THE NATIONAL BLACK ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NETWORK

POLICE VIOLENCE, POLLUTION, AND SYSTEMIC RACISM KILLING BLACK PEOPLE STATEMENT

“I can’t breathe!” ● “We can’t breathe!”

Racism is in America’s DNA. The history of American policing is a history of racism. American policing has deep roots in legal, political, economic, and educational institutions designed to control Black people and Native Americans. The historic roots of formal police departments in the U.S. can be traced to slave patrols who were tasked with chasing down Black people who escaped from slavery in search of freedom, preventing slave uprisings, responding to “disorder” rather than crime, and “keeping Black people in their place.” Then and now, the institution of American policing remains a violent system of oppression that abuses Black people, denies humanity, and deprives Black people of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as part of shaping a society that benefits most White people. This brutal legacy of police racism has continued to this day in terms of police killings, motorist stops, racial profiling, and operates in conjunction with high Black prison incarceration that targets Black youth and young adults. Mostly White, male police officers are most likely to have a record of using force on Black children in custody. We live under the ever-present statistic that Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely than Whites to be killed by police.

The National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) stands in solidarity with all families of African Americans killed by the police. We stand in solidarity with the families of George Floyd, who was killed by the police in Minneapolis, MN; Breonna Taylor, who was killed by the police in Louisville, KY; and Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed in Brunswick, GA by three armed White men who acted under the racist extralegal privilege of white vigilantism in which they felt entitled to “police” Black people.

NBEJN works in support of building a more just world that applies policy strategies to ensure community safety without reliance on armed law enforcement, guarantees racial justice, and makes equitable investments for healthy and livable communities. To this end, NBEJN supports the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Racist policing is an ongoing public health crisis that needs to be dismantled through honest dialogue, policy changes and bold actions. The increasing number of Black people killed by the police creates severe harm, trauma and emotional stress for the ever-growing number of their families, friends, co-workers and neighbors. There is a great deal of evidence about the impact of racism on mental illnesses, including depression, difficulty coping and adapting to severe events, hallucinations and delusions. Racism also impacts physical health, causing severe wear and tear on body organs that can lead to impaired health conditions such as diabetes, strokes, ulcers, cognitive impairment, autoimmune disorders, and accelerated aging. The constant airing of videos showing savage police murder of Black people, as we have seen with the modern lynching of George Floyd, creates harmful mental health effects, triggers emotional distress, racial trauma, and PTSD-like trauma. Furthermore, when these murders go unpunished, it sends Page 2 of 1 a devastating psychological message to Black people – that they are police property, they are disposable and they do not deserve dignity and justice.

NBEJN demands legal change, reform in policing methodology and accountability. The police officers who perpetrate these murders must be held accountable. They must be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, sentenced accordingly. Police officers who have been fired should be included in both a national registry for police misconduct and a national registry for decertified police officers, so that they cannot work in law enforcement as potential threats to Black Americans.

NBEJN is dedicated to building the power of Black community organizations battling environmental racism. These battles involve government-issued environmental permits for significant levels of industrial and vehicular pollution in the places where Black people live, work, play and worship. Across America, Black people suffer from environmental racism, which has resulted in Black people being 79 percent more likely than White people to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution poses the greatest danger to human health.

For us, “I can’t breathe,” as painfully gasped by Eric Garner and George Floyd during their last moments on earth as life was being choked out of them by police officers, has an especially tragic meaning. It is pluralized to “We can’t breathe” by children and adults in our communities suffering severe asthma attacks triggered by government-sanctioned toxic pollutants in the air they struggle to breathe. African Americans are three times more likely to die from asthma than White people, and that increases to 10 times for African American children.

Pollution increases the risk of death from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is killing Black people at a rate that is 3 times higher than White people. NBEJN supports the efforts of congressional members demanding that the Department of Health and Human Services monitor and address racial disparities in health responses to COVID-19 that include testing, treatment and overall healthcare. We also support the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and hundreds of doctors who joined a group of lawmakers in demanding that the federal government release daily race and ethnicity data on coronavirus testing, patients, and their health outcomes. That data must be broken down to the county and local level to ensure that African Americans and other people of color are counted and have equal access to health care. The data are invaluable in helping to develop a public health strategy to protect those who are more vulnerable, and should not be concealed or otherwise kept away from the public.

Fueling the racism we see in policing as well as social indicators of health and wellness are Supreme Court decisions that deny civil rights remedies. The effect of these decisions reinforce the racist ruling by the Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott case, in which the majority of Justices declared that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly applied the doctrine of “qualified immunity” to deny remedies for civil rights violations by members of law enforcement. Pursuant to these Supreme Court decisions, police departments as well as local and state governments face no accountability, which has allowed the repeated terrorism of police officers killing Black people. Additionally, in 2001, the Supreme Court blocked civil rights lawsuits seeking remedies for state and local governmental actions that have a racially discriminatory effect. The Supreme Court’s decision denies the remedies afforded by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that Black people in the Civil Rights Movement fought and died for in order to prohibit racism by governments and institutions.

Following each Supreme Court decision, Congress appropriated federal funds to state and local governments, including police departments, which have been used to perpetuate racism. For decades, federal legislators have failed to pass corrective legislation that stops the targeting of Black people for horrific police violence. In addition, Congress has passed no law to prohibit systemic racism with civil rights remedies for governmental or institutional action that is aimed at or results in racism in environmental protection, healthcare, community investment, housing and home ownership, education, economic opportunities, and the criminal justice system.

Change that is directed by moral clarity is long overdue. NBEJN urges Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), as the Chair of the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives, to introduce legislation that:

1. removes qualified immunity for police misconduct and brutality, and allows the victims of police violence or their survivors to seek civil rights remedies in federal courts,

2. amends Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (42 USC § 2000d et seq.) to include a prohibition against discriminatory effect or disparate impact based on race, color, or national origin,

3. remedies the racist use of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to secure permits that allow companies to target African American and other communities of color for significant amounts of toxic air and water pollution; and 

4. prohibits voter suppression and fully funds vote-by-mail.

NBEJN applauds the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), chaired by Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA), for the leadership in putting forward legislation to prevent police violence on June 8, 2020. We ask for the CBC’s support on the four legislative actions, listed above, to make strong and comprehensive civil rights remedies a federal legislative priority.

NBEJN is committed to achieving environmental justice and eliminating structural racism. NBEJN stands in solidarity to hold police departments as well as local and state governments accountable to the victims of police violence and other forms of systemic racism.

NBEJN is dedicated to achieving environmental justice and eliminating structural racism. NBEJN stands in solidarity to hold police departments as well as local and state governments accountable to the victims of police violence.