Clean Air Shouldn’t Be Political: Environmental Justice and Trumpian Propaganda
One week into the new administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation released a memo that the secretary of transportation has signed the “Woke Rescission.” This directs the agency to “identify and eliminate all Biden-era programs, policies, activities, rules, and orders that promote climate change activism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, racial equity, gender identity policies, environmental justice, and other partisan objectives.”
They have taken down government websites that mention these terms.
Putting aside what these memos mean for policy, I would like to focus on what message this sends. I will focus on the term “environmental justice.”
Since I moved back to New York, I have volunteered with an environmental justice group, South Bronx Unite.
In the South Bronx, one of five children have asthma, thanks to the highways, bridges, and other nearby industrial facilities that pollute the air. The asthma hospitalization rate is five times the national average.
Environmental justice organizations work to combat these kinds of issues. The guiding ethos is that, no matter where you live, you should be able to breathe clean air, have access to green spaces, and live in an environment that doesn’t slowly kill you.
The carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, benzene, and other chemicals from exhaust pipes are not aware of what Trump thinks is and isn’t “woke.” They do not care what is and isn’t a “partisan objective.” They simply go into people’s lungs. These pollutants have shown to lead to asthma and other health conditions. These are facts, things we observe with our eyes and ears.
George Orwell wrote in 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
The Trump administration is undergoing a collective gaslighting. Through memos like this, they suggest that what people experience not only isn’t happening, but that their health conditions are “political ideology.”
By scrubbing this term, the administration says that if you live near waste facilities, power plants, and highways, that your health not only doesn’t matter to us, but that your attempts to fight for a healthier life are against the ideology of the federal government. This is the government which is supposed to serve them.
To keep fighting, we must amplify the stories this propaganda cannot erase.
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