Mental Illnesses In Detroit

In addition to social networks, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Detroit residents to find basic networks for goods and services. As previously mentioned, Detroit is a geographically large city. Developments and introduction of business in one neighborhood, does not directly benefit all residents. Sheila Cockrel has noticed that more and more businesses such as convenience stores, cleaners, and pharmacies are being built in attempts to make neighborhoods more walkable. This helps residents who otherwise would have to go to the suburbs for such basic needs as food and water; a difficult task seeing as many neighborhoods lack a reliable transportation system. Many of the organizations we talked with share a common goal of trying to

If Detroit is not revitalized and branded it has been said that Michigan as a whole cannot rebrand. Detroit is the city that most people outside of the state look at and determine Michigan’s prominence, domination and future. Rather right or wrong that is simply the way that it is. Michigan over the past few years has attempted to gut the city of what they perceive as the ugliness of Detroit, people in poverty. In this attempt most of the people whom had to leave Detroit because of unemployment after the downturn are the very people that the State needs.

Pezzullo investigates in this article the strategies of environmental justice advocates in Warren County, North Carolina. The rhetorical efforts shown by these advocates vigorously urged the state of North Carolina to clean up a local toxic landfill caused by a truck illegally dumping oil contaminated with PCBs in the middle of the night.

The city of Flint, Michigan went through a tragedy when the water supply turned bad with lead and toxians being released into it.The Flint water crisis started in 2014 and still has an impact on the people who live there today. This research paper explains the affects of the water crisis, and is to show and explain the hardship and struggle the people of Flint have been through. This state has a small population, but this crisis has a big affect. Flint, Michigan has gone through a tramendous struggle these past four years including, polluted water, economy affects, sociological and health impacts and criminal cases.

These are few of the many issues of poverty we face today in our communities; food banks are crisis because of the high in demand of people in need. Housing is another important factor as millions of people worry about being able to make rent payments, and finding affordable living places where they do not have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck. A study was conducted from t McMaster University in 2010 for the City

FLINT, Mich. — One resident of Zimmerman Street has trouble sleeping from the gunfire that crackles through the air at night. A married couple down the block has heard squatters camped out in an abandoned house next door. A grandfather across the street cannot find steady work in the city, getting by with odd jobs that pay less than $9 an hour.

The city of Flint, Michigan has lived on the edge ever since 2014. Residents in a city in one of the most developed countries are living in fear as they are facing a crisis; the city’s water supply is contaminated and could lead to sickness and even death. It is very strange that the most powerful country in the world has a water problem. Adding to the weirdness is that this crisis has gone on for four years and it is still going in the most advanced nation on earth. How did this problem start? What damage did this do in the city of Flint and its residents? What is the government doing to solve this problem?

This report through the United Church of Christ and Justice & Witness Ministries was very important in the progress of environmental justice because the report presented that race is the most “potent variable” of where “commercial hazardous waste facilities were located in the U.S.” Throughout this report, the constant theme was about toxic and solid waste, but another underlining theme was the economy versus environment.

This book chapter goes over the overview of several historical events, organizations, and people that contributed to the evolution of what is now the Environmental Justice movement. The authors list some of the key influences of the movement. This influences include: 1) the Civil Rights movement that brought an understanding of social structural injustices – Civil Rights activists argue that because of racism, the injustices were not random –, 2) the anti-toxics movement that contributed to better understand the power dynamics that shape the distribution of environmental bads while resisting against hazardous waste facilities, landfills and incinerators, 3) academics who demonstrated that environmental injustice is part of a national problem

As many as 12,000 children in Flint drank lead-contaminated water and are at especially high risk of brain damage (Goff 2). The effects of environmental racism are health risk, poverty, and race.

Detroit, Michigan is known as the wasteland city where every street corner has homeless people, condemned buildings, violence, drug deals, boarded homes, and poverty. Poverty in this city is at an understandably high rate with all the negative aspects stacking up against it. In 2003 alone, a third of the population of Detroit was living under the federal poverty line (Grengs, 2007, p.348). Detroit was not always this mess of a city it is now, but when what is referred to as the “disaster of Detroit” happened, no one lifted a finger to help. Instead, people accepted the fact that Detroit was what it was. Many Americans, “’are unconcerned. . . . Eight out of ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor, if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of the American dream’” (Herron, 2007, p.667-668). Although Detroit, Michigan has one of the highest poverty rates in America, it is not entirely because drugs, money, and violence, but rather through a constant lack of support this city receives. This paper examines high poverty levels in Detroit, Michigan and the underlying causes.

Rooted in the civil rights movement, environmental justice emerged in the 1970s before gaining nation’s attention in the early 1980s. In 1982, a nonviolent demonstration protesting a PCB landfill in Warren County, North Carolina brought the concern of discriminatory siting to the public and prompted further investigation.

Above all, Environmental Justice has its roots in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1982, demonstrations by community members with the NAACP in Warren County opposed the decision to place a PCB landfill in an African American majority neighborhood. It resulted in over hundreds of arrests but put environmental justice on national headlines. Furthermore, the protests led the United Church of Christ to undertake a study entitled, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States”. This seminal study analyzed the connection between the placement of waste sites and race in the country. It found race to be the most confounding determinant in siting hazardous waste facilities in certain communities. Furthermore, the study

(Agyeman et al., p. 6). This report serves as further evidence of the environmental injustices faced by minorities who do not have the power to face the corporations who own the hazardous waste facilities. It is laughable to think of what would occur if such a facility was proposed in Beverly Hills or Montecito because the citizens would be up in arms with many lawyers and politicians. Because predominantly ethnic and poor communities do not have such resources, they are unfairly subject to pollution which results from profit maximization. In conclusion, corporations extracting additional revenues damages the health of poor neighborhoods who do not have the capacity to resist the pollution in their homes.

“Kids with itchy skin and watering eyes, beneath the weight of polluted skies. Of lead, zinc, cadmium, PCBs, and arsenic too. Makes clear skies hard to view…”These harsh words, by poet Dr. Bunyan Bryant, articulate the urgency of toxic waste and its relationship with environmental justice. As America moves forward in creating our carbon footprint and continued wasteful throwaway culture, it is more evident than ever that nature can, and will be destructed while large corporations pocket huge financial gains (Bullard& Johnson, 2000). Meanwhile, Americans continue to create mass amounts of waste, and technology continues to advance and become more efficient. However, the American lifestyle, efficiency, and advanced technology don’t come without price, a fee that is unfairly affecting minorities and the communities they live in, leaving them in some of the most industrialized or broken-down environments (Maroko, Weiss Riley, Reed, & Malcolm, 2014). This idea, better known as environmental racism, was first coined in the 1980’s and is now responsible for levels of inequality between racial boundaries and devastating health disparities (Puido, 2000). As America continues to grow, it is more evident than ever that individuals are being robbed of something as basic as the right to breathe clean air.