let’s not forget the “Fourth Estate.” What does media report or not report?
The Giant Triplets’ insidious, invisible hands shape the answers to all of these questions in this privileged, educated city.
Most city government employees kowtow to the Triplet Gods because they internalize (knowingly or not) the status quo government culture and understand what is allowed and what is not—e.g., what will offend the Triplets. They implicitly understand that if they discuss them–god forbid go against them!–they will likely be politically silenced and quashed in one way or another. They might lose their jobs.
Sadly, many Madison public officials—citizens elected by other citizens to represent them—often carry implicit understandings (or learn first-hand after being elected) that at they are not likely to be re-elected if they go too hard against the Triplets.
Countless MEJO posts have described how this plays out in relation to toxic pollution and environmental justice in Madison. Just search the website.
Here’s Part I of yet another story…
Madison’s upside-down environmental justice approach to PFAS
In 2021, Common Council president Syed Abbas, with the best of intentions, created the “Presidents’ Work Group on Environmental Justice” and appointed six alders to serve on it, including the group’s chair, Alder Grant Foster. The group’s stated mission is to “provide policy recommendations to the council on how to mitigate the impacts of PFAS and F-35s on existing and future developments and to create a PFAS outreach strategy and a plan for the City’s role in addressing these environmental issues.”
Who was invited to outline the city’s PFAS problems and what might be done about them? To provide input on what kinds of “PFAS outreach strategies” might work best for the community? How community members could be meaningfully informed and engaged on PFAS?
Not community members living near PFAS-contaminated Truax Field and Starkweather Creek. Not anglers who eat PFAS-contaminated fish. Not community activists who’ve done years of PFAS research and advocacy.
No. Instead Madison Water Utility, Public Health Madison Dane County, and city staff were invited to frame the city’s PFAS issues for the group and the city’s PFAS community outreach plan.
What’s wrong with this picture? Upside-down environmental justice = environmental injustice
Inviting the same entities and officials who for years dismissed (or ignored) the community’s repeated requests to engage the people most affected by PFAS pollution to advise on how to engage them now is a slap in the face to the community. It is an upside down, anti-environmental justice approach.
The alders on this work group clearly mean well, but most (with some possible exceptions) seem blissfully naïve about how misguided this approach is, especially under the guise of addressing environmental justice. It reveals their cluelessness about huge power disparities between the most PFAS-affected communities and the government that is paid to serve them. It reflects lack of awareness about the long history of PFAS and other toxic pollution problems in Madison and Dane County. It shows ignorance of the critical roles community advocates, neighborhood groups and many tenacious individuals have played in tackling Madison’s toxic pollution problems (and polluters) from the bottom-up, fighting government agencies, powerful corporate and military polluters, every step of the way.
Most alders also seem to be operating under the erroneous (but unfortunately common) understanding that, as alders, they work for the city, not for their constituents–and that the role of this environmental justice work group is to assist the city.[1]
Just as problematically, alders seem not to understand that the city and county are not neutral actors or pure disinterested public servants in the PFAS poison mess here. Both share significant responsibilities for the PFAS pollution spewing from the airport, burn pits, military base, former Truax Landfill and Burke sewage plant into Starkweather Creek, the lakes, and the fish many low income BIPOC subsistence anglers eat.
Given this, city and county staff are far from unbiased in framing the PFAS issues. They also aren’t free to propose a full range of options, including more meaningful, bottom-up ways to inform and engage the community. As employees of the city and/or county, they implicitly understand (and at times are explicitly advised by city attorneys) that they should not encourage or explicitly propose anything that might point to city and county responsibilities and/or increase their liabilities.[2]
Government outreach is public relations
For what should be obvious reasons, city and county entities aren’t going to design communication materials and strategies meant to empower affected communities to question the city, county and/or state or give them meaningful and impactful voices in government decisionmaking on PFAS problems here.
In fact, they are likely to do the opposite. The obvious bias of these government entities is to design communications and engagement processes that shine the best light possible on their actions regarding PFAS pollution, downplay the extent of the problems and, if asked who is responsible to do something about it, to point to entities other than themselves.
Their own responsibilities in causing PFAS pollution aside, these government agencies have also served for decades as protectors of the worst PFAS corporate polluters in Madison– MGE, Oscar Mayer, and the Air/Army National Guard, and more. They have not monitored the PFAS these polluters gushed into our storm drains, creeks and lakes–though they have the authority to do so–nor asked them to fully follow local and state environmental laws and clean up their poisons. They have made innumerable important decisions with these polluters behind closed doors in order to protect them from public scrutiny and accountability. They are in bed with the polluters.
In sum, “public outreach” strategies designed by city and county agencies are likely to be little more than thinly-veiled public relations that protect their–and their corporate and military polluter bedfellows’– legal and financial interests.
What about environmental justice?
