Theresa Landrum, July 24th, 2024

Theresa Landrum, July 24th, 2024

In this interview, Theresa Landrum shares her experience with climate change and its effects on her community and the city of Detroit.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

en-US

Theresa Landrum

Theresa Landrum is a lifelong Detroit resident and cancer survivor who has seen first hand the most adverse effects of climate change

Kevin Hawthorne

07/24/2024

1:02:11

Kevin Hawthorne: Hello. Visit the Detroit Historical Museum and this is Kevin Hawthorne for the oral history on climate change. I'm here today with.

Theresa Landrum: Theresa Landrum from Detroit, 48217n even. You want to start over?

KH: No. No. Go ahead. I was just going to ask. And if you could spell your name for the record.

TL: Okay. Theresa Landrum. T h e r e s a Landrum l a n d r u m.

KH: And do you live in the city of Detroit?

TL: Born and raised in the city of Detroit.

KH: In which neighborhood?

TL: In southwest Detroit, 40217. Downriver. The Fort Schaefer area between River Rouge Lincoln park and Melvin Dale.

KH: So those are all the areas you've lived in?

TL: No, that's the area that surrounds us that I grew up with. Because we're a borderline community. We're the first part of Detroit you hit when you come north on I-75, and we're the last part of Detroit. You leave going south on I-75.

KH: How long have you lived in that current neighborhood?

TL: All my life. Born and raised there.

KH: Born and raised. So you've never lived in any other area in Detroit. You've stayed in that one area.

TL: One area. My family lives on Liddesdale street. That's, my mom and dad had a house there, and then they bought a house, two houses down and hen I bought a house two houses down. So on the street of Liddesdale, we had three family homes.

KH: Oh, wow. Three family homes. And what did you purchase at home?

TL: I purchased at home, way back in, 1980.

KH: Oh, wow. And how have you seen the city change, you think, in that time?

TL: Well, in in in what I've seen, I've seen a drastic change in the city. I've seen the downturn that occurred, after the 67 riots, the white flight and I've seen the downturn, occur after the auto industry, really start shutting factories in my community and people losing jobs, losing homes. So I've seen a lot of change. I've seen industry expand and industry shut down, industry open up and so it's been, up and down like a roller coaster.

KH: And, working in the city of Detroit. Have you always, what lines of work have you done before the environmental justice?

TL: Before environmental justice, I had a myriad of, jobs. I worked for the state of Michigan as a prison guard. The women's prison Dhaco at the time, then they changed the name to Cotton. But the career that I had the longest was at General Motors. I was a master mechanic at General Motors. I started off as a production worker, and then I progressed up to what they call tool and distribution and then that department was under master mechanics. My family has a history with General Motors. My uncle was the first African-American supervisor, skilled trade school supervisor at Cadillac before it moved qnd that's where he retired from. My cousin currently works at General Motors qnd, I'm telling he's been a long termer he's been there over 38 years.

KH: oh wow So you have a lot of history with not just, the city of Detroit, but with the auto industry. So what first. When did you get into the environmental justice?

