May 9, 2014
Steven D. Low
On May 6th, East Oakland residents and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) staff gathered on the steps in front of Oakland City Hall to announce publicly: permitting construction of a crematorium in East Oakland is a violation of California Civil Code 11135. In short, CBE has a legal case of racial discrimination and we’ve sued the City accordingly.
Shortly before the start of our event, we discovered the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) had also scheduled their own rally in front of City Hall. I was worried that our message, that Oakland’s low-income communities of color don’t continue to be the dumping ground for polluting industries, would be muddled with SPCA’s message of animal welfare.
At one point the two rallies were yelling over each other. “Oakland for the living! Oakland for the living!” and “Let animals live! Let animals live!” combined into a loud and discordant chant.
In this moment it occurred to some folks in both rallies that our messages were not far apart. The Neptune Society crematorium is an issue of civil rights and of environmental injustice, but also of animal welfare.
The hexavalent chromium, hydrogen fluoride, mercury, arsenic, and other toxic compounds the Alameda County Public Health Department expects to be emitted from the proposed crematorium, would be inhaled by humans and dogs alike.
East Oakland is overwhelmingly African American and Latino. Residents in this community will watch their lives shortened by 15 years compared to people living in the Oakland Hills. East Oakland, especially for children under five, has one of the worst rates of asthma in the nation. Residents of East Oakland develop cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses at higher rates compared to their neighbors in the Hills. Poverty, crime, and the existing cluster of polluting industries conspire to create this grim reality, a reality to which the dogs and cats of East Oakland are not immune.
When the Oakland Planning Commission rubber-stamped the Neptune Societies’ project with the classification “General Manufacturing,” they stripped East Oakland of it’s RIGHT to have advance notice, and to conduct a public and environmental review of the crematorium.
Thus, low-income communities of color in Oakland have no say in absorbing the toxic soup from crematoriums. Where I’m from, they call that environmental racism.
Photo credit: Steven D. Low