Living Downstream
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Top 10 Living Downstream Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Living Downstream episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Living Downstream for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Living Downstream episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Seeking Justice: On Repeat, In Every Language, Unceasingly
Living Downstream
10/27/21 • 10 min
For this final Living Downstream episode of the season, we're dropping in on three recent webinars:
One gathering considered Social and Environmental Justice at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico. Another knitted together poetry and a powerful environmental film. It was put on by the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program. And a third event was cheekily called Toxics are a Drag, and was billed as a panel discussion on toxic beauty products in the queer community. That was hosted by one of the most important grass roots environmental groups in the country: New York City's WEACT for Environmental Justice.
Find more information about all these events in the Resources section of our website at https://norcalpublicmedia.org/resources/living-downstream-resource-guide
First, this show has an update on what's happening right now, the last week of October 2021. I called White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council member Dr. Robert Bullard, often called the father of environmental justice in this country. He spoke to me just days before leaving for COP26, the United Nations climate change conference set to start next week in Glasgow.
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Struggling to Breathe in the Bronx
Living Downstream
04/21/21 • -1 min
More than a year into the pandemic, the Bronx is still the New York City borough with the highest death rate from COVID-19. That's where we begin the second season of our Living Downstream podcast.
Last year, Ese Olumhense, former Bronx reporter at THE CITY, explored why residents there were dying from the virus at a rate double the city's average. Public health experts said Bronx residents, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latinx, were more likely to work outside of their homes, regularly exposing them to the virus. The borough also sees high rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes and asthma, which can make COVID-19 infection more dangerous.
Click the icon below to listen.Environmental Justice for Non-Recognized Tribes
Living Downstream
08/27/19 • -1 min
Non-Federally Recognized Tribes Struggle to Protect Environmental and Cultural Assets
By Debra Utacia Krol and Allison Herrera
Read more about federally non-recognized tribes.
Valentin Lopez was handed a dilemma: how to honor his elders’ admonition to fulfill an ancestral directive to guard and protect the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, a small tribe along California’s Central Coast and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.
“In 2006 the tribal elders came to a council meeting,” says Lopez, who’s served as chairman of the 600-member tribe since 2003. “They said our creation story tells us the Creator gave us the responsibility to take care of Mother Earth and all living things, and Creator has never taken away or rescinded that obligation. We have to find a way to do that.” Lopez left that meeting “just shaking my head saying, ‘How in the world could we ever do that?’”
One huge roadblock: Lopez’s tribe lacks federal recognition. Unlike recognized tribes, Amah Mutsun can’t use federal Indian laws such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, also known as NAGPRA or access federal funding to pursue environmental and cultural site protection. And, most of the tribal members have had to move east to the San Joaquin Valley, priced out of their stunningly beautiful—and expensive—homeland, because they don’t have a reservation or other trust lands to call home.
So, how could Lopez honor his word to the elders?
[Photo: Valentin Lopez. Credit: Debra Utacia Krol]
Lopez isn’t alone: Some 55 Indigenous communities in California aren’t on the BIA’s List of Recognized Tribes, the document used by the feds to provide funding and technical assistance to tribal governments for education, health care, governance, environmental protection and many other programs. In fact, California has the dubious distinction of the state with the largest number of unrecognized tribes. Entire cultural groups such as the Ohlone, Esselen, Salinan and other cultures fell completely through the cracks, while others like the Chumash, Mono and Maidu peoples have both recognized and non-recognized communities.
So, how can non-recognized tribes manage to protect their ancestral sites and exert environmental stewardship over their lands? In California, some state laws and policies offer at least some paths to protection.
In September 2011, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued an executive order that requires all state agencies to engage in meaningful consultation with Indigenous tribes in California, whether federally recognized or not.
The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, was amended in 2014 provisions for tribal cultural protections. And, these cultural provisions apply to non-recognized tribes. Under the terms of the amendment, known to tribes as Assembly Bill 52, California tribes have legal standing to issue a notice for consultation regarding any proposed project covered under CEQA in the tribe’s traditional and culturally-affiliated lands.
More state agencies, most notably the California Coastal Commission, have enacted tribal consultation policies. And, the state’s Native American Heritage Commission coordinates consultation as well as identifying and cataloging Native American cultural resources with state borders.
For small, resource-poor tribes such as the Amah Mutsun and the yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe (also known at the ytt Northern Chumash), whose lands lie about a four-hour drive north of Los Angeles on the Central Coast, utilizing these state regulations can be a challenge. Mona Olivas Tucker, tribal chair of the ytt Northern Chumash Tribe, manages relationships with a variety of state and local agencies.
Tucker believes that the state’s efforts to support tribes has a mixed record. “I think the Native American Heritage Commission tries very hard to be helpful to tribes federally recogn...