TL: Environmental justice? My introduction at the time, unknowing to me, was when I heard about U.S. ecology. They wanted to do, toxic waste injection wells in an area of I think it was Bellville, Ypsilanti and Romulus. And I heard about it, and, I didn't understand what it was. And then we understood that I had people and friends that lived out there in Romulus and Belleville in those areas, and there were more rural, and they were on well water and we wanted to understand how injection wells would impact the groundwater, surface water, a well, water of the residents there. So I went to a meeting and I understood it could be a dangerous thing. So that was my introduction, not knowing what it was at the time. Then, in later years, I went, back to my career, working for General Motors. And then I learned that, due to the actual experience, the Detroit salt mine, which we have two salt mines located in the city of Detroit. At the time, it was Morton Salt. The table saw it, and then it was Detroit Salt Mine, which produced the road salt. And that's right in my community, I can actually walk to them. And the Detroit Salt mine had closed, and then it was purchased and the new owners opened up, and they wanted to store toxic waste in the shafts. From my understanding, the closing happened because of instability of the shaft, the safety of the shafts of the Detroit Salt Company, and then to hear that a company would open up and want to store toxic waste down there. That was very disturbing, because the Detroit Salt Company and Morton salt it there, right on the mouth of the rouge river, the most polluted, river, that I know in the Detroit area, you know, they had the Rouge River clean up all the time. Well, that's where I live. Right there on the corner of fourth Street in Oakwood and, the salt company wanted, the new salt company, I think it was crystal mine wanted to open up and store toxic waste. And we didn't want that because we talked about erosion. We talked about we live, in our areas below the water table. What, how would they store it? And if the containers erode it? Would the leaching go into the Rouge River, which leads to the Detroit River, which leads to Lake Saint Clair, which is our freshwater drinking source and it would impact 86 million people in the United States and neighboring Canada. So, as a young woman, I join together with residents, just residents. We weren't environmental activists. We were just concerned residents. How would this impact us? And we went down and spoke before city council, and we presented a pretty good argument. And one of my arguments was because I was one of the speakers was, what happens if toxic waste leaches into our water system? How would that impact the wildlife? How would that impact us? And the city council, we asked them to rescind the the agreement. We asked them to rescind the contract and they heard us. They didn't rescind the contract. It resulted in the Detroit Salt Company changing its route where it was I mean, it resulted in the. Excuse me. It resulted in the the contract, or the push for the toxic waste to be stored, to be shut down, It ended it. And then moving forward as I was getting ready to talk about, we learned again that the sock company had been sold again and reopened, this time for excavation of the salt. We learned that by experiencing actual mini earthquakes from the blasting. Hearing it. Feeling it and experiencing the, disruption of our quality of life. We start to see sinkholes in our yards, we start to see cracked driveways, I had just had a new driveway lead. It was like when my driveway crack. And then we saw how the the doors and the windows begin to shift, and we were like, we didn't understand where it's coming from first of all. We heard the rumbling, we felt the experience and nobody knew that the city of Detroit had given the Detroit Salt Company new owner to actually blast underneath our homes. And what they were using was the same mixture of explosives that Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the federal morale building in Oklahoma City to blast and excavate salt. So again, we went down community residents, and we spoke before city council, and they heard us and they didn't rescind the contract. What they did, the salt company changed its direction to blast more so under what they considered, valuable land that didn't have a lot of impact on residential homes, because in southwest Detroit, we are densely populated in River Rouge in Ecorse, Michigan, the tri cities, which we call our sister cities were densely populated. And so when they changed their route, the mayor at the time of River Rouge gave them permission to blast underneath their city streets, but was on city streets, houses. So we really went to work, joining together and organizing to go down and speak and then to talk to each city for them to. Work with the Detroit Salt Company to change the route and where they were going to blast under city streets. It resulted in the Salt Company changing its direction where it was blasting salt and them changing the method of excavation they went to using liquid, dissolve it to get the pillars of salt off instead of explosives. So that was a victory for the community and that was my really my really first deep dive into understanding environmental justice, not calling it environmental justice at the time.

KH: And a when did you get involved with the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition?

TL: That came about, after working with a young lady called Rhonda Anderson of the Sierra Club. She's an African-American lady. She was the senior organizer for the Sierra Club qnd she came to our community after the 2003 blackout. Right and what happened was, during the blackout, you know, North America and Canada lost power for days. And when the homes lost power the industries lost power as well. That meant all pollution control factors shut down. So poison was being emitted into the air and what you learn about 48217 is along an industrial corridor we have more than 42 major and minor polluting sources along I-75, Pleasant Street, Jefferson, Dix Avenue, Miller Road. We have Marathon Oil Corporation, we have marathon asphalt. We have Great Lakes Marine Petroleum Company, which is another asphalt, their next door to each other. We have the Detroit Cell Company. We have U.S. Jimson. We have Cadillac asphalt. We have Ed Levi. We have a myriad of industrial factories that were without pollution control and we were having a lot of poison emit into the air. And if you knew anything about southwest Detroit when you came to our community, we were known for the stink, the Odors, because we also had the wastewater treatment plant, Saint Mary's and back when I was growing up, we had the glue factory, the linen factory. We had turnstead. We had Fleetwood, we had Cadillac. We have all these factories. and they were, and still today, those that exist emit dirty, dirty things. Greenhouse gases that is fueling our climate change. So when you talk about MEJC, you have to talk about how MEJC came about It came about through the, education that we as a community receive from Rhonda Anderson of the Sierra Club. She came to our community and she said, that she wanted to talk about the environment. But what we weren't clear on one, the area that we have, we have a high rate of cancer. We have a high rate of diabetes. We have a high rate of asthma. We have a high rate of sarcoidosis, upper respiratory diseases, obesity, heart disease, you name it, we have it. We even have residents that have experienced nasal cancer. And Rhonda Anderson came through the guidance and introduction of Doctor Delores Leonard, who was a pillar in our community, and Mrs. Miller. Her sister, who lived in River Rouge. And she was an educator. I think if I recall, Mrs. Miller was a principal of one of our River Rouge schools, and they were active Sierra Club members, and they really got involved with the environment. And they came in, they sat down and asked us, can we come in and talk to you? They didn't come in talking at us. They came in trying to understand how they could help us. And we sat down and we listened and we started to say, why do we have a lot of cancer and leukemia? And she said, did you ever think that it could come from the environment, the surrounding area? Because when I grew up, we had U.S. steel, which was formerly Great Lakes Steel, Dana Corporation, Kelsey and Hayes, BASF chemical, all these chemicals that we talked to, all these companies that my father, my cousins, my uncles, my brothers and even my sister and my nieces work that we grew up in this really densely populated community with orange air, foul smelling air, Black air, black suit and fallout, Silver quiche on our cars. Not understanding the very industries that our families worked at to put food on the table and a roof over our head were having a serious impact on our health.

