Fighting for clean water and environmental justice

Brut America

"It's an egregious violation of people's human rights."   Jeremy Orr is one of the millions of Americans who grew up with limited access to clean water. With the help of NRDC, he's hoping to change this.

Transcript

00:00So, in the bottom of my parents' pantry, they still have the bottles of water that we would

00:06have to use when our water got shut off growing up.

00:08Whenever our water would get shut off, we would grab one of these bottles, we'd take

00:12them to the stove and heat them up if we needed to bathe.

00:15We'd use them to brush our teeth, to wash our hands, to cook food, whatever we needed

00:20water for.

00:21This stuff happens all over the country, right?

00:23It's happening everywhere.

00:50It's an egregious violation of people's human rights, right?

00:54Just basic rights to dignity and humanity, right?

00:58The idea that, you know, you have to take these steps, right, to ensure that you have

01:34If it wasn't a mason jar, right, you have folks, you know, hooked up to the water hoses

02:00of their neighbors.

02:01You see water hoses cutting across driveways for folks that have water.

02:04And now it's just, you know, it's turned into water bombs.

02:06But by the time I started, you know, elementary school in the kind of early 90s, the last

02:11of the white families had moved away, out to the suburbs.

02:14And my block became, you know, 100% black.

02:17My neighborhood was almost 100% black and we saw a decline in, you know, services from

02:23the city, right?

02:24Trash pickup became erratic.

02:27They no longer plowed the snow when it snowed.

02:30My parents worked, both of them worked, right?

02:33And yet, you know, there were still points where they couldn't afford their water.

02:37It wasn't until I went to college, moved into the dorms and had white doormates and roommates,

02:44you know, who would share their stories and I would share mine.

02:47And it became, you know, clear that, man, this wasn't the lived experience of people,

02:53you know, outside of my neighborhood or outside of my city.

02:59I kind of really realized that there was this lack of diversity in the environmental

03:17field.

03:18And, you know, it was in that room where I realized all of the people making decisions

03:22were middle-aged white men, making decisions for a community that was, you know, predominantly

03:28black, brown and low-income.

03:58You may not be directly impacted by it, but, you know, many folks are benefiting from these

04:06inequities, right?

04:07When you have, you know, places in particular, you know, black communities and black cities

04:11that are subsidizing the rates of white suburbs miles away, lift up the stories of these injustices

04:18and inequities, right, and challenge them, right?

04:22And it requires some courage and justice to actually speak up against that type of injustice.

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