We can take heart in the knowledge that everyday people have the power to force their elected officials to keep public goods public. Pittsburgh’s Our Water Campaign showed us how, with strategies that other cities can replicate, adapt, and pass on.
When almost all of Gaza’s water is not fit for human consumption because of a deliberate Israeli strategy, one can understand why Palestinians continue to fight back as if their lives are dependent on it; because they are.
These companies should be paying for the long-term health and safety of these communities and these workers referring to the importance of establishing just transition community funds, akin to the Black Lung Program, paid for by excise tax on coal.
If ordinary people can overcome powerful companies to protect their water in a poor country like El Salvador, imagine what their counterparts can do here.
The stakes for environmental racism need to be even higher than jail time. What if any company responsible for major ecological devastation was dissolved? Or politicians colluding with or enabling environmental destruction could not hold office?
Last April, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that barred water shutoffs. At least 1.6 million California households, or one in eight, have water debt, and they could face shutoffs when Newsom ends the state of emergency.
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