Chicken Country, North Carolina: Justice on the Factory Floor
Living Downstream
07/08/21 • -1 min
On this episode of Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast, Victoria Bouloubasis visits a rural county where the multicultural workforce kept America fed during the pandemic. We'll meet Esmeralda, who has become a community health worker, and her mother Marta, who works in a poultry plant.
In the face of blatant mistreatment and inadequate protection, food factory workers in North Carolina became sick, and died, in unacceptably high numbers. This mother-daughter team stepped up to protect the health of their neighbors and coworkers, efforts they continue today.
Click the icon below to listen.Smackdown: City Hall vs. Big Oil
Living Downstream
11/01/18 • -1 min
"Smackdown" tells the story of Richmond California, a working class town that grew up in the shadow of a massive Chevron refinery. The refinery emits a toxic soup of chemicals and residents suffer an asthma rate that is double the national average.
Explosions and fires have periodically shaken the refinery since 1989. But Chevron is also the biggest employer in town and its taxes supply tens of millions of dollars for city services. Can Richmond maintain a healthy economy while transitioning away from fossil fuels and lessening its reliance on Chevron? And what role does electoral politics play in the mix?
In October, 2018, Chevron settled a suit brought by the U.S. EPA, requiring it to pay nearly $3 million in damages, and spend about $160 million dollars upgrading refineries around the United States, including the facility in Richmond, Calif.
(Pictured: Community demonstrates against Chevron, April 20, 2012. Credit: Daniel Arauz, Flickr)
Listen to Smackdown, produced and reported by Claire Schoen.
Learn more about refinery towns in the U.S.
For a technical but very accessible animation describing the explosion and fire at Chevron's Richmond refinery in 2012, see below. The video was produced by the U.S. Safety and Chemical Hazard Investigation Board.
Click the icon below to listen.Firing Forests to Save Them: Could Native Traditions Save Lives?
Living Downstream
10/19/18 • -1 min
When we imagined a podcast about environmental justice – it was before the Tubbs fire here in Sonoma County – and the deadly fire seasons of 2017 and 2018. Even so, we wouldn’t have thought of Indians and their relationship to fire as a matter of environmental justice.
But producers Allison Herrera and Debra Utacia Krol have a different viewpoint. They’re members of a Western tribe – and see the increasingly destructive fires in Northern California as a matter of the Anglo society forgetting lessons that Native Americans have known for millennia. Fire, they say, can be an important – even necessary – part of the landscape.
Fire helps clear habitat for animals and space for plants. And smaller fires can allow us to avoid the cataclysmic fires that leveled neighborhoods in Santa Rosa and the surrounding communities – especially in the past two years.
Herrera and Krol say Indian traditions once protected these lands and could do so again— Allison Herrera brings us the story.
Learn more about native traditions and controlled burns.
(Photo: An ancient oak tree at Pepperwood Preserve likely won't survive its burns from the 2017 Tubbs fire. Credit: Debra Utacia Krol)
Read the story here:
Firing Forests to Save Them: Could Native American Traditions Protect Land and Lives? Can Native land management render the next round of wildfires less destructive? These Indigenous people say ’yes.’ By Debra Utacia Krol and Allison Herrera Alice Lincoln Cook at her jewelry bench at the Book Nook in KlamathAlice Lincoln-Cook understands why burning is preferable to huge fires. She and her family survived the Fire Siege of 1987, which ravaged a large swath of Northwestern California. “They took out half the country here; I mean, it was a huge fire,” she says. “It was really scary for [us] because all our family down there and many other families had their homes and stuff burnt down.” That harrowing time led Lincoln-Cook’s her family to action. They clear the land around their homes every year, and sprinklers are placed to wet the ground in case of another fire. It’s also made her cognizant of what cultural burn managers are working to accomplish. “That's why we're hopeful of more controlled fires rather than disaster fires of that sort because those are those are pretty hard to take when they're taking lives and homes and stuff like that,” she says.The 1987 fire—and the wildfires that raged through Northern California in October 2017—are the stuff of nightmares to residents. They, and other smaller fires, ravaged this part of California. The October 2017 fires resulted in 44 lives lost; 10,000 structures destroyed with more than $8 billion dollars in property damage; and more than 200,000 acres torched. And, in 2018, the region took another fiery hit: this year’s Mendocino Complex Fire is even bigger; to date, more than 460,000 acres have burned, making it the largest fire in recorded California history. But could these fires have been, if not prevented, at least rendered less destructive? Many Indigenous peoples in California say yes. They say their traditions once protected these lands and could do so again—if they’re given the opportunity. Journalists Allison Herrera and Debra Utacia Krol visited several Northern California tribal communities to learn more. From fire comes new plant life at Pepperwood PreserveThe first stop: Pepperwood Preserve, a 3,200-acre facility just east of Santa Rosa. It contains oak groves, mixed conifer forests and grasslands, and is home to many endemic species. It’s a beautiful drive despite the burned-out sites we see on our way up to the preserve. This hilly region is also home to Indigenous peoples, including the Pomo and Wappo cultures. Here, we meet Clint McKay, one of several Indigenous Californians who are using fire to fight fire. McKay is the cultural consultant and Native American advisory committee chair at Pepperwood Preserve. McKay is a citizen of the Dry Creek Band of Pomo and has Wappo heritage. He is also a noted cultural practitioner, particularly in living with the land—and carefully setting fires to cleanse the land. “[Pepperwood] asked us to provide some insight to the native way of working with the land,” says McKay. He adds, “Land management means to me that you’re controlling something. I don’t believe we have the ability or the right to control nature, so we work with it.” McKay shows us where the fire came through an area that was scheduled for a controlled burn. It was supposed to clear the area of the “duff,” as McKay calls the accumulation of dead plants, weeds and unwanted trees ...
