On Awareness for Environmental Poverty Lawyering

Earth month, April, provides an opportunity for everyone to reflect on how we treat our largest shared resource: the Earth itself. Use of this resource often brings to mind drilling in wildlife areas or deforestation in any number of places worldwide. However, I would like to draw attention to the environmental dangers we face in urban areas: dangerous environmental practices that tend not to come to light because they are overshadowed by major environmental disasters and because these dangers affect only those people least able to help themselves.

Many poverty-stricken communities are subject to environmental dangers with no ability to remedy them. The problems these communities face are seemingly unlimited, from the building of low-income housing developments on former toxic waste dumps, as in Love Canal, New York, to the systematic destruction of local parks and recreational areas in order to develop industry. The reasons impoverished communities often have no voice in these decisions are two-fold: (1) a lack of historical recognition of impoverished communities in the law, and (2) disorganization in the communities themselves.

In addressing the first point it is important to note that many of the environmental and community dangers across the country arising from commercial and industrial development are legal.  

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“Illegal” Orphanages – Legality and Legitimacy in Chinese Culture

In January of this year, the Huffington Post reported on a fire that killed six children and one young adult “at an illegally run orphanage in central China”:

“The deaths Friday in Henan province’s Lankao county have spotlighted China’s lack of government-run child services. They are often left to private citizens with few resources and no legal authority. The Lankao government earlier acknowledged that it had turned a blind eye to the illegal orphanage, which cared for abandoned children and young adults. … The deputy county governor said earlier that some departments had failed in supervision and should shoulder responsibility.”

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Big Differences, Civil Words in Debate over Future of County Government

A curious thing happened at the end Thursday’s hour-long joint appearance at Eckstein Hall of State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, who wants to reduce the role of the Milwaukee County Board, and County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic, who is fighting Sanfelippo’s proposals:

A lot of people stayed on to talk. Dimitrijevic talked with whoever came up to her. Sanfelippo did the same. County Executive Chris Abele, who was in the audience, had almost a dozen people gathered around him at some points. Other people lingered and mingled through much of the Appellate Courtroom.

Usually, the room clears pretty quickly at the end of events of this kind. But for some reason – an interest in talking about the issue? the availability of the main figures? the chance to catch up with people? – this was a group that didn’t seem to want to leave. There were probably almost 50 people, out of an audience of more than 200, still in the room 15 minutes after the session ended.

Maybe this was a little bit different way of demonstrating how the public policy programs that Marquette University Law School has been hosting for the last half dozen years are meeting their goals of furthering serious, informed conversation on major issues. The notion of being a crossroads for such a discussion starts with the presenters at these sessions, but it often extends to the informal conversations before a program, during breaks, or afterwards. 

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