In Conversation with Community: The East Phillips Indoor Urban Farm & Living in Minnestota's "Arsenic Triangle"
Karen Clark has lived in the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis for 40 years and represented it in the State Legislature for 38 of those years.
As a community member and representative, Karen Clark offers a unique perspective on the long history of environmental racism in East Phillips and the story of a neighborhood still fighting for the life of its members.
"Phillips neighborhood is where I've lived for more than 40 years, and I represented it in the legislature for 38 of those years and just retired two years ago now. So I still live there. And it's, you know, it's part of my life. It's a wonderful community to represent. It's part of a district that is similar throughout. But East Phillips is specifically designated as an environmental justice neighborhood, both by the state law that we passed in 2008 and then also by Minneapolis City Council decided to declare two neighborhoods in Minneapolis as green zones. But East Phillips, which is one part of the whole Phillips neighborhood, is probably the most concentrated area for the kind of environmental toxic exposures of any part of Phillips neighborhood." -Karen Clark
https://www.buzzsprout.com/831541/episodes/5277610
Brad, Cassie, and Carol have two major things in common: they live in the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis and they are part of the East Phillips Urban Indoor Farm project designed to benefit their own community. They are also all environmental justice warriors who love their community well and are dedicated to helping their neighbors.
"Why did I stay? Because I just loved the people. And it's sickening that people take so much advantage of the people in this neighborhood. And they have been. And that's what the city is doing. They're just taking advantage of the people in this neighborhood. Why don't we move out? Why should we? We're doing something for the community. We're all working together to make something better here. As it should be." -Brad Pass
"I started standing out more vocally because I have a son I lost at 16 years old through a heart condition that just came out of nowhere at 14 years old, just diagnosed him at 14, saying he had this heart condition. He needed a heart transplant and the heart transplant was unsuccessful. I have a best friend who we both raised our kids on the same side of little Earth. I have a best friend who's twenty one year old daughter gave birth to her second daughter. Just didn't feel good. And then she died from a heart condition at 21. We've had a few other people, young people and youth that have passed away not from overdosing, but from diabetes or heart conditions. So I start thinking, like, what the hell is going on here? Why do we have so many of our young kids dying from these heart conditions that are these other conditions that nobody knows where they came from, how they got them? They're just sick. I just had a brother pass away yesterday. He started feeling sick. And he for the last couple of years, he was like feeling dizzy, passing out, just not feeling good. And he works with children. So he had to stop working to start getting tested. And the hospitals didn't even know what was wrong with him. They just said he had vertigo. And then he ends up passing away yesterday and we're still waiting on what happened. So we just have so many people here at Little Earth that are that are dying on top of the overdose and the shooting with that are just dying with food, just like these medical reasons that are just popping up. And I feel like a lot of our medical issues are from the pollution and the environmental injustices that are around us that that can be helped. And I feel like that the city is trying to make it worse with their plans, like they have no care, they don't care about us, they don't care about our health, that their plans are just they're going to kill us. And I don't know how long we can last here in this community. And no matter how much the community has went to city council members. We begged. We pleaded. We said, listen, this is what's going to happen if you do this." -Cassie Holmes
"We're so stressed with this whole thing, oh my god, it's because of pollution and because the Native American and other children here have been so damaged by this. And we've been here a long time and we've watched generation after generation. We've become family, friends, and we've watched one kid after another get to have asthma or heart conditions, et cetera, stop going to school.. Don't wanna go to school anymore. End up on drugs end up in a street and then eventually dying of opioid stuff. And we've gone through about four different major campaigns just to keep the Native Americans safe. This is our last one and I wouldn't survive another one." -Carol Pass (on retiring from her position at EPIC).
https://www.buzzsprout.com/831541/episodes/5278142