I’m writing this in the spirit of retraction.

Not for anything that I have posted here on Dr. Pop, but rather for things that I have posted on the facebook Wall of Life.

So here it is.  For years, whenever anyone — particularly young people –  would quote Woody Allen’s maxim that “90% of life is just showing up,” I would go into automatic rant-response about (a) how that is SO not true and (b) how preparation is everything.

This Gilda-rant-#357 typically continues on about how preparation is the key to great events, meetings, and collaborations. Etc., etc., etc.

And then, after all that preparation, if you don’t show up… well, then you’re just stupid.

But the other night at the lovely event that SAJE had organized to honor my “legacy,” I looked around the friendly room and was reminded that showing up has its own beautiful intrinsic value.

So here is my official retraction coupled with admiration for all of you who have” just showed up” for all those meetings, hearings, actions, events, and picket lines.  Who showed up in New Orleans.  Who showed up in Arizona. Who will show up in Detroit.

Just to show your solidarity and support.

Kudos to Jose Zamarripa who captured the actual event on this video in an entertaining way.

SAJE Legacy Event 2010 from Zetasan on Vimeo.

And… kudos to Tiny Team for completely capturing what it feels like to be an organizer surrounded by all that showing up, solidarity, and support in the picture that they drew for the invitation.

poster Seth Tobocman

While health insurance and bank lobbies vie for the comic-book-villain-of-the-year award, there is nothing more insidious than the invisible health threats that attack us daily without our consent or knowledge — through our water, our food, and our air.

For parents, the very notion that the homes in which our children play, eat, and sleep might be silently poisoning them, gradually causing nerve and brain damage to developing bodies, is a very hard pill to swallow. Yet for tenants who are trapped by high housing costs in slum housing, this is often the case.  The cause is chipping and peeling lead paint, and the uber-villians are the slumlords who profit, often hugely, from dangerous, unhealthy housing conditions.

Although lead paint has been banned from the U.S. since 1978, existing lead paint that chips and peels in neglected homes flake into dust that contaminates the air that children breathe indoors and the soil where they play outside.  (intact paint is not a hazard).

In Los Angeles, it is estimated that 48,000 families are living in extreme slum conditions and getting sick as a result, from exposure to lead and other hazards in their homes.  In New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina washed chips of lead paint from the homes into the soil, where it remains as a constant threat to children’s health.

The ecological principle that “diversity ensures resilience” applies to the business of solving intractable urban problems.  It is not simply a matter of how many eyes and brains are brought to bear on difficult problems, but rather,it is  the diversity of those eyes and brains that lead to the best solutions.  In the case of childhood lead-poisoning, the solutions are available, but hampered by lack of political will, commitment, alignment, and intelligent resource allocation.

What follows are stories about two efforts, the Healthy Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors Collaborative in Los Angeles and the New Orleans-based Fundred Dollar Bill Project that employ diverse methods and thinking to transforming homes and neighborhoods from sources of poison to healthy sanctuaries for our nation’s children.

Read More…

Here is a short video of Cecil Corbin-Mark speaking at People’s Planning School: about working with planning professionals, the link between planning and health, and the importance of taking control of the land. (Los Angeles, SAJE, 2007)

And here is the transcript of his remarks, for those of you who want to know more about his experience:

My name is Cecil Corbin-Mark. I come from an organization called WEACT for Environmental Justice. Our organization has been around, next year, for 20 years, working primarily at the start on issues of environmentally polluting facilities and their siting in our communities. We started out that way as an organization being very reactive to the primary polluter in our community — that being the City and the State. And we were always waking up and finding out about a new facility.

 

And over the years we came to realize that there was a power that we weren’t using. And that was the power to engage in planning for the future of our neighborhoods. As our cities have grown up, one of the things that we have found has been that people in this country are completely more and more disconnected from what actually happens on the ground in their neighborhoods, with respect to the introduction of new facilities or stores or whatever it is. And we decided a long time ago that we needed to work on a model of being more proactive. Read More…