Fresh Voices: Recognizing the Intersections, Inspired by Love of Their City
by JV Valladolid
Most of the articles in Living Peace are written by sisters, associates, or staff. Fresh Voices is a column written by, or focusing on, someone outside the CSJP community to help raise awareness on specific issues.
Meet JV, 33 years-old, born and raised in Newark, they have been working for the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) for close to 10 years, first as a volunteer in direct family services and for the last two years as a Frontline Communications Manager for environmental justice. JV shared with us what drew them to this work, why they are passionate about it, and how they keep that passion alive.
My background is in reproductive justice and sexuality education in Newark and throughout New York City for adults and persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. I went to the Family Success Center at ICC as a volunteer. As a first-generation child of immigrants, in a community that is primarily Spanish and Portuguese speaking, I thought it was amazing that ICC was offering services for free. Then I learned more about environmental justice through my proximity to it and really liked it.
I’m interested in the intersection of social issues and environmental justice. I continue to volunteer with the sexuality education organization Masakhane Center in Newark, and that’s one of the things I find important to share with people who are joining us to become educators. There is research published about heat island effects on pregnant people. Just living in a place that has less green space and is literally hotter than other places can impact pregnancy outcomes. In Newark we have a long history of several decades of facilities that have targeted the city and have left pollution as their legacy.
One of the biggest campaigns that was just starting when I came in two years ago is a proposal for a fourth fossil fuel power plant in Newark. The community is only four-square miles. This is something that has been proposed by the largest sewage wastewater processing facility on the East Coast, which also happens to be in Newark, Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission. They service dozens of other municipalities outside of Newark, but they have open pits of sewage. It looks like swimming pools full of human waste, and that contributes to the smell in the community. And New Jersey has this stereotype of New Jersey smells. And it’s true, and unfortunately our community gets different terrible smells that are not just unpleasant, but sometimes it means that students don’t go outside during recess or people are shutting their windows or getting headaches or feeling nauseous throughout the day.
Over 30 years ago we received the largest garbage incinerator in the state of New Jersey, and we had the discovery of Agent Orange in over 17 miles of the Passaic River that runs alongside many communities. Agent Orange was being manufactured in Newark, right in the Ironbound neighborhood, which is the neighborhood that we focus the most on because of its proximity to the facilities and that heavy industrial zoning. Once the facility shut down, all those byproducts stayed. So, the cleanup effort has been decades long, because a lot of these chemicals linked to cancer, including dioxin, don’t mix with water. Plus, there are three existing fossil fuel power plants, over 100 brownfield sites, and limited green space. There are so many things that are really stacked up against the community in terms of public health issues. The work that our team focuses on is how we can inform policy, not just for Newark but for communities that look very much like ours throughout the country.
We consider ourselves frontline communities, communities that are impacted by climate crisis in a very quick and real way and at the negative receiving end of a lot of what the rest of the state might take for granted, like turning on a light bulb or flushing a toilet or throwing out garbage. We are not the only community that unfortunately has been targeted in this way. We know that a lot of communities throughout the country are experiencing the same thing. It’s why we have relationships with other environmental justice organizations throughout the country to think up strategies.
Inspiration to Stay the Course
The team that I work with has been a source of inspiration. We currently have less than 12 people and most of them are women, women of color or gender expansive people. Everyone on our team has grown up in environmental justice or frontline communities, so I really feel like all of us are invested in supporting one another and in how we continue this work.
The legacy of the community work before I came in is inspiring too. When that incinerator was proposed over 30 years ago, the people who were protesting it were community members who may still be involved with us now but are much older. When we do toxic tours of the community and show groups just how close residential life is to heavy industrial zoning and those legacy pieces of Superfund sites, we like to end at the park which was only made possible by protesting and organizing and community solidarity that happened decades before I was around, so they were able to save a park from demolition and push for a park to be built.
Community work has made it so that the Environmental Justice Law of New Jersey (S232) was passed, and that was beautiful to see. Over 300 people showed up to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection public hearing in Newark and shared over two hours of testimony, saying that the Environmental Justice Law is something that they support. And being able to defeat a sludge facility that wanted to come into our neighborhood last year, even before the Environmental Justice Law was fully implemented, those are things that I find motivating. This shows how a frontline community can be truly active in the policymaking process.
It feels like every week there’s something to celebrate and at the same time, we’re figuring out how next week we’ll be continuing in a different fight. So, while there are wins that I really appreciate being able to reference, I would say some anxiety exists around some of the current issues that we’re dealing with.
Our 30-plus-year-old garbage incinerator continues to have their permit renewed, they keep getting the okay to continue operating and this same incinerator has over 800 air permit violations on record. They have become very savvy on the kind of language that allows them to come across as using green technology. We consider that greenwashing: a way of telling people we’re just your friendly neighborhood waste management. Instead, they are burning garbage every single day by the tons into this neighborhood that already has the highest rate of asthma in the whole state.
The Environmental Justice Law very simply says that the Department of Environmental Protection has the power to now deny permits to new facilities that may contribute more pollution to communities that have already been overburdened by facilities and pollution, and that took over 12 years to get on the books. And only as of April did it get fully implemented.
How I Keep Balanced
It is interesting working in and enjoying the community that you also know is dealing with all these issues. But I always say that the only way that there has been over 30 years of people coming together to fight for it is because we love it so much, and I really, really love the city.
One of the things I’m currently doing is, if possible, I’ll take a meeting on a walk. I’m at Branch Brook Park right now, which is closest to where I live, and it’s a gorgeous park. So, I think reconnecting to nature is this really great escape that I find is so pleasant. Nature gives me a lot of joy and peace and silence. It’s a sense of reciprocity that drives wanting to see our communities thrive, and so this is a way that I feel regenerated to keep going.
I have an older sister and an older brother. And my parents live only about 10 minutes from where I live, also within the city of Newark. And then in terms of the friendships that I have, I have friendships outside of work, but also people that tend to care about what’s going on in the community, or what’s going on in other social issues of the world. Connecting with people that I really love and care about also feels regenerating. When the work seems difficult, I think about a person that I care about, and I think about how pollution harms them and all of us in Newark and cities like ours. My teammates tend to also be friends, and we just check up on each other. We may have lunch together during the workday or work together at a café. It always does come back to a conversation about the work that we do, but we also really enjoy each other as people.
Our director Maria Lopez-Nuñez was appointed to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. And that’s incredible because this is a person who has dedicated a large part of their life to the work that’s happening here in the Ironbound. I find that that’s also something that feels really motivating, that this is something that’s now being talked about at a national level. It makes me hopeful for what can happen with future initiatives.
This article appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Living Peace.