KH: So obviously that's been a still prevailing issue, especially in southwest Detroit, where some of the construction of new bridges is still causing huge amounts of air pollution. Air pollution is one of the biggest things. But, in the past ten years, how what other aspects have you seen of climate change besides just the air quality going down? Have you seen any other adverse effects?

TL: Let me address MEJC first of all, that question that you asked prior, Rhonda Anderson, Sandra Turner-Handy who is now the interim director of Detroiters working for Environmental justice. Gloria Lowe, Gloria Rivera, Apaula. And other people came together and they started, the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition. They brought me in, and we became members of the Environmental Justice Coalition. That was a coalition built to address the inequities, the systemic, transportation, racism, environmental racism and issues that black people faced living in areas that were, having an impact on their health and so that came about. Other people I can't remember right now, were in, in it and they came together to build this coalition and, to talk about how could we stay grounded and rooted. And fight for justice for communities that were experiencing injustice. Economically, educationally, health, food sovereignty, all of that. So that's how image came about from it, from my remembering. And you have to realize it's been such a long time ago. I'm still a current member of MEJC. In fact, I am, presently on the steering committee, of MEJC, as well as on Environmental Justice Caucus, where we interact with legislators about policy change. We've been working with Senator Stephanie Chang, Representative Rachel Hood, Representative Abraham Aiyash, and others over the years to talk about policy change that's needed in the state of Michigan. And also I did miss your question. The other question was about what was the question?

KH: That I was just about to say, But also, we can come back to that question because, that response you gave was very good— and it gave me some —people when they hear about environmentalism and climate change, they have this one view. And when you hear a term like environmental racism, they might be, a lot of people are unfamiliar with that term. Could you explain what you mean by that term?

TL: Environmental racism. It comes after slavery ended, and then the states and the actual federal government instituted unspoken Jim Crow laws qnd the states on individual level, blacks still could not have the freedom to, go to a restaurant or to a movie and things like that. And that is what you call, part of environmental racism. What happens is, is when, after the, first wave of the, World War one, after the first wave of the Great Migration, as many people know in history, a lot of the African-Americans came north for better jobs so they could better their life. Well, then you had another wave right after World War Two. You had another wave of the great, migration. And because the — our white counterparts were being enlisted and going to was we know that a lot of the women of the homes began to work in the factories. Well, that wasn't enough to to to fund the the supplies and equipment needed to fight a war. So a lot of the industrial people and they went to South and they sought African-Americans to work in those factories. And so when the word got out about the jobs and that you could make a living wage, of course there was a wave of, African-Americans coming from the South. However, we have to remember what happened after slavery and when Jim Crow laws were instituted. Blacks could not just go anywhere and live. In fact, blacks were unable to purchase homes because the federal government, the banks, the insurance companies, the real estate companies and the mortgage companies would not give them loans or would not let them buy. And so they were directed and forced to live in areas that were called redlined areas and those were areas that, the more affluent people would, would find undesirable to live in. So an area that is heavily polluted with, water, being polluted because factories, it's still today. They have the right to dispel their wastewater into our waterways. That's the sewage infrastructure, the waterways. And we know it. That's across America and across the world. And so blacks were not allowed to move to greater Detroit or places like Allen Park, where I live, at Lincoln Park Wyndott, Trenton and Dearborn. And so we talk about systemic racism, we talk about environmental racism because blacks were forced to live in areas that were undesirable, where others would not live in the area that, the smells, the oldest from the chemicals, would actually permeate through the house, even if the windows were closed, the the the odors and the the chemicals they call salts, orders would come up in the drains so the houses would smell. So you look at what you call environmental racism because the environment from that the factories created, which was poor air quality, poor water quality, poor soil quality and vapor intrusion into folks homes was not a desirable place to live. Also living in that area, living below the water table, flood challenges. People were faced with flood challenges when there was heavy rains or when the, rivers overflowed. And things like that. So we talk about environmental racism. We talk about how the environment impacts black people that were forced and redlined to live in certain areas.

KH: All right. Thank you so much for, clarifying that that was a very great, answer. And, thinking about just climate change in general, especially, we've talked to a lot of people from the Jefferson Chalmers area, which has some of the worst flooding in in general in your area in the past couple of years. How have you noticed the flooding and just general issues raised from climate change? Have you seen that affecting your local community?

