Learning and Action

[Emery Graham <egraham@dca.net>]

Moving Communities to Action

     I'm beginning an effort to develop a set of activities
that households located in chemically impacted areas might
     routinely execute in order to decrease the negative
health impacts of the pollutants. I need some feedback and
     thinking around this idea.

     Like learning to use computer programs and other tools,
the simplest acts of environmental self preservation tend
     to provide similar learning effects. As much as EPA,
ASTDR, and NIEH purport to promote environmental
     justice, none of them have integrated the research on
moving social groups into action with the efforts to generate
     effective citizen participation. I suspect that if
households, and hence communities, begin to carry out a set of
basic
     environmental pollution self preservation routines there
will be a marked increase in citizen participation. I suspect
     that citizens will become very sensitive to the notion
that all development is local and that there is an inherent
"lack
     of justice" associated with the devil's choice between
"jobs with pollution," or "no pollution, no jobs."