♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Vernice Miller-Travis, executive vice president of the Metropolitan Group, next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we are committed to diversity and understand our responsibility in supporting and empowering diverse communities.

Diversity and inclusion is integral to the way we work.

Supporting the financial health of our diverse customers and employees is one of the many ways we remain invested in inclusion for all today, tomorrow, and in the future.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to empowering people to choose how they live as they age.

♪ ♪ >> How long am I going to have to stand in this space where we try to connect the dots about civil rights advocacy and vulnerabilities and those communities who get less of the better things in our society, but so much of the bad things, including all of the adverse environmental impacts?

>> We're very honored to have one of our nation's foremost researchers.

Environmental-justice advocate Vernice Miller-Travis is the executive vice president of the Metropolitan Group.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, Dr. Ben.

Thank you so much.

>> I've known you for decades.

>> You have.

>> Tell us about your upbringing and how it contributes to what you do today.

>> Well, Harlem Hospital was the largest employer in the Harlem community, and it was a village unto itself.

So people worked there for decades.

My mother worked there for 43 years, and she worked with the same people.

So, she started working there when she was 18.

When she retired, she was 62, and she worked with the same people over decades.

So they raised their children together, their grandchildren.

All the trials and tribulations of life, they went through together as a community.

It was a huge deal for my dad.

When he got -- I think he went to work at Harlem Hospital in 1930s, and it was a huge deal to get on the staff of the hospital.

It was one of the first things that Congressman Adam Clayton Powell did was to integrate the professional staff at Harlem Hospital.

And he was truly a man of the people.

And my father worked for him as an organizer.

He loved the ground that he walked on.

And so I think of myself as somebody who is from that space, from the Adam Clayton Powell space.

>> So that gives me a deeper understanding, and our audience an understanding, of what you do today as executive vice president of the Metropolitan Group.

Tell us the mission of the Metropolitan Group.

>> So, the Metropolitan Group is a social-change agency.

It's a B Corp.

It is a for-profit organization, but with a social purpose and social-justice mission, as well as an environment and sustainability mission.

And we do -- we have a public-health practice area, we have a strategic communications practice area, organizational strategy and innovation, intercultural engagement, and environment and sustainability.

And I'm part of the environment and sustainability team, and I lead the environmental and co-lead the social-justice practice areas of the firm.

>> And you're based in Washington, D.C.?

>> I'm based in Washington, D.C., but the group is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

>> Mexico City.

>> Mexico City, Chicago.

>> So international.

>> Indeed.

>> Coming out of Harlem, New York.

>> Trying to tell you.

>> Alright.

[ Chuckles ] So, listen, how does the Metropolitan Group help to ensure that people of color are treated fairly, are treated justly, given all the profound social change that's going on in America and in Mexico and other places in the world?

>> One of the big pieces of work that we do is organizational culture change, particularly with federal agencies.

So in order for them to meet this moment, they really have to do some housecleaning, and they really have to address some of the inequities that are systemic within the agencies themselves.

One of the biggest revelations had been when Lisa Jackson was the EPA administrator under President Obama.

She requisitioned a report done by Deloitte on the operations, or lack thereof, of the Office of Civil Rights at EPA, an office that we have long said has not been doing what it should be doing.

>> The office was there, but it was dormant.

>> It was more or less dormant, except that there were thousands of discrimination complaints that had been filed by staff at EPA.

So I had always been focused on the external civil rights compliance.

What are they doing to make sure that states are treating people of color equally before the law?

It just floored me, the level of problem of racial discrimination and gender discrimination within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

I was not prepared for it.

There was -- There were several class-action lawsuits by women.

There was just sort of a terrible set of conditions, but the staff never mentioned it.

So you would be working with these same people, and they might be party to a class-action lawsuit or an individual discrimination lawsuit, but you would never know that.

And there they are, trying to advance equity and justice at EPA when they themselves are not being treated fairly within the workplace.

So we do work like that.

We do work with the U.S. Forest Service.

We do work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

We do work with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

We do work with EPA.

So, foundationally, we believe that in order to bring justice and equity, you first have to make sure that the people inside, that the institution itself, believes in equity and recognizes how you propagate that within the organization.

And that's -- it's a big piece.

But President Biden has stepped to that and said that we are going to do this.

So we spend a lot of time working on that.

>> That's interesting to learn that both internal -- that means within the agency -- external, and the community at large, there has to be equity in both places for this to work.

>> Exactly right.

And I was not aware of that degree of inequity and discrimination within the federal government.

