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  • Author(s): Sze J.
  • Author(s) ID: 26039539700;
  • Document Type: Book Chapter
  • Publication Stage: Final
  • Volume: 9780813542539 | Issue: | Article Number:
  • Page Start – 177 | Page End – 190 | Page Count:
  • Cited By: 17
  • DOI:
  • EID: Scopus2-s2.0-84917522441

In the 1980s and 1990s, community concern over the problem of childhood asthma in minority communities in New York City reached a crescendo. At protests over controversial polluting facilities-incinerators, diesel bus depots, sewage and sludge treatment plants, solid waste transfer stations and power plants-in the South Bronx and West Harlem, groups of low-income African American and Latino children routinely protested with asthma pumps in hand. Many students attended rallies wearing gas and surgical masks, to dramatize how the air itself had become their enemy. “Fatigo,” as asthma is known in Spanish, has became a way of life. A major advertisement campaign on bus shelters paid for by a community-based organization working to pressure the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority to convert its buses to natural gas read: “If you live Uptown breathe at your own risk. Diesel bus fumes can kill. Six out of seven of Manhattan’s diesel bus depots are located Uptown. This puts the health of a half million mostly African-Americans and Latinos at risk. Don’t just breathe this all in. Do something. Because clean air is a right, not a privilege, even if you live above 96th St.” The text accompanied a dramatic photograph of a grandfather and two children of color wearing large gas masks. © 2004 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.


New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism