Therefore laws should equally be enforced to ensure the proper siting, clean-up of hazardous wastes, and the effective regulation of industrial pollution, regardless of the racial and economic composition of the community. It refers to those cultural norms and values, rules, regulations, behaviors, policies, and decisions to support sustainable communities, where people can interact with confidence that their environment is safe, nurturing, and productive. These are communities where both cultural and biological diversity are respected and highly revered and where distributed justice prevails. As a professor, scholar, and researcher I have attempted various mediums of communicating the disproportionate impact of environmental hazardous on people of color and low-income communities. I have written scholarly articles and have lecture on college and university campuses across the country, have lectured at professional conferences and to neighborhood groups, and have been a consultant to various environmental organizations and governments on this important issue.
Poems are now another medium for communicating.
The idea for poems first begin when I decided to write a poem for my cousin, Anthony Ethridge, who graduated from college in June of 1994. This poem has been included. A small number of those poems that address environmental justice has been incorporated for this book of poems. Additionally, pictures of people involved in the struggle have been included as another way of making the story in the poems more real. Who was academically slow.