TL: Well, climate change has been something that we've been impacted by for decades. We know that climate change is a result of greenhouse gases attacking our protective ozone right? And, the we know that deforestation of our, rainforest and our jungles, because they're the the vegetation that create our climate, the rain, the whatever we have, the clean air, we know it comes from our, rainforest and our jungles, the vegetation, because we know about how plants are used now as buffers to offset, pollution, because we know the importance of plants. But to talk about areas like Jefferson Chalmers, to talk about areas like Grosse Pointe, to talk about areas like, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, it is is funny to me because for decades, southwest Detroit, 48217 River Rouge in Ecorse. We've suffered with flooding for decades. So when we had the flooding that really saw impact in areas that were more affluent, we were like, well, we've been dealing with this forever. So, you know, it's not a shock to us to have flooding, to have basement backups, and to constantly have our streets flooded. I actually have pictures on my phone and on my computer of the last rain. We just had it and my street Liddesdale street looks like a river. You can actually get a canoe and paddle down it. So for others to talk about the historic flooding of Jefferson Chalmers, we've been dealing with it for decades and has been ignored, ignored by the federal government because FEMA was not brought in, ignored by the state, because resources from the state were not brought in, and even ignored by the city of Detroit. To know that we flood and have been flooding for decades. Actually, the Detroit city, in my opinion, is the direct cause of more of the serious flooding that we see today because they designed the infrastructure after they built the Oakwood Pumping Station, central sewage overflow in my community under the Kilpatrick administration for $200 million. They put in new sewers and redid the streets and what they did, they paved over the drainage system. They actually built the system wrong so we have been experiencing flooding of our streets for some time. So when we saw people in Dearborn Heights and people in Jefferson Chalmers and people in Grosse Pointe talk about, we're flooding and see the water coming, their windows. Well guess what? That's a that's an everyday occurrence for us. So it was nothing unusual for us. So we were saying to ourselves, in my community, they're seeing what we — they're seeing an experience of what we've been dealing with for years.

KH: No, I that's an absolutely valid frustration that like you've had that for years and now suddenly it's affecting more and more people, especially with climate change. There's still some people who are, you know, very adamant against, but more and more people are seeing the more adverse fate. Are you hoping that will cause more solidarity with people to hopefully get things done, or are you are you less optimistic about that?

TL: I'm praying for solidarity, but I would like to address what else we see. We have been dealing with thermal inversion for years because of all the factories around us, and all the concrete and all the asphalt. And for those that don't know what thermal inversion is, it means that the heat comes down, bounces off the earth and goes up and cools. Well, because we don't have a lot of green space, because we have a lot of factories, the heat stays down. So we experience hotter temperatures than other parts of the city. So when you talk about the experiences, what people are experiencing in climate change, recognizing, understanding it. We've been dealing with it for years. And for those that do not believe that climate change is happening, look how we see through the magnificent and ingenuity of TV and radio what we did not used to see and hear we can now see on our phones, on our watches, on our TVs and on our radios. The increase in tsunamis, monsoons, Earthquakes, Volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes and flooding. a\Also the opposite, they increased in the fires in the west. Nevada, California, New Mexico. Now we see the fires from the north in Canada impacting our quality of life. I have received no less, I think, last year than 31 alerts about poor air quality from the city of Detroit, saying that sensitive populations should either stay and don't open their windows if they have air conditioner, use air conditioner. If they go outside, wear a mask, right? We actually had one the other day. Then we see where, the roads are flooding. I 75 Lodge 96 94 and just last year and year before Southfield Expressway, cars floating by, right, trucks getting stalled. We've been experiencing that in southwest Detroit, 48217, where I live the year of, 2023, 2022 and 2021 when we had those heavy rains in June, July and August of 21. We saw that we did not have any exit, all the roads were flooded. One of our main thoroughfares, fourth Street, was flooded. The other one, Shafer, was flooded to the north 75 was floored. It flooded to the east and to the west. Jefferson was flooded and going west Going towards 9-94, all the buybacks were flooded on all the major streets that are entrances and exits to our community, other spaces outer drive, all the barracks were flooded so we couldn't get out. And we have been talking with the city of Detroit for many, many years. Various, mayors since the Coleman Young administration, about a area specific evacuation plan. How are you going to get us out? Then when you talk about the construction of the new Gordie Howe Bridge. Well, what we have in the city of Detroit. Is 144 square miles. I bet you 90% of that area is a brownfield contamination. So we're living on contaminated land. Our schools, our churches, our home are on contaminated land. Then when the automotive industry went down, we saw all the factories that subsidized the automotive industry die, right? And they tore the buildings down or left the buildings to go to disrepair and be vandalized and become environmental hazards. What they did, they just tore the buildings down for the bridge. They did not mitigate that soil. So what we have are hundreds of acres, thousands of acres of land that's heavily contaminated with lead arsenic, cadmium. A myriad of things and what they do, they under Jennifer Granholm, with the swipe of her pen, she said, put the Gordie Howe Bridge in Delray. They tried to really work about putting it down in Trenton and the downriver area down where the old McLeod steel used to be, and other factories. But the white community said, aren't we good people? How are you going to do that to good people? Rhonda Anderson of the Sierra Club was there. She said, well aren't we good people too, in reference to black people. So we see how the regulatory agency and our government works. In my opinion black people are considered less than human still From slavery days and that still impacts us. That's how we have environmental racism. That's why we have systemic racism. Racism is so deeply woven into the fabric of America iIt cannot be separated. Not from slavery days. Up until now, in the year 2024.

