https://capitalbnews.org/south-la-oil-drilling-black-women/
"LOS ANGELES — When the winds shifted last January and smoke from wildfires
settled into South LA, the city’s low-lying neighborhoods, residents there
didn’t need another study to tell them the air was unsafe. They could feel it.
For Iretha Warmsley, the soot raining down was another reminder of what decades
of fossil fuel extraction have done to her community.
On paper, South LA’s neighborhoods look like any other stretch of the city:
blocks of small houses, churches, playgrounds, and busy corner stores.
But behind chain-link fences and warning signs, oil wells still pump crude just
a few yards away from the homes of thousands of mainly Black and Latino people.
Warmsley, an LA native, has spent years educating her neighbors about this
hidden reality long before the fires came.
This year’s fires, which destroyed over 10,000 homes across the county, were
35% more likely to happen because of the burning of fossil fuels, according to
research from the World Weather Attribution and the University of California,
Los Angeles. The extraction, production, and use of fossil fuels contributed to
higher temperatures, a drier atmosphere, and drought. It was a “perfect storm,”
climate science researchers said, but for Warmsley, it was expected.
“As long as we allow oil companies to drill in Los Angeles, we allow them to
pollute the air we all share,” Warmsley, who is a member of Strategic Concepts
in Organizing and Policy Education, also known as SCOPE LA, wrote in a blog.
“It also gives them a blank check to continue to fuel climate change, which
helped make the January wildfires so intense and devastating for the entire
region.”
The cycle of pollution in the city’s Black neighborhoods is why she and other
Black women across the county are working to shut these oil wells down. They
are leading a movement that demands a transition that prioritizes community
health, equitable redevelopment, and reparative justice.
Fueled by the disproportionate burden of pollution and climate disasters,
organizers from groups like Black Women for Wellness, SCOPE LA, and Stand
Together Against Neighborhood Drilling are reframing climate action as an
extension of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. They are insisting that
clean air, safe housing, and the right to raise healthy families are
nonnegotiable tenets of climate activism."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
