Martin Luther King Jr. on balcony of Lorraine Motel in Memphis TN just before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 (AP photo).
Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. To commemorate his birthday in January, we posted an article, F-35 Fighter Jets in Madison: What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Say? Our post linked to Dr. King’s powerful 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech. “A Nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” Dr. King said in the speech, “is approaching spiritual death.”
If Dr. King were alive today, he would undoubtedly oppose the U.S. military’s F-35 program, which is funded by billions of taxpayers dollars that could be used instead for education, social services, public health, homeless, crumbling infrastructures, and innumerable other societal needs.
The purportedly progressive elected officials who strongly support the “beddown” of F-35 supersonic jets in Madison—many of whom are likely attending events commemorating Dr. King’s death today—should take some time today to read Dr. King’s Beyond Vietnam speech.
As our first article and subsequent posts (see here and here) highlighted, the noise and other pollution from the F-35s, like the F-16s currently at the base, will have disproportionate and negative impacts on many low income people and people of color living very near the base—especially at the Truax apartments to the southeast, and the trailer park to the west.[1],[2]
Toxic pollution from the base also has negative impacts on Starkweather Creek, which receives nearly all of the stormwater discharges from the base before flowing through the low income Truax and Darbo Worthington neighborhoods. Subsistence anglers eat fish from this creek. In sum, the F-35s will further exacerbate environmental injustices—exposing low income people to more toxic pollution than more privileged people who live further from the base.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in February, and his tragic death on April 4, 1968, please submit comments to the Air National Guard expressing your questions and concerns about the F-35 proposal and highlighting effects on low income people living near the base.
Send your comments to Ms. Christel Johnson, National Guard Bureau, NGB/ A4AM, Shepperd Hall, 3501 Fetchet Ave., Joint Base Andrews, MD 20762–5157. You can also email Ms Johnson at christel.d.johnson.civ@mail.mil or submit comments on the Air National Guard EIS site here: http://angf35eis.com/Comments.aspx
If you are reluctant to speak out against the proposal to base F-35s in Madison–in the face of strong support from many city, state, and federal officials on both sides of the political aisle, as well as the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce–remember Dr. Kings words: “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war” (yes, we are in a time of war–perpetual wars all over the world). King went on, “Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world…the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility of our limited vision, but we must speak.”
[1] There is a growing body of studies, reports, and articles about health effects of noise and air pollution from airports and military jets. Here are a few of them:
–WHO, Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise, 2011
-Bistrup, ML, Health Effects of Noise on Children, National Institute of Public Health Denmark, 2001
-Babisch W. Cardiovascular effects of noise. Noise Health 2011;13:201-4
-Babisch, W. Babisch, W. (2006a). Transportation noise and cardiovascular risk: Updated review and synthesis of epidemiological studies indicate that the evidence has increased. Noise & Health, 8(30), 1-29.
-Babisch, W. (2006b). Transportation noise and cardiovascular risk: Review and synthesis of epidemiological studies, dose-effect curve and risk estimation. Dessau, Germany: Umweltbundesamt/Federal Environmental Agency.
-Babisch, W. (2005). Noise and health. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113(1), A14-A15.
–WHO, Effects of Air Pollution on Children’s Health and Development, 2005
-Clark C, Martin R, Van Kempen E, “Exposure-effect relations between aircraft and road traffic noise exposure at school and reading comprehension,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 2005
-Babisch, W. (2003). Stress hormones in the research on cardiovascular effects of noise. Noise & Health, 5(18), 1-11.
-Babisch, W., Ising, H., & Gallacher J.E. (2003). Health status as a potential effect modifier of the relation between noise annoyance and incidence of ischaemic heart disease. Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 60(10), 739- 745.
– German Environmental Agency: Aircraft noise causes illness.
–Controlling Airport-Related Air Pollution, Center for Clean Air Policy, 2003
-Babisch, W., Froome, H., Beyer, A., & Isling, H. (2001). Increased catecholine levels in urine subjects exposed to road traffic noise: The role of stress hormones in noise research. Environment International, 126(7-8), 475-481.
-Evans GW, Lercher P, Meis M, Ising H, Kofler W, “Community noise exposure and stress in children”, J, Acoust. Soc. Am. March 2001
–Santa Monica Airport Health Impact Assessment, UCLA Medical Center, 2010
-Airport noise and cardiovascular disease.
–Time Magazine, Airport noise and risk of major disease
[2] Fortunately, several local journalists have written about the F-35 issue in recent weeks—see here, here, here, and here. The most recent article, Erik Lorenzsonn’s March 28 Capital Times cover story, The Plane Truth, was a well-written overview of some of the history and current debates surrounding the proposal to locate supersonic F-35s at Madison’s Truax Air National Guard base. He talked with and cited a diverse range of sources, and took time to dig into the long history of this issue—rare in journalism these days, and commendable.
We are grateful to all the local reporters who wrote about the F-35 issue in recent weeks. If they hadn’t done so, few citizens would even know about the proposal to locate the fighter jets here. That said, the way a few of the recent news stories were structured and framed, how various sources were used to tell them, and what wasn’t said, unfortunately served—purposefully or not–to marginalize significant environmental injustices involved with placing the F-35s at Madison’s Truax base. One recent story, for instance, began by quoting a woman who said she is used to the noise from the jets already at the base. Later in the article, a few residents who were bothered by the noise were quoted (including a child who lives at Truax and said he is awakened at night by the jets–a significant health issue). I (Maria Powell) was also cited, noting that low income people have to get used to a lot of unpleasant and unhealthy things that more privileged people do not have to tolerate because they have more choices. But the article’s lead set the tone and theme for the story—creating the impression that the noise is not a significant environmental justice issue because people get used to it. (A friend of mine responded to this story’s framing this way—“Women who are abused get used to that too…does that make it not harmful? Does it make it OK? No!”)
There is nothing wrong per se with including the perspectives of those most affected—it is good that they were consulted. However, none of the elected officials who support the decision to locate F-35s in Madison were asked in this story for their perspective on these environmental justice issues, nor were the government agencies responsible for protecting public and environmental health—such as public health departments—asked to weigh in on these health disparities and what they will do about them. In leaving these entities out of the story completely, and focusing only on those most at risk, the article puts the onus of responsibility in the wrong place. It targets the powerless and lets the powerful off the hook. Our elected officials and government agencies played a big role in creating these environmental health disparities in the first place, and are the ones with the most power to do something to reduce and eventually eliminate them.
