Speakers
Joshua Abraham The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC) mission statement: 1. to document, expose and challenge human rights abuses in the United States criminal justice system; 2. to build power in communities most harmed by government-sanctioned violence; and 3. to develop and advocate for proactive, community-based solutions to systemic "criminal injustice." 4. to help build the pathway from the present "gulag economy" to the future "green economy." We want California and the United States, the world leaders in locking people up, to become instead the world leaders in lifting people up. EBC uses a wide variety of tactics to accomplish its mission, including grassroots organizing, direct-action mobilizing, media advocacy, public education, cultural activism, policy reform and legal services. |
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Bradley Angel Bradley Angel is the Executive Director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. Bradley joined with grassroots community environmental justice activists from California and Arizona in 1997 to form Greenaction. Greenaction works with urban, rural, desert and Indigenous communities around the west in campaigns for health and environmental justice. Bradley is a nationally recognized leader in the environmental health and justice movement. Since 1987 Bradley has worked with hundreds of diverse communities impacted and threatened by pollution, and has played a leading role helping communities win some of the most important struggles in the history of the environmental justice movement. Prior to co-founding Greenaction, Bradley was the Southwest Toxics Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace USA for eleven years. Bradley has helped co-found numerous local, statewide, national and international environmental health and justice coalitions, including California Communities Against Toxics, Don’t Waste Arizona, Toxic Links Coalition, California Zero Dioxin Alliance, and the San Francisco Community Energy Coalition. Bradley also helped bring together Indigenous grassroots community activists and organizations to form the Indigenous Environmental Network. Bradley has been active in many other social justice issues since a teenager, including organizing on anti-war, tenants rights, affirmative active, anti-racism and other community and justice issues. |
Re'Anita Burns Youth United for Community Action, a grassroots community organization created, led, and run by young people of color, majority from low-income communities, provides a safe space for young people to empower ourselves and work on environmental and social justice issues to establish positive systemic change through grassroots community organizing. Re'Anita Burns, 19, has been working with YUCA since she was a sophomore in high school. She is currently a Senior Youth Organizer. Cynthia Cruz, 17, has been an active core member with YUCA for the past year. |
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Luisa Chavarin Launched in 1999, SVTC’s Health and Environmental Justice Project (HEJ) is the only community-driven environmental justice organization in Santa Clara County. The primary population of HEJ is women from the low-income, Latino communities in East San Jose. HEJ aims to educate and organize women of color to identify, reduce and prevent the health risks from toxic exposures and built environments, and to fight for public policy changes that will foster healthy environments where people live, work and play, pray and go to school. Rina Mehta joined the SVTC staff as Project Director of the Health and Environmental Justice project in September 2004. Rina received her Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2004. She comes to SVTC with a long-standing dedication to women's empowerment, health and social justice. Rina's graduate thesis explored the different dimensions of women's empowerment and the link between women's empowerment and contraceptive use in India. Prior to entering graduate school, Rina worked for four years on issues related to reproductive health and justice for low-income API communities in Oakland. Rina is also an aspiring dancer and has been studying Kathak, one of India's six classical dance forms, for six years now. |
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Dr. Henry Clark Dr. Henry Clark has been the Executive Director of the West County Toxics Coalition for the past 19 years. The organziation is based in Richmond, CA . Dr. Clark is the Co-Chair of CalFed, Calfornia's state and Federal water programs environmental justice subcommittee. Also a member of CAL-EPA environmental Justice Advisory Committee. |
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Luke Cole Luke Cole is an environmental justice and civil rights lawyer in San Francisco, where he directs the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Widely recognized as one of the foremost environmental justice lawyers in the U.S., Cole pioneered the community-based, community-led litigation style for which the Center is known. He has represented hundreds of community groups across the country fighting environmental hazards, focusing on building the capacity of clients and communities as well as addressing the environmental issue at hand. Current client include residents of the Inupiaq village of Kivalina, Alaska fighting the world's largest zinc and lead mine; residents of South Camden, NJ in a historic civil rights suit against the state for permitting a cement kiln in their already over-burdened community; and Central Valley communities fighting pollution from factory dairy farms. Cole has taught environmental justice seminars at Stanford Law School, Boalt Hall, and Hastings College of the Law, where he most recently served as a visiting professor from practice in 2004. |
