Environmental Justice: Your Health, Your Rights

Robert Taylor Jr. died at 79. Lived his whole life on East 26th Street in Reserve, Louisiana. Eight hundred feet from Marathon Petroleum refinery. His mother died of cancer. Father too. Three brothers. Two sisters. All cancer. The house he grew up in? Bought by Marathon. Demolished. The elementary school next door? Closed. Too many sick kids. This is Cancer Alley, 85 miles of Mississippi River where life expectancy drops with property values.

March 7, 2025. Trump's Justice Department drops the Denka case. The Japanese-owned plant in St. John Parish emits chloroprene at 15 times EPA's safe level. Chloroprene causes liver cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer. Pick your poison. EPA said Denka created "unacceptable cancer risk." DOJ said "we're ending DEI initiatives." Translation: Black communities don't count. But here's the twist: May 13, 2025, Denka suspends production anyway. "Mounting financial losses." The real reason? Insurance companies stopped covering them. Even capitalism has limits.

The Flint Template: How to Poison a City and Blame the Victims

April 2014. Flint switches water source to save $5 million. General Motors stops using the water—it's corroding car parts. Residents told it's safe to drink. Kids develop rashes. Hair falls out. Legionnaires' disease kills 12. Lead levels in children spike 300%. Officials' response? "Some people are just anti-everything." Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha proves lead poisoning. They call her "hysterical." Data doesn't lie. Neither do dead children. Settlement: $626 million. Divided among 100,000 people. That's $6,260 each. For permanent brain damage.

Jackson, Mississippi, August 2022. Water plant fails. 180,000 people without water for weeks. Couldn't flush toilets. Couldn't shower. National Guard distributing bottled water like a war zone. The city is 82% Black. State legislature? 70% white. Refused infrastructure funding for decades. Called it "Jackson's problem." When white suburbs needed water upgrades? Immediate state funding. Pattern recognition isn't conspiracy theory when the pattern is written in water bills.

East Palestine: The Controlled Burn That Controlled Nothing

February 3, 2023. Norfolk Southern train derails in East Palestine, Ohio. Carrying vinyl chloride. Company's solution? Controlled burn. Released hydrogen chloride, phosgene (WWI chemical weapon), dioxins. Black smoke visible from space. Residents evacuated for three days. Told it's safe to return. Pets dying. Fish floating. Soil tests find dioxin levels 700 times safe limit. Norfolk Southern's response? $25 million for the town. Population 4,761. That's $5,250 per person. For cancer risk that lasts generations.

The kicker? Norfolk Southern spent $7.5 billion on stock buybacks in 2022. Could've upgraded every brake system, installed modern sensors, prevented the crash. Chose shareholders over safety. The CEO who made that decision? Still employed. Salary: $13 million. The Palestine residents with chemical burns? Still waiting for medical coverage.

The EPA's 2024 rule requiring 96% emissions reduction? Revolutionary. If it survives. Chemical companies already filing lawsuits. Fifth Circuit Court (same court that killed Biden's vaccine mandate) will likely strike it down. The companies know they just need to wait. New administration, new rules. Or rather, no rules.

Warren County, North Carolina, 1982. State dumps 40,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil in predominantly Black county. Residents lay down in front of trucks. Get arrested. Birth of environmental justice movement. Forty years later, the soil is still there. The PCBs are still there. The cancer is still there. The only thing that changed? Now they call it "brownfield redevelopment opportunity."

Here's what they don't want you to know: Insurance companies are doing what government won't. They're refusing to cover polluters. Banks won't finance new plants in flood zones. Even Wall Street sees the writing on the rising sea wall. The Denka plant didn't close because of activism or regulation. It closed because insurance actuaries did the math. Poisoning people is finally becoming unprofitable. Not immoral. Not illegal. Just unprofitable. In America, that's the only justice that counts. Use it. Find their insurers. Document everything. Make their premiums unaffordable. It's not environmental justice. It's environmental capitalism. But if it closes plants, who's counting?