KH: Absolutely. Especially a lot of people do not realize that issues of environmentalism and racism are absolutely intertwined in, you know, everything is intersectional, everything intersects with each other, and all these issues are connected and obviously, as you said, the city of Detroit in your mind has not done enough. What in your mind, if you could sit down with the city of Detroit and tell them what actions they need to take, what do you think you would tell them?

TL: Oh, this is ironic. I was just on a meeting with the sustainability director and many others yesterday, and I actually got in. I would like to sit down with the city, because you have to see strategically how the city is working all the investment dollars that are coming under this current administration and under the archer administration. They're going directly to uplift downtown, Midtown, Tech Town and Corktown. The borderline communities were predominantly African-American, are not seeing those investment dollars. We see communities such as 48217 left out of the major dollars. We have been intentionally left out of the Joe Louis Greenway, The Iron Belt and the Great Lakes way. They're opting to go around us and join with more suburban cities like Lincoln Park, Allen Park and avoid 48217. We're home to marathon. marathon is part of the largest oil refinery industry in the nation because of his, most recent, in latter years, ten years acquisitions. It's the only oil refinery in the state of Michigan. Back in the mid 2000s. We understood the marathon wanted to do a $2.2 billion expansion. At the cost of what? Residential homes and property. So we have seen over the years marathon, the Detroit Salt Company, Cleveland Cliffs, Eddie Levi. Encroach further and further on residential neighborhoods. So that is having a serious detrimental impact. And what we have not seen is economic redevelopment happen in my community along fourth Street from Schaefer to Outer Drive we had a great business area. Well, back when I was growing up, we had a Chevrolet that actually sold corvettes right on the corner from my house. We had restaurants, we had hotels, we had beauty shops, we had churches, we had, restaurants. We had it right there in the heart of 48217. But back when I was, a child, we learned that I-75 was coming from Florida all the way to South Saint Mary. Where did they choose to put that expressway? Right through the center of 48217. So therefore black homes were lost to eminent domain. I have a lot of friends when I was going to school at Boynton, say as a child, me not understanding, we got a move and we said, why? Because they told us to. So eminent domain came through and and that was part of the conversation that was on the white House Environmental Justice Summit today, which is going is live now. And they talked about how transportation, racism, how they made sure that they did least invasion into the white communities as possible by draining major thoroughfares right through the black neighborhood, destroying it. We know the historical loss of Black Bottom here in Detroit. Then 375 took that curve, and now they're talking about restoring the area, right, with a walkable boulevard. So here we go again another disruption. The powers that be don't take into consideration or they do take in consideration, and they decide to disrupt and impact African-American communities. And in my opinion, I do not think that the improvements for downtown, Midtown, Tech town, Corktown and those such areas are for black people. I go into restaurants today that I used to go many years ago. And the population and the patronage is are white. I feel out of place. I feel uncomfortable because I never forget I was, at, coming from one of my hospital visits because I'm a cancer survivor. My mother and father both died of cancer my younger brother, had cancer, and we're both survivors. Going to Karmanos. I used to go right on Woodward walk from, the, DMC Karmanos, Medical Center area and walk to Union Street just to have a bowl of black bean soup. And when I went in there, after years change, I went in one day, and I felt so out of place and uncomfortable because when I went in, I was going to sit down. But the the, the patrons were— I didn't see any black people other than myself. And when I went in that door, all eyes turn to me and I was like, oh my God, the change. So I don't feel welcome in my own city that I was born and raised in. So the changes that I've seen. I'm glad for the changes but I want my community and I want black people to be included. I see that when I look at Corktown right there Clemon garden. There's a predominantly African-American community of townhouses and apartments. Guess what? They're going to be raised. And I know that the African-Americans that live there, 99.9%, will not be coming back. They were born there and they will not be coming back. They say they have first opportunity, but it was not guaranteed in writing that the residents that leave will be able to come back. So the changes I see, I see gentrification with a double edge swift sword with sword knocking out the African-American populations and so that's what I'm disappointed about. As a lifelong Detroiter, I want to see inclusion of all respects. I don't want it to go back to, to Jim Crow days. Where the cities were predominantly white and blacks were still on the outskirts, living in areas that were undesirable to live in.

KH: Absolutely. And so in your mind with, what green infrastructure projects and, you know, being inclusive to all people and then green infrastructure projects, what do you think is the way forward to see not only change that is meaningful in the city, but change that is inclusive of every single person who actually lives in the city, not just the wealthy tourist or the people who have decided to you know, people are saying, oh, Detroit's hot right now. Like it's becoming a bigger city, which, you know, on one hand, that's a wonderful thing. Detroit has had years of being, you know, kind of looked down upon. And seeing it rise up is nice. But you and many other people we've interviewed have talked about, like, but what about the people who have actually lived here for years? We're going to say Detroit is nice. But then maybe in ten years, you know, it'll be like, oh, we're like the next Chicago, but at the cost of what has happened. So what do you think the city could do that would be meaningful change. That would also include people in terms of maybe like green infrastructure and what have you?