Antonio Diaz Antonio Díaz is the Project Director for PODER, People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights, a grassroots environmental justice organization based in San Francisco's Mission District. Prior to joining PODER, Antonio was the Co-coordinator of the EcoJustice Networking Project at the Institute for Global Communications in San Francisco. Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995, Antonio's previous work in the environmental justice movement included working as a Research Associate at the Texas Center for Policy Studies where he conducted research on a variety of statewide environmental issues, He currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Support Center in Washington, D.C., is a Board member of the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, CA, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the board of CorpWatch in San Francisco. |
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Veronica Eady Veronica Eady is general counsel for West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), a community-based environmental justice organization in New York City. She also serves as an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law. Before joining WE ACT, Ms. Eady held a faculty position in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, where she taught Environmental Justice, Environmental Communication and Education, Legal Frameworks in Social Policy, and Air Quality. Prior to her work at Tufts, Ms. Eady was Director of the Environmental Justice and Brownfields Programs for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Ms. Eady served as the principle crafter of the first-ever environmental justice policy and program for Massachusetts’ environmental agencies. This policy has been converted into legislation that is now pending before the state legislature. Ms Eady is the recent former chair of EPA’s federal advisory committee for environmental justice, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and serves on several other boards. |
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Christopher Edley, Jr. Christopher Edley, Jr. joined Boalt Hall as dean in 2004 after 23 years on the law faculty at Harvard University. He earned a law degree and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard, where he served as an editor and officer of the Harvard Law Review. Following graduation Edley joined President Jimmy Carter’s administration as assistant director of the White House domestic policy staff. Edley served as national issues director for the 1988 Michael Dukakis presidential campaign, and as senior adviser on economic policy for President Bill Clinton’s transition team in 1992. In the Clinton administration, he worked as associate director for economics and government at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995 and as special counsel to the president in 1995--directing a White House review of affirmative action. He returned to the Clinton White House in 1997 as a consultant to the president’s advisory board on the race initiative. Edley's academic work is primarily in the area of civil rights, with additional concentrations in public policy and administrative law. He has taught federalism, budget policy, Defense Department procurement law, national security law and environmental law. Edley is a co-founder of the Civil Rights Project, a renowned multidisciplinary research and policy think tank focused on issues of racial justice. From 1999 to early in 2005, he served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Edley is a member of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. His recent publications include Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action, Race and American Values, which grew out of his work as special counsel to President Clinton; and Administrative Law: Rethinking Judicial Control of Bureaucracy. |
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Tina Eshaghpour Tina Eshaghpour is a Program Officer at the Women’s Foundation of California, where she manages grantmaking, grantee capacity building, convenings and research. Leading the foundation’s environmental health and justice work, she researched and wrote “Confronting Toxic Contamination in Our Communities: Women’s Health and California’s Future.” Tina has a background in public health, social marketing, immigrant and refugee health and environmental justice. She has served as a communications consultant for foundations including The California Wellness Foundation, The California Endowment and Irvine Foundation. Tina is a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs and received her Master in Public Health (specializing in refugee and immigrant health) from UCLA. |
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Margie Eugene-Richard Margie Richard grew up in the historically African-American neighborhood of Old Diamond in Norco, La., in a house just 25 feet away from Shell Chemicals plant’s fence line. Years later, she would lead the front line of a long, hard-won battle to hold Shell accountable for the devastating health problems in her community. Richard, 62, whose campaign has been hailed as a landmark environmental justice victory, holds the distinction as the first African-American to win the Goldman Environmental Prize. In 1989, Richard, then a middle school teacher, founded Concerned Citizens of Norco to seek justice from Shell in the form of fair and just resettlement costs for her family and her neighbors. Over the next 13 years, Richard led a community campaign that was equal parts hard science, grassroots organizing and media savvy. In 2000, thanks largely to Richard’s efforts, Shell