An Interview with Robert Bullard

I was looking for something to post about and i came upon a website that features a an interview with Robert Bullard and 'Earth First! Journal' coloumnist Errol Schweizer. Schweizer main theme in the article is to understand what the 'environmental justice movenment' really is and how Bullard came about the idea. Something Bullard said really got to me, he says that, "There's been a lot of conflict and misunderstanding about what the role of some of the green groups are as it relates to environmental justice and particularly working in communities of color. And what we're saying is that its just one environment. You're talking about planet earth, where we live, and if in fact we are going to have a global movement for environmental justice, we have to understand what environment is and what the agendas are. A lot of grassroots groups and communities of color are saying that we have to work in our communities and take care of educating and empowering our people before we can talk about having other people do stuff for us. I think to a large extent a lot of grassroots groups have come head-on with a lot of the larger groups that have not understood exactly what environmental justice is." I really think that what he says here is very true and very powerful because our environment is corrupt and were the ones that are doing the corrupting. People always think that 'colored' people are the ones that ruin the environment but we don't realize that the gradens, the fields of food, and the communities they build are what keeps the world at peace (or whatever peace there is left). I feel that we don't do enough and that instead we worry too much about our own small problems instead of realzing that in order to fix our own, first we have to fix the problems that surround us. It's not engough what people can do for us, it's not always take take take and then give, we need to give a little even it's by growing our own vegetables and then sharing it with our neighbors, friends, and family. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." -Neil Armstrong

Here is the website for full interview: http://www.ejnet.org/ej/bullard.html