TL: Well, I'm glad you asked that question. I happened to be on the CEAC and that was helping to create a, resiliency strategic planning for the city of Detroit and one of the things that we talked about was home ownership right? Blacks are losing their homes to the over taxation and due to property taxes not being paid with. They're losing them because, the baby boomers are the ones who are the anchors of the city. Their income has been frozen in the sense that cost of living has gone up and they retired 30 some maybe 40, 20 years ago, even ten, 15 years ago. Their incomes are staying the same, but utilities increased gas, food, everything and Covid really brought that out, the disparities. Not only the disparities in food and in utilities and the cost of living, but also in education. When Covid hit, we realized the digital divide that the digital, access, the digital avenue that is now our communication source, that is now our avenue forward, and we don't have that in a lot of communities because the system is not. Designed to lift up black communities. Many of the infrastructure folks and the companies that provide the technology, they're not investing dollars in black communities. Matter of fact, right before I came here, I was so frustrated. I paid some of the highest prices for internet and it keeps saying no internet, no internet. So I got a deal with Comcast, right? Well, a lot of people are not computer literate. A lot of the seniors in Detroit don't have internet. They don't have cable. So they are blocked out. The way of information now is through technology, and we have to have that in all communities. I know in part of River Rouge because my family still — I still have family because when we came from the south, my family located in Ecorse. They later moved to River Rouge and then moved to Southwest Detroit, where I was born and raised. You can go in some spots of River Rouge, no internet service, Ecrose no internet service. And pockets in Detroit no internet service. So we're leaving out a great deal of people because the infrastructure has not been put into place to uplift these areas. And when you talk about green spaces, you have to look at where I live at. I can only come from my personal experience. There's not much land for green spaces because of the overburden of industry. Guess where the green spaces are coming from? They're coming from houses being torn down. They're coming from, spaces where people have lost their property and houses that fell into disrepair. So our streets are looking like, the a jack o lantern. A house here, missing house here, then missing space. So we have to look at the void where it's coming from. It's coming from residential property loss. That's where the green space is coming from. Because if you look at what's happening in downtown Detroit, you don't have much green space. The building of LCA of the, Tiger Stadium, Ford Field, the new jail, now, the new soccer stadium, that's going to be concrete. So green space is being left. I mean, green space is not being preserved. What I think we should do. Create more spaces for green space. Oh years ago, we had the EPA come in because, as I told you, 75 runs right through the center of 42817 , right by our only public school, right by our community center. Their backdrop is cars on I-75. The other backdrop to the west north is Marathon's oil refinery and then the salt company and then to the west we have more than 110 tanks, storage tanks, because that's the other part of Marathon's storage plant with that big basketball is. It used to be a baseball when I was a kid. That's where I live at. Beyond that, you have factories and industrial corridors. So we're losing our green space. So they should be working on how to create more green space in communities that are heavily, densely populated and what vegetation it will take to create a better environment because we suffer with the most, polluted air. At one point, we were deemed the most polluted, area zip code in the state of Michigan. And that's, according to a University of Michigan School of Public Health study done by Doctor Paul Mohi and Doctor Byung Sook and their team. Then you look at the, Michigan environmental justice screening tool. You look at the EPA screening tool. You look at the white House center, on environmental quality screening tools, and you see the most areas that are considered disadvantage are black communities. And that comes about because of the, the the parameters, the indicators, flooding, heat, income level, educational level, location, poor air quality. Poor air quality. We meet a lot of the indicators in southwest Detroit for 8 to 1 seven. I've been doing this over 25 years, not understanding at the time what environmental justice was, but now I know is the fair, equitable treatment of all people, especially black people. And we know from historical facts that the indigenous, the Native Americans and African Americans through slavery are the most abused races of people. And here in America, we still suffer the highest ratio impact. From not being able to get car insurance at an affordable rate., house insurance at affordable rate health insurance at a affordable rate. Quality food because many of the communities that I've talked about, we have food deserts. We don't have a and we don't have a health facility. right? We have to go out of our community to go to a health facility. And then we know that was orchestrated in the debt betting process during the 70s and 80s, because they want to build these great umbrellas, like the Detroit Medical Center and New Henry Ford Health Center and Beaumont and all of them, which are now Ascension and what have you. And we we saw that with our schools also under these emergency managers. I really don't think that the emergency managers were necessary. And I truly do not believe that the city of Detroit was in bankruptcy. I believe it was orchestrated, and, contrived for control and power to be taken right? And right now, I feel that that's one of the things, we do not have, the equitable treatment for all communities and for our people. We have a huge population of our Hispanic neighbors. And, and in some areas, I think they're overcrowded. We need housing, and we need affordable housing. We need a true affordable water plan because we see thousands and thousands of people getting their water shut off every year. You know what I mean on a daily basis. We see thousands of people