Happy Earth Day from Living Well Kent

               Today marks the 51st anniversary of the first recognized Earth Day. 1970 went down in history as the year in which the modern environmental movement was born. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin is coined as the leader of this movement. After witnessing an oil spill off the shore of Santa Barbara in 1969, he recruited a staff of 85 members to organize a coalition whose goal would be to raise awareness concerning air and water pollution. Senator Nelson specifically targeted student campuses, seeing the strength of their activism throughout the anti-war movement. Earth Day served as a binding force between groups who had previously been fighting against issues such as pollution, toxic dump sites, oil spills, the use of pesticides, and endangered animal species as separate causes. Within one decade of the first Earth Day celebration, numerous new federal environmentally protective laws had been introduced and passed, along with the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
As wonderful as these changes were, the modern movement towards environmental justice has a persisting problem with diversity.
 
The concerns of environmental destruction has always been a relevant issue to non-white communities. Many Black and Indigenous peoples were exploited through physical labor, in order to sustain the very infrastructures which ended up polluting our society. There were also several BIPOC activists who had been organizing prior to the modern environmental movement. Such as Dolores Huerta, who began organizing with Cesar Chavez in the early 1960s. Together, they founded the United Farmworkers or UFW. Her work was implemental in gaining rights for agricultural workers, as well as the banning of harmful pesticides like DDT.
 
There is a societal expectation for every human to bare equal responsibility in the undoing of our ecological damage but there have been disproportionate effects of environmental destruction on BIPOC and low-income communities: from the proximity of landfill sites to communities of color; to lead-pipes serving the water supply for predominantly Black neighborhoods; or the lack of fresh and affordable produce in low-income communities. Predominantly middle-to-upper-class and white communities typically do not experience the direct effects of climate change, which enables their lens to focus on the larger climate issues: such as the ozone layer or recycling. The history of red-lining and segregation has allowed these communities to mainly thrive in environmentally safe neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the frequent environmental injustices that take place in low-income areas and communities of color expose already vulnerable populations to even greater health risks.
 
One of the ways we support community wellness and environmental justice at Living Well Kent is through our Farming Program. Our program grants farmland and a year-round greenhouse, to BIPOC farmers to grow their own food. This space allows our immigrant and refugee communities to have culturally appropriate foods, organic and accessible fresh produce, and the opportunity to directly reap the benefits of their own labor. This is one of the many ongoing steps we have taken towards tackling environmental justice and ensuring our community that they are deserving of healthy food and land.
 
This Earth Day, we are grateful for all steps taken with the well-being of the planet in mind. We celebrate all who have organized, advocated, and sought to bring justice to our environment. At Living Well Kent we also advocate for those who are commonly left out of the decision-making dialogue, those overlooked within the mainstream environmental justice movement, and those who live with the everyday repercussions of climate change.
 
If you would like to support Living Well Kent, our farm program, and our farmers, please consider signing up for our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program for this summer. All details can be found on our website at https://livingwellkent.org/csa.html
If interested, please contact our Food Access and Farm Manager, Xavier, at xavier@livingwellkent.org