DC Earth Day events embrace environmental justice
Originally published Wednesday, May 5, 2021 for Sourcing and Interview Techniques class, Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies
On Saturday morning, volunteers holding clear trash bags while wearing gloves and blue “Earth Day 2021” t-shirts, pick up trash at Pope Branch Park and a nearby abandoned train track.
For two hours on this sunny spring day, the 40 volunteers collect alcohol bottles, red solo cups, food containers, water bottles, car parts, and the occasional mask. The volunteers are in a neighborhood that is not theirs and likely new to them. At the Earth Day event, the act itself, of repeatedly bending, picking, and tying trash bags inherently feels good, for both humans and the environment.
“Today is a great day to collect good trash,” Dolly Davis site coordinator said.
From conservation to environmental justice
The first Earth Day occurred in 1970 and was the birth of the environmental movement, but it did not include the same “sensibility” towards environmental justice as it does today, Malini Ranganathan, Ph.D., an American University professor who teaches environmental injustice said. The reframing of Earth Day, according to Dr. Ranganathan grew from the public assertion of people of color and the efforts of a more youth-focused environmental justice movement.
“It was a much more unpeopled environment, right? It was the sort of environment that had needed saving from people, that needed saving from destruction,” Dr. Ranganathan said. “And it wasn’t an environment that was thought of as actually, disproportionately affecting people of color and poor people and indigenous people.”
In DC’s Ward 7, where Dr. Ranganathan researches environmental justice issues, extreme weather is not their most pressing concern, she said. Instead, the concern is about access to healthy meals, transportation, and asthma exacerbated by “low green cover” or lack of trees. The communities of Ward 7, according to Dr. Ranganathan, also face the issue of waste dumping because the neighborhoods are sometimes thought of as disposable.
“Whenever we spoke with people who are organizers or community leaders, or even just residents, they always talked about sort of the day-to-day survival as being most pressing,” Dr. Ranganathan said.
Planting Earth Day knowledge
At Ward 8CO7 Commissioner Salim Adofo’s Earth Day event was a community trash cleanup with an environmental justice component. The event’s goals, according to its website, were to mobilize residents across Ward 8 about plastic pollution, develop partnerships, and overall elevate the issue of environmental justice.
The Earth Day event took place at Oxon Run Park, Adofo said because that is where the community does outside learning, hangs out, walks their dogs, and relaxes in a natural space. The last time Adofo was there, he said kids were learning about the life of worms while sitting nearby trash.
“Looking at all of the trash, the things that are in the park and the waterway, that’s the creek, that’s in the park, which is being polluted, that makes it difficult for the children and then for people who just want to enjoy the park,” Adofo said.
Up the street from Oxon Run Park, Adofo said is the elementary school that in 2016 had elevated lead levels in the water. More recently, Ward 8 has been reeling from an increase in gun violence and according to Adofo, one way to “detract” from gun violence is to create a cleaner and safer community.
“I think that when people see a clean space, they have a different respect for it and they’ll treat other people that way,” Adofo said. “But when we live amongst, some of the filth that we may have in some of these spaces, it produces a different kind of result.”
Earth Day is also a chance to talk about the positive, Adofo said.
“I also think that Earth Day is a good day to talk about what’s right, and what’s some of the great things that we can do,” Adofo said. “I was always told that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is today.”
A “DC-area tradition”
The Anacostia Watershed Society’s website calls their Earth Day Cleanup a “DC-area tradition” and held the first one in 1995 to bring attention to the health of the Anacostia River.
Community engagement coordinator, Stacy Lucas said the event connects individuals across DC and Maryland who live by the watershed, as well as government organizations. The event also introduces people who may not live in a certain community to new neighborhoods, Lucas said.
“Just seeing people come into a community that is new to them with one perspective and leaving out with a totally different perspective, which is much more positive,” Lucas said. “That’s my favorite part of the day.”
In general, the event’s message is “Swimmable & Fishable by 2025,” according to Lucas, but volunteers should look at the story behind the trash. She said she likes to tell volunteers to associate trash with community behaviors and beyond food containers and liquor bottles.
“It’s a story about why that trash is there, it’s a story behind the type of products of trash that you are constantly seeing in certain communities, right?” Lucas said. “There must be a lack of something, either there’s a lack of resources in regard to healthier food or different grocery stores.”
Just days before the Earth Day event, Davis, the site coordinator at Pope Branch Park, sent an email about the history of the park, its environmental issues, and a proposal for converting a railroad track to a hiking trail.
Davis wrote that she has been a part of the event for 22 years, began helping the park as a Ward 7 commissioner in 2000, and that DOEE renovated the park/creek in 2016. Still, Davis wrote that more awareness needs to be brought to the park which is a “HOT SPOT” for dumping.
“As we volunteer our time tomorrow, please keep in mind that there’s so much more work needed to do,” Davis wrote. “Currently, my community faces issues that many don’t see.”
The full Earth Day picture
At Pope Branch Park’s cleanup trash was in all sizes. It was whole or in one piece by the train tracks, in teeny tiny plastic pieces in the park where the grass had recently been mowed, and the color of mud, down by the stream, which goes into the Anacostia Watershed.
No matter the size, each piece of trash picked up was reflective of the human who put it there and part of a larger environment. The trash, volunteers, Earth Day, and cleaning up are all small parts of environmental justice.
At the end of the event, Davis rounded up the group of volunteers for a picture. While taking the group’s photo, a nearby trashman, who was there to pick up the collected Earth Day trash offered to take the picture for Davis.
“Come on y’all, Ms. Dolly needs to be in the picture,” the trashman said.
This created a more accurate image of Pope Branch Park and Earth Day, site leader Davis in her community with 40 volunteers in front of 1,250 1bs of trash.