People know our work because of what we do with EPA and other agencies externally.

But there's also work to be done internally.

And if you don't get that straight, you can't really mete out justice and fairness and equity for people external to the agency if you can't do it for your own staff.

Right?

>> Can you tell me now, how does research play a role in data collection, play a role in making sure that there's equity for communities of color in America, and now you're working internationally?

But broadly speaking, the importance of research and data.

>> I remember, Ben, in particular having a conversation with my grandmother, who was also a nurse, when I was in the midst of doing the research at the UCC Commission for Racial Justice.

And I called up my grandmother one day, and I said, "Grandma, you won't believe what I'm finding, looking at the location of hazardous waste sites, and how it seems to be in every place where people of color live, no matter how remote that is, there is the presence of hazardous waste."

And this is what my grandmother said.

My grandmother said, "How much did y'all spend on that study?"

And I said, "I'm not responsible for the money, Grandma.

But I must say, I don't know, $150,000, $250,000."

And she said, "I am so glad I don't belong to the United Church of Christ."

Which I did, right?

And I was just outraged.

I was like, "How could you say such a thing?"

She said, "Because y'all spent all that money to tell you something that every black person in America knows to be true.

Wherever we are, that's where the things are that harm you."

And so the thing that really stuck in my soul, from doing that work with you and with Charles Lee, was, you can have all the lived experience in the world, but until there's a peer-reviewed study -- and I said this to my grandmother -- I said, "Grandma, you're a scientist.

You know that.

There's got to be data that backs up what people's lived experience.

Or it's like you didn't have the experience, right?"

And so that's what we did with toxic waste and race.

And I've tried to continue to do that throughout the course of my career.

And when I worked at the Ford Foundation, I funded a lot of academic environmental justice centers so that they could continue to develop that research base to verify.

And I hate to say this, but to -- not to verify, but to validate people's lived experience.

Right?

>> Now, 40 years later... >> 40 years later.

>> ...how do you assess progress over the last 40 years?

>> Well, it's been painfully slow.

Painfully slow.

We spent -- I want to say, we spent those first 15 to 20 years validating that environmental racism was a real thing.

>> Yeah.

>> And I remember, I got to a point then where I said, "You know what?

I'm not getting on any more panels, I'm not participating in any more conferences, I'm not doing any more debates with folks who want to debate whether or not this is real.

I live in a community -- I lived in a community in New York where a giant sewage treatment plant was built on our waterfront -- our Hudson River waterfront -- treating 180 million gallons of raw sewage and wastewater a day from the entire West Side of Manhattan, with no odor-control devices.

I said, "Even though these are not hazardous waste sites --" and our research was about hazardous waste sites -- "this is the same phenomena we are looking at."

>> It's how you define what's hazardous.

>> Exactly.

We went on to, you know, continue to mobilize, to build a nonprofit organization, to empower people, to train people.

And then because of Charles and because of you and the Commission for Racial Justice, and then to link up with other people around the country, because we thought it was only happening to us.

We were so isolated in our battle.

The city of New York would not work with us, would not meet with us.

U.S. EPA Region 2 gave two findings of no significant impact to that sewage treatment plant, because they were focused on restoring the quality of the water in the Hudson River -- a mission that I believe in.

I'm on the board of Clean Water Action.

I'm on the board of the Patuxent Riverkeeper.

I believe in clean water, and clean water in our natural resources, but I don't believe that to achieve that, you have to poison people and poison the air that they breathe.

>> It shouldn't be a juxtaposition between clean water, clean air, and clean people.

>> Exactly right.

The original decision to really sign off on a sewage treatment plant in our community was done by John Lindsay.

And what they thought they would do to make these black people, or black and brown people, calm down -- because we were mad as hornets -- was to design and build a state-of-the-art state park on top of the sewage treatment plant.

>> Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

>> You heard me.

>> I just want our audience to understand what you just said.

A decision was made to build a park... >> That's right.

>> ...on top of a sewage waste-disposal thing.

>> That's right, that's right.

>> A park where children are going to play.

>> That's right.

>> In a community where already the children disproportionately have asthma.

>> And the children had very little access to green space.

So, south of our community, Riverside Park is my favorite park in New York.

It's an extraordinary waterfront park, right?

But when you get to 125th, 135th Street, it changes dramatically.

And it's really just a spit of land.

It's not a park.

South of us, it's a park.

But once you come Uptown, it's not a park anymore.

It's a green space that goes along the river waterfront.

But there are no playgrounds in there, there's no access.

