As the Executive Director of Alternatives for Community and Environment, a black-led environmental justice organization in Roxbury, I welcome Mayor Walsh’s recent declaration that racism is a public health crisis.
The recent videos of police brutality and the pandemic have made it impossible to ignore deep systemic inequities — the death rate for black folks is three times higher than the death rate for white Americans.
The disease of racism isn’t just a white policeman kneeling on a black man’s neck.
It’s black folks in Boston spending 64 more hours stuck on the bus than white folks.
It means calling into question long-held ways of making decisions, like rethinking the way police do their job, reconsidering the way we “redevelop” neighborhoods and force longtime residents out, doing more to redress environmental injustice like unhealthy air and unequal transit and lack of green space for black and brown Bostonians.
