Dr. Benjamin Chavis is known throughout the world as a leading civil and human rights activist, becoming famous as a member of the Wilmington 10, nine Black men and one white woman who were wrongfully convicted of arson and conspiracy in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1971 during racially tense times but was later exonerated.
Chavis went on to serve as a leader of the NAACP, and presently is the president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), the trade organization for Black newspapers. Chavis is also known for his early advocacy of environmental justice in the 1980s, writing opinion columns and making speeches about communities of color needing to have clean air and water.
Chavis published a landmark national study in 1986: “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States of America” that reveals the connection between race and the location of toxic waste sites throughout the nation. As a result of his work, he is known by some as the “Godfather of the postmodern environmental justice movement.”
However, Chavis is not happy with the recent moves by the Trump administration to gut federal environmental justice programs.
“The denial of the current administration of environmental racism and climate injustice in communities of color is going to cause greater suffering, greater harm and greater mortality,” Chavis, 77, told The Informer.
Chavis made his comments as the nation seeks to recognize Earth Day on April 22, an annual event to show support for environmental protection policies and practices.
Chavis said there is clear evidence that environmental racism has severely impacted people of color in the U.S.
“Covid revealed that people have pre-existing health conditions. We now know that those pre-existing conditions are the result of people being exposed to harmful environments,” he said. “The nation has not yet healed from Covid, and many people are still exposed to toxins, and that is tragic to millions of Americans.”
Fighting for Environmental Justice Against Trumpism
During the Biden administration, Michael S. Regan served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Regan, with the support of the Biden White House, prioritized environmental justice initiatives aimed at African American and Latino communities impacted by pollution and climate change and shepherded the use of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to fight environmental bias.
In a Dec. 31 resignation letter to EPA employees, Regan said the agency took environmental justice and “placed it at the center of our decision-making.”
But when Donald Trump assumed the presidency in January, he made it clear that pro-environmental justice programs were to be shelved.
The new EPA chief, Lee Zeldin, labeled Biden’s environmental justice initiatives as “scams” according to an exclusive interview with the New York Post.
James McHenry, the then-acting U.S. attorney general, issued a memo to employees of the Department of Justice on Feb. 5, stating the three Biden administration environmental justice executive orders were rescinded as of Feb. 7.
The anti-environmental justice developments by the administration created a strong backlash from environmental advocates.
On Feb. 6, Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club and former executive director of NNPA and NAACP, criticized the Trump administration.
“Donald Trump is hellbent on dismantling and disregarding so much of what helps keep our families and our communities safe,” Jealous, 52, said. “Protecting our air and water and holding deadly polluters accountable helps American families. By shuttering these offices, Donald Trump has decided that we do not deserve clean air or water, and our right to a livable and safe planet comes second to further enriching his fossil fuel friends and donors. Trump has been on the job for less than a month, but every single day he is making our communities less safe. The American people deserve better than this.”
Maria Lopez-Nunez is an activist who served on Biden’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. She called the Trump administration’s gutting of environmental justice programs “alarming.”
“[The Trump administration is] not just saying we’re eliminating the programs. It’s saying: ‘We don’t give a damn about the environment at all, or people’s lives or the health impacts across the country,’” Lopez-Nunez said in a March Earth Justice article.
Despite the policies of the administration, Chavis is upbeat about the opposition to it that is increasing.
“I am optimistic about the growing grassroots movement that is multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual that will not be deterred by the backwardness of the current EPA that protects polluters and not the country,” he said.