You used to have to climb down stuff and cross over the railroad tracks.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the Amtrak railroad runs next to the water and the New York City subway runs along a spine in the middle of the community.

So we had two railroads, right?

So, yeah, they built this park, the Riverbank State Park.

And I should say about the Riverbank State Park, it is a state-of-the-art recreational facility.

There's soccer, there's hockey, there's basketball, there's tennis, there's an Olympic swimming pool inside and out.

There's a carousel, there's a restaurant.

There's everything you could imagine that you might want in a recreational facility.

You just might not want it on top of 180 million gallons of raw sewage and wastewater every day.

So that was an extraordinary thing.

Oh, and the -- So, the initial process of sewage treatment, when it first went online, tertiary process was to introduce oxygen into these big huge holding tanks.

And oxygen would take a long time to eat through the sewage.

You would have an effluent left.

They would put that effluent on barges and they would take it down to the Fresh Kills landfill.

But it smelled to high heaven.

And so, for eight years, we lived with the pervasive smell of raw sewage blanketing our community.

So we sued the city of New York.

And one of the things I learned and I did not know, the people who lived directly across the street from the plant, the people who lived in those fabulous prewar apartment buildings on Riverside Drive, they said the smell of sewage permeated their upholstery, their drapery, their carpets, and they would take them out, have them removed to be professionally cleaned or have cleaners come in.

They could never escape the smell of raw sewage.

They couldn't open their windows in the summer.

They couldn't go outside on their terraces.

It was horrific.

It was horrific.

So we sued them.

We eventually won.

And we sued them when David Dinkins was the mayor.

So, here is our friend.

I went to high school with his daughter.

He was friends with Peggy Shepard's father.

They're both from Trenton, New Jersey.

We know this man, and we have -- and we worked our soles off to get him elected mayor.

And he -- we had to sue him.

Right?

Our litigation is, WE ACT -- West Harlem Environmental Action and Natural Resources Defense Council versus David Dinkins.

Right?

We're suing him.

He didn't take it personal.

He settled that lawsuit on the last day of his administration.

We got a $1.1 million settlement fund, but he committed $55 million capital dollars to put in place the odor-control systems that should always have been there.

>> Is that working?

>> It is working.

You know, I think you only see the faintest smell of raw sewage.

You smell it in a few places in the park, but nothing like the pervasive odor that we used to live with.

So I lived it and I researched it.

It was sort of a 360-degree full-circle experience.

>> You know, but I'm glad you took the time to tell that story about Harlem, New York, because it is not an isolated case.

>> That is exactly right.

>> Talk to us about a national picture that you know about today.

>> So, as I said, we thought this was only happening to us.

Right?

And then you and your colleague Charles Lee and the leadership of the United Church of Christ decided to hold this extraordinary gathering.

I remember taking a train from New York to D.C. Was at the Washington Court Hotel.

There were all these people, all these people, hundreds of people... >> Different communities across the country.

>> ...who had the same experience that we had had.

I don't know how y'all knew that.

Besides Warren County, North Carolina, I don't know how you knew that, but you tapped into there were all these people.

It was happening to us wherever we were.

>> From Hawaii, from Alaska.

>> From the Marshall Islands.

>> That's right.

>> From Puerto Rico.

People were there from the territories and all across the United States.

And that meant so much to us.

And then, you know, we just -- from there, we really built the architecture of this social movement, right?

We passed the principle -- We worked on the principles of environmental justice.

>> 17 of them.

>> And you were in that room with us -- you and former New Mexico Governor Toney Anaya.

Right?

Over that process, as we debated every single word of the 17 principles of environmental justice, it's to this day in my life, it is the -- the best and deepest experience I have with democratic process and decision-making that I have ever experienced, because we did that together.

We debated that together.

And they stand today, right?

>> Our Native American brothers and sisters were so articulate and were so clear about the sacredness of Mother Earth.

It was the first principle.

>> So, we -- I remember, we were debating this -- right?

-- sovereignty.

And we looked around the room.

And so in this small drafting committee -- right?

-- that room I'm talking about that Ben and Governor Anaya were in was a room off the main ballroom, and there were about a dozen of us who were tasked with drafting the principles.

And we look around the room, and they're like, "Well, wait, there's no indigenous people here."

It was very diverse, but there were no Indigenous people.

So I went outside, and, oh, my God -- and now because I want to call her name, she is a brilliant, brilliant environmental and human rights lawyer and advocate from Hawaii and part of the leadership of the longstanding movement for indigenous land rights in Hawaii.

We pulled her in the room.