due to the laws that were put into place. People's homes are being taken. We're the only, I think, country in the world that do not. We cannot own our property outright. I forgot what what it's called, but in other countries they can actually own a property. A property cannot be taken for taxes, so they have heir property. We don't a person dies, can't pay the taxes then is taken over by the Detroit Land Bank. And then the is a hardship put on people that they need to sit down and and look at and talk to the people. So getting back to talking about green space and we have a new sustainability director. Mr. Farah, we were on a call, just yesterday, and they need to talk to the people. Because the former homeowners are now a current renters because they lost their homes to taxes. People bought the houses through auction and everything and LLCs they've taken over. They own thousands of houses. They don't even live in Michigan. So we have absentee landlords. So we had this this whole dynamic where our city is being lost and do — I mean being lost to outsiders and the people that live here don't own anything, and that's that should be sat down and thought about how can we work to make sure that the long term residents, the taxpayers that have kept the city afloat, are put into places where they can stabilize the community? You know, I know a couple of my friends, they used to own their property, didn't even know their property was being sold out from under them, and they were in a fight to get it back. They lost, of course. And so now they have to pay the price, whoever that absentee landlord is or they don't have a home. So we had to sit down. We had to create our own think tank. And and we have to do this dissection of each community at a time. We have to eat this elephant one bite at a time. Who are the experts to talk about? This is the community. People that deal with it every day, right? We live that experience. Why aren't we being consulted? Why aren't we being allowed in the room to have a seat at the table? Right? And that's where they failed. They failed the residents because they do not include them. We have people making decisions for us, without us. And that's a hardship. We see right now with the Michigan Public Service Commission you have three people that makes the decision on whether to raise the utility rates when the DTE or Gleewa were asked for a rate increase right? They always be able to say, we're going to improve this, we're going to do, infrastructure improvement, but they fail the people that need it the most. DTE just had a rate increase. Then a few months before that had another rate increase. Then they're coming back for another eight rate increase. All these improvements they did doing for other people are not going to the people that need it the most and all the things that they invest in. They put — they recoup it by putting increased rates on the people that are struggling to pay their bill. Why isn't water a human right? Water that comes from the sky that comes from God, that Mother Earth creates for us to exist? Why do we have to pay drainage fee and non pervious use fee? It's just taken away and eating away at the income, the limited fixed income that the older population has and the the stakeholders of the city are the baby boomers now. Our young people, they live in in condos, they live in an apartment. They're not buying property. We have to look at the land value, the land value that we live on. We only have one Mother Earth. We cannot go anywhere. So as we increase technology, increase factories, increase growth of businesses, we're seeing a decrease in housing and population. What do you need to exist? You need people. But if you impact into people, the very people you need? You know, you building a pipe dream, right? The automotive industry working at General Motors. When we found out that they they were going to cut 250 jobs. General Motors, in my opinion, stabbed themselves in the foot because the very base, their base that bought their cars was the General Motors workers. And when they cut those jobs— that's why the auto industry lost so many jobs. That's how they went into needing assistance from the government, because the very customer base that was held them up, they cut the jobs so they couldn't afford to buy the product. So guess what they did? They increase the the price of a car three times over right? I haven't had a new car in years. The last time I bought a new car was in 2003. in 2003 I think I bought a new car. I paid off my last one. I have a used car, right? Because my other one got stolen, of course. You know, we talk about a high crime rate. We don't talk about the things that causes the crime rate to increase and that's poverty and locking people out. So crime is going to increase. So we need to talk about how can we reduce carbon emissions, increase green space. Therefore to offset the carbon emissions that are destroying, protective ozone and that's fueling climate change and that is to talk to the people. Talk to them how they can use vegetation buffers along, the major thoroughfares like, I 75, I 96 and I 94. We need to talk about the right vegetation that will generate, for oxygen to go into the air right? To help that, we need to talk about— we sit down with industry to talk about what be pollution control mechanisms can be used to reduce pollution right? Right now we have marathon asking —we just had a hearing with them a couple of months ago to increase, to go to 100% capacity. What does that mean? That means an increase in pollution. If we want to offset pollution, shouldn't the company be using the best pollution control mechanisms where there's no fixed standard F\for that to say, when you want to increase pollution, what are you going to do to reduce pollution? They say, well, we're going to reduce pollution this way but what they have done is they have purchase retired credits from other companies that have shut down, so they can use those credits and say, well, we haven't met our threshold and we can add these pollution credits here so we can increase more pollution. So for areas that have serious air problems and us being deemed the most polluted because of the overburden of industry, that's a hardship to hear that a company wants to increase pollution, but say what they're going to be a good neighbors? I sit on the community advisory panel for marathon and I hear this "oh, we I our year end profits were this!" But