This article will be updated very soon....

Protocol for use of EJSEAT in circumstances in which it will have
an impact on current and future allocation of resources

Nationally Consistent Environmental Justice Screening Approaches - text included below, without Appendices - download full 5 MB /PDF Report here

A Report of Advice and Recommendations of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council - A Federal Advisory Committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - MAY 2010

CHN Joins Detroit Shoreway & City of Cleveland to Host HUD Press Event Third Round of NSP Grants Announced On September 9, 2010 CHN, Detroit Shoreway and the City of Cleveland welcomed Assistant Secretary Mercedes Marquez of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Marquez announced a $6.8 million award to the City of Cleveland for the third round of funding through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). NSP was established for the purpose of stabilizing communities that have suffered from foreclosures and abandonment.

Dr. Edgar J. Schoen

As the son of a physician, who grew up socializing with physicians and their families, I've always seen doctors - scientists - as regular human beings, who burn hot dogs, crash cars, fall down, make mistakes, and fade away. This makes me very aware of the fallibility of doctors and their diagnoses, to the core.

Lessons learned - not all scientists are created equal - all scientists are flawed - be an informed consumer and make certain all your science decisions are based on the best scientific data and scientists possible - always get a second opinion... more if the decision in truly important.

Having spent several years studying and addressing the lead poisoning crisis in Northeast Ohio and worldwide, as a subcommittee co-chair of the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, and seeing lead poisoning from inside the healthcare and human services industries, as the parent of lead poisoning victims, I have become informed about the poor quality of healthcare industry attention to lead poisoning in America - historically and now - nationwide and especially in highest incidence regions like Northeast Ohio. The poor quality of healthcare response to lead poisoning is intentional and designed into government by the healthcare industry through corruption of scientists who are bad.

 Understanding the entire HUD Funding breakdown, the MASTER PLANS of the Local CDC's, the City of Cleveland, and the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and the INFLATED APPRAISALS in addition to the INFLATED TAXES which are 2 separate inflations..would have improved this story by the PD.

Legal Aid proudly announces the launch of our redesigned website.  Visit www.lasclev.org now to find resources, read success stories and learn how you can help Legal Aid provide access to justice.

Today, I saw this demo company turning onto a neighborhood street off of Clark... Ultimately, it and several others landed right behind Train Park off of West 48 & Clark/Train Avenues. Another house was being demo'd...and many, many, many more to go!

Just felt like venting below....watching the annihilation of our city has traumatized my life, violated our people, and decimated our American Spirit...But I shall continue to have faith that the corrupt jerks who have destroyed our world will be held accountable before our lifetime is over. May they all enjoy the shame that comes with being exposed for their poor choices...and that jail time that should come with convictions... We the people have been imprisoned for all too long in our community and it's time to be set free! 

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011, AlterNet highlights the reality that the mainstream media in America is incompetent in its duty to inform the world about affairs in America, if it is not worse and directed by media and government leadership to deceive the people of the world into believing America is right and good, when we are not. As a resident of Northeast Ohio, subjected to the incompetency and/or deception of our regional mainstream media in not-covering and/or covering-up real news of Ohio and our region (e.g. covering up for local political corruption, environmental crimes, and theft of public funds and opportunity from the poor for the rich), the harm caused my family is realized in lead poisoned children and the waste of family resources and loyalty to a place and leadership that are undeserving, if not evil.

Here is how things are working out in the rest of America, for the rest of the world, in the era of the most ineffective, corrupt and despicable "free press" imaginable:

85-Year-Old-Woman Arrested for Bank Protest -- 6 Revolts the Tea Party-Obsessed Corporate Media Overlooked

Some of the most undercovered stories of 2010 were actions taken by ordinary people standing up for a more just and equitable society.

The Cleveland Public Library is pleased to present the Chelsea Duo on January 29th, 2011 at 2pm in the Fine Arts Department on the 3rd floor of Main Library (325 Superior Ave., Cleveland, Ohio, 44114). The Chelsea Duo, consisting of Annie Fullard, violin (from Cavani String Quartet) and Marcia Ferritto, viola, will perform a program entitled "A Bohemian Sampler" with music by Béla Bartók and Bohuslav Martinů. This concert is FREE and open to all ages. For more information call 216-623-2848 or visit http://cpl.org/musicatmain. Please join us for this informal, intimate and entertaining concert.

Location

Ward 14 Democratic club's first 2011 event-- hosting County Councilman Dan Brady who will report on the status of new government and take questions.

Thursday, January 20, 6:30 PM, Applewood Center gym.