agreed to reduce its emissions by 30 percent and improve its emergency evacuation routes. Shell also agreed to pay voluntary relocation costs for residents who lived on the two streets closest to the plant. But Richard and Concerned Citizens turned up the heat, leading to a meeting at the Shell offices in Norco where they secured a $5 million community development fund and full relocation for all four Old Diamond streets. Since the agreement was brokered in 2002, Shell has bought about 200 of the 225 lots at a minimum price of $80,000 per lot. In addition to being the first community relocation victory of its kind in the Deep South, Richard’s success in Norco has been an inspiring example for activists nationwide battling environmental racism in their own backyards. Richard stands at the forefront of this important social justice movement. After passing her presidency of Concerned Citizens to another member, Richard has become an activist-at-large. She continues to work with Shell on an initiative to improve community and environmental health and safety in Norco. She advises other communities battling corporate pollution including the African-American neighborhood of Westside in Port Arthur, Texas, which borders a refinery owned by Premcor, one of the nation's largest independent oil refineries. Richard’s activism has also taken her abroad. In 2002 she spoke at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and met with citizen groups in South Africa struggling with contamination from industrial run-off. This year, as in years past, she plans to help lead an international delegation to Royal Dutch/Shell’s annual general meeting (April 24-25) in London where she will pressure the corporation to take responsibility for its dirty industrial practices and the medical costs associated with treating environmental illness. |
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Sharon Fuller Sharon Fuller, a life-long resident of Richmond, is the founder and executive director of the Ma’at Youth Academy. This nationally recognized Academy brings curricula that focus on urban ecology and environmental health to public schools in communities of color and low-income areas throughout Contra Costa and Alameda counties. For the past 10 years MYA has linked urban high school students and after school programs to hands-on environmental education and community action. Ms. Fuller has lectured and served as keynote speaker at national environmental justice, education, environmental health and youth conferences. She earned a B.S. degree in Conservation and Resource Studies from UC Berkeley and a M.S. degree in Environmental Education from CSU Hayward. Ms. Fuller is a Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials Commissioner and was recently awarded the 2004 Woman of the Year Award for the State of California, 14 th Assembly District and the 2004 San Francisco Foundation’s Koshland Civic Unity Award. |
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Antonio Gonzales Antonio Gonzales is the executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, an independent agency created by the United Nations to protect and promote the rights of indigenous peoples all over the world. Among the IITC’s many achievements is a UN study of treaties between governments and indigenous peoples worldwide; that study is due for completion this year. |
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Anjuli Gupta The Center for Environmental health was founded in 1996. Through
education, litigation, and advocacy, we promote public health and
prevent negative health outcomes of exposures to toxic chemicals. We
reduce pollution and chemical contamination in the air we breathe, water we drink, and products we buy. |
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Anne Harper Anne Harper is an attorney with Earthjustice, a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. Anne received her law degree and an LLM in international and comparative law from Duke University. She has also earned a masters degree in non-profit administration from the University of San Francisco. For the past several years at Earthjustice she has worked on enforcing the Clean Air Act in the California Central Valley, the most air-polluted region of the country. There Earthjustice represents low income, minority and other vulnerable populations suffering from the negative effects of air pollution. |
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Angela Harris Before joining the Boalt faculty in 1988, Angela Harris served as a law clerk to Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and as an attorney in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster. She was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in 1991, Yale Law School in 1997 and Georgetown Law Center in 2000. Harris's writing and research focus on feminist legal theory and critical race theory. Her recent publications include Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (with Katherine Bartlett, 1998) and Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (with Juan Perea, Richard Delgado and Stephanie Wildman, 2000). In 2003 Harris received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction, an annual award that honors a Boalt Hall professor who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to teaching. She also received the 2003 Mathew O. Tobriner Public Service Award, an annual prize that recognizes Bay Area law school professors for their commitment to academic diversity and for mentoring the next generation of lawyers. |