She sat down for about 10 minutes, and she typed out exactly what's in those principles right now, about land rights and sovereignty, about the sacredness of Mother Earth, about the need to acknowledge indigenous treaty rights.

10 minutes it took her to write that down.

And just what she wrote is just what's in the principles of environmental justice today.

And it was just -- it was an extraordinary, extraordinary experience.

And we have created this space in the interim 40 years.

You can now get a PhD, a master's degree, and a B.S.

in environmental justice from the University of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability.

So many -- >> Can get a law degree at the University of Vermont in environmental justice.

>> In environmental justice.

So many universities around the country have added this to their curriculum.

But that was not the case when we started out, right?

As I said, you know, circling back to what I said at the beginning, we had to convince people that our lives mattered.

And we were the first people to talk about Black Lives Matter.

We were the first people to talk about "I can't breathe."

We said that.

We put that out in the universe because it was literally true.

It was literally true.

But young people today have this space.

And I see young white folks, I see young people of color.

People are gravitating to this body of work because it meshes human rights -- right?

-- science, public policy, law, art and culture, and the values that they have as young people.

So, I used to worry, "What happens when we get to the point where we can't do this anymore?"

I used to worry, "Who's going to continue this work?"

I don't have that worry anymore, because the young people are all over it.

They're all over it.

>> So, your optimism about the future is because you're witnessing young people, not only in the United States, not only in Mexico, where you're working, but the environmental justice movement has become a global movement.

>> Absolutely.

>> Can you talk about the globalization of the movement?

Even the United Nations now has codified environmental justice.

>> So, that's another piece of work that we undertook as a U.S.-based movement.

When I worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer, I was part of the Environment and Development Affinity Group, which were all the environment and development program officers from around the world.

The Ford Foundation is a global organization.

And I was the first person to -- I led the standing up of the first environmental justice grantmaking portfolio at the Ford Foundation.

And then I had a colleague in the New Delhi office who did the same for Southeast Asia.

>> In India.

>> In India.

He was from Nepal, but he was building this across Southeast Asia, but he was based in the New Delhi office of the Ford Foundation.

And my colleagues in Brazil, my colleagues in Argentina, my colleagues in South Africa especially -- my colleagues from around the world -- and the Philippines -- we would come together once a year as environment development program officers.

But they loved the environmental justice framing because they were seeing it play out.

And one of the things that was really interesting is that I remember we went to Durban, South Africa, to participate in United Nations World Conference Against Racism.

There was 17,000 delegates at that conference.

>> From all over the world?

>> From all over the world.

15,000 of them were grantees of the Ford Foundation.

So my colleagues in the human-rights program at the Ford Foundation, they did some extraordinary organizing.

But this was a reflection of the work that they were already doing.

Right?

And so -- But the Environment and Development program at the foundation was not going to play a big role in that conference.

And I said, "Hold up.

This is the central platform upon which we stand -- the discrimination of people because of who they are -- right?

-- what the color of their skin is."

So I took about 150 people from the U.S. to that conference, and we met up with all these other folks.

And before you know it, I remember, Damu was helping to lead that delegation.

Before you know it, we were working and drafting -- or they were working and drafting treaties among the NGOs -- right?

-- because they couldn't really penetrate the government negotiation.

So they decided they would sign treaties with each other.

And that environmental-justice framework took ahold in people's souls, right?

And then they took it and they were off and running with it.

So not only were we organizing here, we gave a framework for people around the world.

And I remember, at that Durban conference, I had given a grant to a network.

It was called, I think, the South African Environmental Justice Network.

And they did a pre-weekend before the conference started and took us on toxic tours to see all kinds of stuff.

I remember being with Monique Harden and Beverly Wright from New Orleans, from Louisiana.

And we were in a community that just as far as the eye can see, industry, industry, industry.

Freeport-McMoRan was the company that was poisoning them.

And Freeport-McMoRan was doing the same thing in Louisiana.

And so that gave us another piece of organizing to do.

Not only did we have similar circumstances, sometimes we're fighting the very same companies.

So why don't we get together and figure out strategically what we can do within the U.N. process to affect that?

>> Vernice Miller-Travis, thank you so much for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, Ben.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, please visit our website at thechavischronicles.com.

Also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we are committed to diversity and understand our responsibility in supporting and empowering diverse communities.

Diversity and inclusion is integral to the way we work.

Supporting the financial health of our diverse customers and employees is one of the many ways we remain invested in inclusion for all today, tomorrow, and in the future.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to empowering people to choose how they live as they age.

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