Prof. Wheat to lead environmental justice/civil rights presentation, Thursday, Oct. 22

UW-Green Bay Associate Prof. Elizabeth Wheat will discuss environmental justice and its relationship to civil rights in a presentation, Thursday, Oct. 22 at 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public and can be accessed at https://cahsseffect.org/events/.

According to the event description, Wheat will be diving into the environmental justice movement in the United States that began in 1982 when residents of Warren County, North Carolina, used non-violent tactics to oppose the siting of a toxic PCB landfill in their mainly African American community. Decades later, Sheila Holt described her family’s health struggles after the government of Dickson, Tennessee, protected white families from polluted drinking water but told her and other Black families that the water was safe. She inspired countless of other people to think of environmental issues as human rights issues that must be addressed through confronting systemic racism.