Jones Campus
3518 West 25th Street
Cleveland, Ohio 44109-1995
(216) 741-2241 fax: 459-9821

Location

Merrick House announced on Friday 1/7/2011 that they plan on closing their Fulton Road offices and transitioning services to other sites by April 1st, 2011.  Funding cuts over the past four years were cited as the reason for the closing of the Clark Fulton site.  Such cuts reportedly created funding gaps which had to be covered by the organization's reserve funds.  Their decision reflects concerns for ensuring programs at their main office remain solvent. 

I strongly recommend subscribing to Greenversations - the Official Blog of the EPA - it is written by EPA staff with their personal observations and perspectives about the environmental world around them. The latest posting is about Environmental Justice and schools, which should interest all parents of school children, and school children.

I would be interested to see or help develop an environmental justice rating system for Northeast Ohio schools - that could be used to improve academic performance and the health and well being of students and staff region-wide. Does anything like that exist today, here? How is the environmental justice in Cleveland Schools?

Grace, how is the environmental justice in the schools down in Austin?

Principles of Environmental Justice

(Printable PDF version)

Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.

PREAMBLE

WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

Environmental Justice leader/victim Barbara Miller speaking to panel at First White House Forum on Environmental Justice

In what I consider the most important positive environmental development in America in the 21st Century, on December 15, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley convened the First White House Environmental Justice Forum, where leadership of the recently-reconvened Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG) met with over 100 environmental justice leaders (typically long-suffering EJ victims), in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, at the White House complex, to develop new federal interagency strategies and interactions with citizens to right current EJ wrongs in America, in anticipation of worse to come as results of climate change.

This Forum was the public interface, and culmination of a year of expansive activity in the White House, throughout the Obama Administration, and nationwide, to advance EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s priority to “expand the conversation on environmentalism and work for environmental justice” in America, in clear recognition of harm caused disadvantaged citizens by current Environmental Injustice (aka Environmental Racism... Environmental Genocide... from the mouths of victims), and showing clear US government concern over "Climate Gaps" (e.g. in Heat Islands), and over those worsening, causing more environmental injustices, to be exacerbated by future Climate Change and resulting Climate Injustices that will harm life on Earth, in this age of human-caused global warming.

I have compiled a summary outline list of 15 "Top 10ish Environmental lists of 2010" found on the Internet - these are drawn from diverse, largely US-oriented environmental media services and organizations - many focus on organizational objectives - most feature positive and negative developments. I have summarized all but the last list - A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice - by Joe Romm, as that should be read in its' entirely, including linked reference material.

Romm points out: "The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year." "Any one of these would be cause for action — and combined they vindicate the final sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s  Field Notes from a Catastrophe:  “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

Romm concludes: "Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action.  Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable.  The fact that the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media ignored the overwhelming majority of these studies and devoted a large fraction of its climate ‘ink’ in the last 12 months to what was essentially a non-story (Climategate) is arguably the single greatest failing of the science media this year."

Voice your comments and suggestions on improving Cleveland's neighborhoods with Community Development Block Grant Funds, Federal HOME, Emergency grant, Neighborhood Stabilization and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS.

Location

’Mid glad green miles of tillage
And fields where cattle graze;
A prosy little village,
You drowse away the days.

And yet—a wakeful glory
Clings round you as you doze;
One living, lyric story
Makes music of your prose!

That start and conclusion to The Poet’s Town, penned in 1913 by past Nebraska Poet Laureate John Neihardt (complete poem below), well describes Gothenburg, Nebraska.

I stopped there one winter morning, not long ago, for some wakeful glory away from the drone of the interstate - to find some fresh, local character and better-than-truckstop coffee and donuts.

Located off I-80, the living, lyric story promised by Gothenburg's towering grain elevators and freeway signs is the "Pony Express Capital of Nebraska". Being in the modern-day Pony Express business, delivering communications via the Internet, I thought I'd connect with my roots and find some inspiration there.

Happy New Year Everyone! 

While the impatience of my daughter's childhood counts the seconds until the New Year while watching the Dick Clark New Year's Eve Time Square Ball drop.....I think back over a long year of many amazing moments...and I remember the words of my father earlier this evening as he spoke so philosophically about a brighter, more beautiful, better, and hopeful 2011 ahead...

What if we made the players wear colorful jerseys, made the playing field open to the public, and empowered the teams to face off for a dual? Would the public at large begin to become more engaged if these political leaders were met with citizen opposition ready, willing, and able to fight the battles that have been run underground for so many generations? Would the sports fanatics who blog religiously about pro sports teams/games-become involved with our government games- if we showed the statistics of the players, the quotas of the people, and the money spent on s