The city, county, and Water Utility have consistently ignored racial and class-based disparities in who is drinking more/less contaminated water, and who is most exposed to the toxic pollution oozing and draining from government, military and private polluters into lakes and fish. They have not used their abundant resources to investigate the potential or even the blatantly obvious race and class-based health risk disparities in toxics exposures here. They have not invited community members to be involved in decisionmaking about pollution—especially the most affected subsistence anglers, low income and people of color–further exacerbating knowledge and power disparities.
Now these disparities, the essence of environmental injustice, have been well embedded in Madison and Dane County for many decades.
I am not suggesting that these government entities shouldn’t be involved in the EJ work group process at all, and should not be invited to present to them. Alders could have asked city and county agencies to answer the community’s questions–after first hearing the community’s knowledge, experiences, and questions regarding PFAS. They could have asked responsible government agencies to explain their roles in creating (or ignoring) PFAS problems here, and what they will do about them–again, in response to community questions.
Instead, again, the EJ group invited the responsible governmental entities to frame the problems, the questions, and the solutions right from the start. This only further serves and protects the powers-that-be, not the people most affected by environmental pollution. It prioritizes and privileges the understandings and voices of privileged government staff over those of the community. In doing so, it boosts their power and weakens the community’s. It protects them. It protects the polluters.
This upside-down approach reveals the systemic ways MLK’s Giant Triplets thrive here. It is the opposite of environmental justice.
What about inviting the community into the process now? Too late…
Some readers will probably ask the questions: Why don’t we demand to be included in the process now? Why don’t we submit comments in the public comment part of the EJ work group meetings?
Taking the 2nd question first–three or five minute public comments, as all seasoned activists know, have some limited value, but are mostly frustrating experiences in trying to squeeze months or years worth of experiences and knowledge into a few minutes. They are usually ignored by the powers-that-be. Given this, participating in these token exercises is typically a dis-empowering waste of time. (Case in point: the one public comment that was submitted by an experienced community advocate at a previous meeting, which included very important and timely questions, has been totally ignored since it was submitted over a month ago. Why would this person participate again? Why would advocates who work with him, including MEJO, bother to submit questions?).
Why don’t we demand to be given more time to present to the work group? It seems like a reasonable approach, but only if we ignore the power dynamics and process to date. If we and other advocates and community members were to provide input now—after the powers-that-be have already framed issues to alders in ways that downplay health risk concerns and protect their interests, we have no choice but to be reactive and defensive– pointing out gaps and problems in the framing and solutions they’ve already outlined. (That’s what my earlier post on the Water Utility’s presentation to the work group was—an uninvited critique of what the utility presented.)
We know from years of first-hand experience that this setup creates a very challenging, uncomfortable, and usually futile political context for citizens to attempt having meaningful voices or even to be heard at all. We are viewed as negative naysayers and troublemakers. Alders–especially those who believe they work for the city, not for us—are not likely to seriously consider our comments and suggestions questioning the status quo.
In fact, we don’t even need to anticipate what this process would be like–we already know how receptive all but one of the alders in this group are to giving the community activists a meaningful voice in the process. At the very end of the 2nd EJ work group meeting, Alder Tag Evers suggested that maybe community advocates could be involved. “We do have an activist community around this topic,” he began, “and sometimes they’re challenging, as activists often can be. But they’re a source of independent information that holds us all to account. I’m wondering to what extent we should invite MEJO or Midwest Environmental Justice Organization involved in some way or another in some of this outreach and do it proactively from a standpoint of being able to listen and engage and acknowledge common concerns and goals in trying to get to a good place…Is this idea of any value to the group?”
The Zoom then shifted to the group’s chair, Alder Grant Foster, who did not respond in any way to Evers’ question. He didn’t even acknowledge that it was asked. The other alders? Complete silence. Foster looked uncomfortable and then asked about the next meeting.
It was insulting to watch this, but very familiar. Anyway, even if asked at this point, we are no longer willing to go there. Been there, done that.
MEJO is beat down and demoralized after decades of being dismissed, ignored, and sometimes ridiculed in trying to engage in city and county processes in which the power is heavily stacked against us, our voices are token at best, and our “asks” are ignored. We have given up even trying to engage in these processes. We know very well that the most powerful entities–the Chamber of Commerce, industries and corporations, MGE, the U.S. military–have huge power behind closed doors and are the ones really influencing what happens (or doesn’t happen) in addressing pollution here.
Meanwhile, the people who are most negatively affected by PFAS, even though we have involved and engaged them in our projects to the extent possible, are not being heard or engaged at all right now. Will they be meaningfully engaged by the city, PHMDC and Water Utility in the outreach plans they proposed to the work group? We’ll see. See Part II.
Part II (coming soon): How has this upside-down environmental justice approach played out so far on the Presidents’ EJ work Group.?
[Below: MEJO Board member Ida Jammeh talking with Darbo-Worthington residents about Starkweather Creek during our EPA funded Starkweather Creek project.]
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[1] Several alders asked explicitly in meetings how they could “help” the city in their efforts.
[2] We know from first-hand experience and internal documents that city attorneys have advised city staff not to answer–not to respond at all–to difficult questions from citizens that might point to city or county’s liabilities for toxic pollution.