then I want to tell them where I, I death rate from cancer. We just lost two people, one yesterday and another one, I think, the day before from cancer in our community. We had — we lost last summer. We lost a nine year old kid from Mark Twain School. He died of an asthma attack. He was at school the last day of school, that week we get air quality alert that the air quality was bad because of the impact of the Canadian wildfires, combined with the pollution from industry. Right? Cumulative impact. This kid struggled the whole year to breathe. So we have a right to breathe clean air. But this child was not given that right to breathe clean air and to live a full, productive life because of an illness he was born with. Our children are being born with asthma and that's not normal. And we have to look at those things that are impacting our kids. Do you know that there is no serious study in our area to see how many children were impacted by lead coming from Cleveland Cliffs former Ford Rouge plant or US steel, former Great Lakes steel or coming from other industries like DTE before they shut down or U.S. Jimson or other industries? The mothers, the childbearing age mothers living there, Their children were being, impacted in vitro with lead poisoning. Nobody studied that to say whether these people of childbearing age should not live in front of this factory. Now we hear that U.S. steel has been purchased by Nippon, a Japanese company, and they're poising to open up and operate. That means what? More pollution from my community again. We are an area that has been a nonattainment for sulfur dioxide and for ozone for many years. and with DTE shutting down in 2021 and U.S. steel going idle in 2020, the air quality as far as sulfur dioxide improved because it was a decrease, right? that EPA wanted to and still, I think, focus on calling the area area of attainment. In other words, it would meet the National Ambient air quality standards. Right. Well, guess what. If Nippon Open back up, what's that mean? More pollution. So that plus that was given to the improvement of air quality will turn into a minus. So we have to look at those things. So I think that. The question you asked me about. If they sat down and talked to me, what would I say? What would I ask for? I would ask for them to work with community., to mandate industry use the best available pollution control technology. And also go to alternative sources instead of coal or coke or pet coke. That they transition to green energy. What could those green energies be? They could be a combination of solar, hydro wind turbine, electrification and others, right? So they don't want to do it because it costs money and what they care about is their bottom dollar to create profits for their stockholders. Well, how many black people do you know own stock in U.S. steel? who own stock in DTE, own stock in marathon? Not many. Because they can't afford it. And then the riskiness of the stock market, that's another day, another subject for another time, because we know manipulation and then we know the manipulation of data to say, oh, well, for it to one seventh here, it's not as bad as it is. They manipulate the numbers. Then we have to work on policy change. Because right now industry does self reporting. They report their own data to Great Lakes environment, and energy company. That's an industry— to me the books are being cooked and and they're given, what I call, skewed data to make their numbers look good. They always know how to make— so we're decreasing this way. But over here, they're not reporting how they're increasing. And I really think the EPA should sit down with community and talk about cumulative impact and cumulative impact. Because right now cumulative impact is not considered cumulative impact is, each industry in its many, many, many chemicals. Each chemical is evaluated on an individual basis and each company is evaluated on an individual basis. But if you look at all the chemicals that one company emit with all the chemicals that another company emit and they combine together, you get an over and burden of cumulative impact. And we have to realize that that's what our state, that's what our federal government has to do to look at all the chemicals being emitted from each company and the next company, all the chemicals that they're emitting, and the next and the next and the next. Because if you look at all the chemicals that 42 companies are emitting, and each chemical is given a threshold on an individual basis, layered is given a threshold, mercury is given a threshold, arsenic is given a threshold, tiling is given a threshold, benzene is given a threshold, but they're not looking at all combined together. And who has done a long term study on a community to say this is allowable amount? We have parts per trillion, parts per million, parts per billion of each chemical. But guess what? All of them are contributing to the poor air quality. Someone asked me before, they said, well, Teresa, we're not the only ones! We only, emit 3% of the sulfur dioxide. Where do Trenton Channel and River Rouge, channel they emit 80%. But you. I give him a pie chart. I said, well, I'm gonna give each bad person a bottle of red dye and clear water— no a barrel of arsenic, I say. And it takes 17%. Arsenic to kill a person. This water is only 17%. So DTE US steel. They put in their red dye or our stick into the water. But the person is not dead. So your company put their 3% in their in the person die. Who's responsible for that person dying? Is it the people that had the, the, 97% or the, the one that added the 3% that caused the 17% when the person would die? Right? No. You all contributed to the death of that person. So what straw does it take to break the camel's back? And that's what we have to look at. And I really think that they should look at sitting down with residents and creating eco friendly houses. And if they can do one house at a time, one block at a time, one street at a time, then we look at stabilization. But they're not doing it. They're investing their money in downtown with industry and building more concrete when what needs stabilization on the very taxpayers that creates the money that creates the city budget to keep the city going.

KH: All right. Well thank you. I think that is a good place to end it. Thank you so much for your time today and for your perspective.

TL: Well, thank you so much, Mr. Hawthorne

KH: Thank you.