What voting rights mean for the planet

By Derrick Z. Jackson | Grist

There were no racial breakouts for those studies, but there is plenty of evidence that the very people most in need of voting rights are also in need of environmental protection.

In the South, the disproportionate proximity of people of color to coal ash dumps, refineries, oil and gas fracking sites, and “cancer alleys” hyper-concentrated with petro-chemical plants is well documented. In the predominantly Black town of Reserve, Louisiana, chemical plants give residents a cancer risk 50 times the national average.

The chances of having state and federal agencies with the commitment to eliminate the disparities, remediate the damage, and regulate future industrial pollution depends on the most affected people being able to elect the most effective, representative government.

I was proud of the long lines at my old school. Even before all this, I experienced how easily a voter could be disenfranchised by the sheer laziness of voting officials. The weekend before the 2008 presidential election, my father was in a Veterans Administration hospital in Milwaukee for a heart attack. Hooked up to I.V.s and monitors, he said he still wanted to vote. So I went downtown to the city’s election office to get him an absentee ballot. The clerk insisted the deadline had passed for him to obtain one, even for major health reasons.

I went back to the hospital and told my dad this in front of one of his nurses. The nurse happened to be a patient advocate for various services, including elections. She angrily said that what I was told was nonsense for hospitalized veterans. She left the room and returned with a document for me to take back downtown.

When I went back to the elections commission, the same clerk saw me coming, remembered me, and had words for me before I could open my mouth.

“I thought I told you that you were too late,” she said.

I handed over the document: “Take this to your supervisor.”

I watched the clerk and her supervisor stammer for a few minutes before the clerk finally came back and gave me the ballot, without a word, without apology.

I went back to the hospital with the ballot and watched as my dad’s hands — trembling from his traumas — marked off the spot for Barack Obama. I learned forever that if it is this hard for just one Black man to vote, even in one of the “bluest” cities in the United States, who knows what barriers will rise elsewhere?

Stinnett said these voters care about the environment “because coal-fired power plants aren’t put in lily-white suburbs. They’re put in communities of color.”

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