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Robert Hickey As Urban Ecology’s Policy Director, Robert Hickey oversees the implementation of neighborhood plans in ethnically-diverse, low-income communities. Using his background in community organizing and land used planning, Robert offers technical assistance and hands-on training to help community members document and advocate for solutions to pressing problems in their neighborhoods. He is currently working closely with Latino, Vietnamese and Mien women in East Oakland to help them win streetscape improvements around the most dangerous school in Oakland. In addition to on-the-ground advocacy, Robert develops policy initiatives to distribute public resources more equitably to communities in need. Robert holds a Masters in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley. Before working at Urban Ecology, he researched affordable housing policy with PolicyLink, and worked as a community organizer for Camden Churches Organized for People – a faith-based community organization in Camden, New Jersey. |
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Dana Lanza Dana Lanza is the Executive Director and Founder of Literacy for Environmental Justice and has served over 10,000 public school students in free environmental education projects since 1998 throughout the San Francisco area. During her tenure, Dana has raised over $4 million from private and governmental sources. In addition to Dana's leadership within LEJ, she sits on several boards including The San Francisco Citizens' Advisory Taskforce on Power Plants, The Crissy Field Center, and Next Course. She has served as faculty at New College of California in the Master's in Teaching Program in Critical Global Literacy, and has presented at events such as The American Public Health Association Conference, Bioneers, and the California Governor's Office Environmental Justice Committee. Ms. Lanza is currently a fellow with the California Women's Foundation Policy Institute and a Fellowship Mentor with the Compton Foundation. Dana has received many prestigious awards throughout her career. Some of these include the Bronze Addy Award for public education, the Vineyards Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals, National Clearwater Award for Waterfront Development, KRON TV's Golden Apple Award for Service Learning, and SF Estuary's California Coastal Management Award for Heron's Head Park. Dana holds a Masters degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from The California Institute of Integral Studies and a BA from Boston College in Psychology and Environmental Studies. Prior to her work in San Francisco, Ms. Lanza lived and worked amongst the Samburu people of northern Kenya for several years. |
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Pam Tau Lee Pam is a founding member of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. She was a participant at the First People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and at the Second Summit played a key role in the development of "Principles of Working Together," guiding principles in building a grassroots lead environmental justice movement. She has served in the EPA National Environmental Justice Advisory Council serving on the public participation and enforcement committees. A major focus for her work is eliminating "unfair choices" workers of color face when forced to accept dangerous work or unemployment. She is currently assisting former AXT workers who were exposed for many years to extremenly high levels of arsenic while producing computer chips for their employer. They currently live in the shadow of cancer and Ms. Lee is working with them to secure lifetime medical monitoring. |
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Cindy Montañez Cindy Montañez and her five brothers and sisters were raised by their immigrant parents, Manuel and Margarita Montanez, in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. As a freshman at UCLA, Cindy and her sister participated in the historic 14-day Hunger Strike that established the Cesar E. Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies. Between classes, homework and helping in the family business, Cindy found time for public service. Cindy's experience in public service has been diverse. Her experience as a community advocate for battered women, her internship with then Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and her appointment to the San Fernando Cultural Arts Commission, helped Cindy develop a firm grounding for her future as an elected official. Cindy's early efforts gained the confidence of voters in the City of San Fernando where in 1999, she was elected the youngest person ever to the San Fernando City Council. She became the city's Mayor in 2001 and created a strong resume of accomplishments in the City during her tenure including building a new Library, expanding a Community Center and developing a new plan for commercial business development. In 2002, she was elected to the California State Assembly at age 28, where she is the youngest woman ever elected to California Legislature. Cindy's Legislative work has focused on issues most important to her working class district. Her areas of focus are education, the environment, health care and consumer/worker protection. Ten of Cindy's legislative proposals were adopted by the Legislature and signed into law during her first year in office. These bills included statutes to improve the management of urban landfills, a law to protect children from a sexually abusive parent and laws to insure the safety of temporary construction workers. In addition, Cindy was the author of several bills on education to ensure healthier students. Cindy was appointed Chair of the powerful and influential Rules Committee February 2004 by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. At 30 years old, Montañez is the youngest woman, the first Democratic woman, and the first Latina to serve as Chair of Rules. Cindy proudly serves the communities of San Fernando, Pacoima, Sylmar, Panorama City, Sun Valley, Mission Hills, Arleta and Valley View. |
