Environmental Justice

Despite sharing many individual goals, local environmental groups largely confined their advocacy to their home state.

The city will have to increase its testing and monitoring under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

An event held on the banks of the Mississippi River was a symbolic step for communities in both Missouri and Illinois that routinely face similar air quality issues.

“I’ve heard that 20-something years, so seeing is believing,” one resident said.

Throughout this season, we have introduced you to urban farmers, people working on the ground to change their environment, politicians working to pass environmental legislation, and more. But there are also many environmental scholars working to provide a space for Black environmentalists to thrive. That’s why we are introducing you to Dr. Dorceta Taylor, an author and professor at the Yale School for the Environment. In this episode, we hear about Dr. Taylor’s work in environmental studies, the contributions Black folks have made to the environmental justice movement, and the power community leaders have to transform the environments where they live.

This fall, about 20 Black faith leaders will take an environmental bus tour to examine St. Louis locations that have irrigation and air quality systems, sustainable buildings and repurposed sites to better understand how to protect the environment and keep their congregations healthy.

Democratic Representative Cori Bush made history when she became the first Black Congresswoman for Missouri, unseating the Clay political dynasty. She brought her background as a nurse, activist, organizer, single mom and pastor to her new role and has jumped headfirst into advocating for issues ranging from reparations for Black Americans to taxing billionaires to Medicare for All. She teamed up with Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth to introduce a bill that would bring together federal agencies and create a mapping tool to help allocate environmental funding from the Biden administration. Just last week, she also joined forces with New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce a $1 trillion dollar bill to fund environmental justice projects for the next four years. In this episode, we’ll hear from Senator Tammy Duckworth and Congresswoman Cori Bush about three major environmental justice bills: the Environmental Justice for All Act, the Environmental Justice Mapping and Data Collection Act, and the Green New Deal for Cities Act.This episode was a collaboration with Jason Rosenbaum, St. Louis Public Radio political correspondent and co-host of the Politically Speaking podcast. You can listen to the Politically Speaking episodes with Senator Duckworth and Congresswoman Bush at stlpr.org or anywhere you get podcasts.

The federal agency is investigating whether Missouri violated civil rights in issuing an air quality permit.

Duckworth spoke with St. Louis Public Radio's Eric Schmid and We Live Here's Jia Ling Yang and Lauren Brown about her legislation.

In a collaboration with St. Louis Public Radio’s "We Live Here," Jason Rosenbaum spoke with U.S. Rep. Cori Bush about two pieces of environmental legislation that she proposed in her first few months in office.