The Sea Next Door
Living Downstream
10/06/21 • -1 min
From Northern California Public Media and Mensch Media, this edition of Living Downstream is guest hosted by Molly Peterson.
This time, from the Coachella Valley, east of Los Angeles, we’re talking about the biggest lake in California — now starved of water — and the people who live around The Sea Next Door.
The Salton Sea sits in a depression of land 30 miles from the Mexican border — and it poses a growing threat to public health. In this episode, two young women from the Eastern Coachella Valley introduce us to their neighbor.
We begin with Adriana Torres, who lives in a rural community there: an area called North Shore. We'll also hear from her classmate Rosa Gonzalez.
Click the icon below to listen.The Little Town That Would Transform the World
Living Downstream
09/22/21 • -1 min
So if you want to do something about the climate emergency, the thinking goes, you can’t just focus on things like reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for disasters. You need to address long-standing social and economic inequities at the same time.
Climate justice is the big idea behind the Green New Deal — the resolution that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first introduced with Senator Ed Markey in 2019 and re-introduced in April of 2021.
Congress hasn’t formally adopted the Green New Deal, but many local governments around the country have gone ahead and passed their own versions. Ithaca is one of them. And it’s brought in a man with a global vision to lead the charge. Veteran public radio reporter — and long-time Ithaca resident — Jonathan Miller takes us there.
Click the icon below to listen.Degrees of Injustice: The Social Inequity of Urban Heat Islands
Living Downstream
09/22/21 • -1 min
On this episode of Living Downstream, Texas Public Radio’s Yvette Benavides takes us to Central and South Texas where summer days are frequently in the upper 90’s, but where in many low income neighborhoods the mercury climbs even higher.
And with climate change, these areas will be experiencing more extreme temperatures, more frequently and for longer durations.
New research shows how these hotter temperatures are taking a toll on the people who live in some city neighborhoods — typically in communities of color. The heat is affecting their bodies and minds — effectively shortening their lives.
We'll be hearing from some Spanish-speaking residents as they explain how they coexist with the heat. Yvette will translate, but we’ll make room for these Texans to have their voices heard in their own language.
What's the connection between longstanding racism in our cities and the built environment there? What can be done to reverse what the EPA and many researchers call “the Urban Heat Island Effect”? The answers will demand that we untangle a complex web of issues, reject some of our prejudices and think creatively. That’s essential if we want to save lives and come to grips with the changing planet and our place in the community of people inhabiting it. Yvette Benavides reports.
Click the icon below to listen.Health, Wealth and Race in Today's Louisiana
Living Downstream
10/08/21 • -1 min
This season, we’re looking at environmental racism across the country, and today that takes us to the sugarcane covered, oil-rich region at the intersection of southern Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico: Iberia Parish.
In this episode of Living Downstream, we will hear from people who say they are fighting over something that their families have already fought for generations to maintain: wealth. In this case, we’re talking about land: what grows on it and what lies under it.
We’ll hear from Black sugarcane farmers who say it’s become impossible to stay within the industry. These farmers describe the challenges of keeping their businesses afloat in an atmosphere of overwhelming racism, and they share with us how the stress is affecting their minds and bodies.
And we'll hear the poignant story of a woman who documents how oil was taken from her family's land, while the only compensation was a $10 contract she says is a fraud.
Gulf States Newsroom regional healthcare reporter Shalina Chatlani takes the story from here.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Living Downstream have?
Living Downstream currently has 48 episodes available.
What topics does Living Downstream cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts and Science.
What is the most popular episode on Living Downstream?
The episode title 'Seeking Justice: On Repeat, In Every Language, Unceasingly' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Living Downstream?
The average episode length on Living Downstream is 11 minutes.
When was the first episode of Living Downstream?
The first episode of Living Downstream was released on Aug 22, 2018.
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