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Richard Moore Richard Moore is a key national leader of the environmental economic justice movement with over 35 years of experience as a community organizer. Of Puerto Rican descent, Richard has resided in New Mexico since 1966. He has worked with a variety of community-based organizations around such issues as welfare rights, police repression, street gang activities, drug abuse, low cost healthcare, child nutrition and the fight against racism, including the struggle for environmental and economic justice. Richard is a founding member of the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) and the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. Richard is presently the Executive Director of the Southwest Network, a bi-national organization which comprises over 60 community based grassroots organizations working in communities of color in six southwestern states and Northern Mexico. Richard's commitment to multi-racial and multi-issue community organizing - and recognition of the interconnectedness of local, regional, national and international issues - made him an important member of the planning committee for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which took place in October 1991. Richard serves on the Environmental and Economic Justice Project Board of Directors and completed a three year term as the chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the EPA and has served on the Board of the Alston/Bannerman Fellowship Program from 1998-2002. In addition, Richard played a significant role in establishing the Environmental Justice Fund--a coalition of Environmental Justice Networks. Richard is also, at this time the Co-Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus National Environmental Policy Commission, on the Planning Committee of the Inter-Agency Working Group on environmental Justice. In recognition of his lifelong work, Richard was the recipient of the 1991 Bannerman Award, the 1995 Albuquerque Human Rights Award, and the 1997 Tides Foundation Jane Bagley Lehman Award for public policy. |
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Alan Ramo Professor Alan Ramo is a Professor of Law at Golden Gate University School of Law where he is the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic’s (ELJC) Co-Director and the Director of the LL.M. Environmental Law Graduate Program. ELJC is an in-house law clinic staffed by faculty and students assisting disadvantaged communities suffering disproportionate environmental impacts. The ELJC has won awards from the ABA, US EPA Region IX and the Environmental Law Foundation for its environmental justice work. The Environment Now Foundation awarded Ramo the Wells Family Award in the area of Urban Renewal in December, 2000. Professor Ramo received a B.A. in political science from Stanford University in 1971, a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1974 and an M.J. from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1982. He is a member of the California Bar. For nine years, he was the Legal Director and later General Counsel for Communities for a Better Environment (formerly Citizens for a Better Environment), a nonprofit statewide environmental organization. He has appeared on numerous panels regarding citizen suits and environmental justice and served on advisory boards for governmental agencies. He is a founder of the Western States Legal Foundation, which addresses nuclear power and weapons, and a member of the Impact Fund’s Advisory Board, which funds public interest litigation. He is also a member of the Rose Foundation’s Advisory Board, which funds environmental justice projects, and the As You Sow Advisory Board, which specializes in toxics litigation and corporate accountability. |
Renee L. Robin Renee L. Robin is the California Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, a national, multi-disciplinary non-profit organization whose mission is to protect the fetus and the child from environmental health hazards and promote a healthy environment. Current projects include bridging scientific information with advocacy on issues such as air quality, pesticide exposure and toxic chemical reduction. Renee is also developing a new initiative on “Children and the Built Environment” which emphasizes green building practices and regional planning policies that uniquely effect children’s health -including issues such as the health effects inherent in housing types, school design and siting, and in regional land use decisions affecting natural resources and health. Renee also has co-founded California’s Environmental Health Legislative Working Group – a coalition of over 40 environmental and health organizations promoting a diverse statewide policy legislative package for the 2004-05 legislative session. Another project, “Healthy Environments in Childcare and Preschools” a pilot project in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, is preparing training materials and community outreach on methods to remove environmental health hazards from early childhood care. Prior to joining CEHN in 2002, Ms. Robin has had a 20-year career as a land use and environmental attorney in academic, public and private sectors. In the academic arena, Ms. Robin was Executive Director of the Program on Public Space Partnerships at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government (1985-89) and was visiting faculty in land use and environmental law at the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design (1990-93). She received her B.A. in Politics and Economics from Brandeis University, and received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1982. |
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Julie Sze Julie Sze is currently an Assistant Professor in American Studies, University of California at Davis. Her research focuses on the culture and politics of environmental justice activism, race and urban environmentalism, and risk & health, social movements and community activism. She is also interested in community-based urban planning and environmental health research. Sze’s manuscript, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice is a history of environmental justice activism in New York City, looking at the intersection of planning and health (especially the asthma crisis), and changes in garbage and energy systems as a result of privatization and deregulation. She has published on topics ranging from energy and environmental justice activism; Asian Immigrant and Asian Pacific American Environmental Justice Activism; Race, Gender and the Politics of Asthma; Human Genetics, Environment and Communities of Color, and the literature of Environmental Justice. Sze has worked with environmental justice organizations in New York City and nationally for the past decade. She began working in the environmental justice field as a community organizer on transportation and clean air issues. |
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Max Weintraub Max Weintraub founded the Environmental Justice and Health |
LaDonna Williams LaDonna Williams, Executive Director of People for Children's Health & Environmental Justice and a mother of six became an Environmental Justice, Community advocate when it was discovered in early 90's her former community Midway Village in Daly City, CA was built directly on top of and contaminated with over 350 superfund toxic chemicals that belonged to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Historical official documents confirm PG&E, EPA, CAL/EPA, Department of Health Svcs, San Mateo County Housing, City of Daly City, elected and government officials all had previous knowledge of Midway Village (a low-income community of color) being a superfund site, however none of these entities ever informed the residents that they were living directly on top of over 350 superfund carcinogenic toxins, nor of the threat to their health and lives. In 1991 when men in bubblesuits appeared at Midway, LaDonna discovered her children's illnesses as well as her own were directly connected to the 350 carcinogenics and the 10 years of toxic exposure of PG&E's toxic chemicals. She took action by returning to her former community, informing, and organizing current and former residents to hold all responsible parties accountable for their practices of Environmental Racism. The acceptance of allowing years of toxic exposure at Midway has result in birth defects, chronic illnesses and deaths at Midway that were preventable. LaDonna to date continues to work on relocation and compensation from Pacific Gas & Electric Co, and all responsible parties, for Midway residents (both current & former) who have suffered immeasurable damages as a result of the accepted practices of Environmental Racism and Injustice. LaDonna currently shares a seat on the CAL/EPA Advisory Environmental Justice Committee, DHS Mercury Fish Steering Committee, CAL/FED Environmental Justice Subcommittee to assist with recommendations and implementation of Environmental Justice and policy changes so that EJ is a part of every aspect of decisions and actions affecting our communities especially those of color. LaDonna has traveled from Louisiana to Boston to Vieques Puerto Rico to highlight EJ/racism practices negatively affecting people of color and holding accountable agencies and elected officials allowing these practices resulting in preventable chronic illnesses and death. |
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Wanna Wright Wanna Wright is women's health advocate, community organizer, poet, and playwright. Her works include Alive to Testify, Breast Cancer a Family Affair and Sexuality & Breast-less-ness. Wanna is a two-time cancer survivor. She spent her childhood in Louisiana and most of her adult life in Richmond in the shadows of Chevron Texaco. She volunteers her time working with women to help them deal with their fears about breast and other women's cancers. She is on the Board of Directors of the Breast Cancer Fund and the Women's Cancer Resource Center and is the chair of the African American Breast Cancer Task Group. Wanna's mission in life these days is to engage the African American Community in a more active role in environmental racism and environmental justice issues. |
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Diana Pei Wu Diana Pei Wu is currently working on several projects that address environmental justice in Oakland and nationally. Specifically, she worked with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and Pacific Institute on a report on diesel pollution in West Oakland. She is currently working in support of campaigns for affordable housing in West Oakland (InfoOakland), the Pacific Renaissance campaign for affordable housing in Oakland Chinatown (Chin Jurn Wor Ping), and another campaign for community benefits agreement for the neighborhoods of Chinatown, Eastlake and San Antonio in Oakland's flatlands (Urban Strategies Council). Diana is also the lead researcher on a national survey of youth organizing in the environmental justice movement with the Movement Strategy Center. In her spare time she is writing a dissertation on race and power in Oakland through struggles for environmental justice in Oakland. |
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