 "No change is gonna happen until people get together and realize that it ain't no black issue, and that it ain't no white issue ... that !
it's a human issue." said Charlotte L. Keys, the president and executive director of Jesus People Against Pollution (JPAP). We were received by JPAP in Columbia, Mississippi, in the early morning. The Freedom Riders stepped off the bus into the steamy Mississippi air after driving overnight from Waycross, Georgia. Columbia, a poor rural community of about 8,000, has suffered tremendous environmental tragedy in addition to poverty. We heard the history of Columbia's toxic disaster from a documentary video and directly from members of JPAP. A flyer explained briefly: "In 1977, the Reichhold Chemical plant, located in the midst of our low-income African American and white community, explo!
ded and burned. Residents were evacuated for less than a day. There was never any testing or attempt to determine if anyone needed medical treatment. The fire destroyed the Reichhold plant that was located in the center of Columbia, a town with a resident and  surrounding population of more than 26,000 people, but left behind more than 4,500 drums of chemicals that were soon buried in an 81 acre field at the plant site or abandoned on flats at ground level. The drums leaked, allowing chemicals to seep into the soil (most drums were not removed until the Superfund [cleanup] efforts began, years later, and others have been recently discovered). Subsequent floods spread the toxins !
into surrounding farmlands, rivers, swimming holes and streets." Ms. Keys took us on a tour of the neighborhood bordering on the Superfund site, and we saw a community as devastated by poverty as any we'd seen. We saw -- and smelled -- sites where chemical barrels had been dumped but never uncovered. As we passed by houses and trailers, Ms. Keys listed the health problems suffered by the residents: Alzheimer's and emphysema in this house, cancer in the neighboring house, and kidney problems in the next. The neighborhoods around the site were composed mostly of visibly substandard housing. Much of it is public housing from the Farmer's Housing Authority. In addition, Housing an!
d Urban Development (HUD) built an apartment complex for disabled people on a lot directly bordering the Superfund site, after it was known to be contaminated. We also learned that new families are moving in to Columbia, not being told by the government of the still-toxic sites around the city. Members of Jesus People Against Pollution explained how elected officials on all levels and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed them, taking years to acknowledge the problems and then providing only a partial cleanup. Community members in JPAP have had to look for support outside their local governments and the EPA for support. As Ms. Keys told us, politics seems to have been more about making money and covering-up the problems than about!
the lives of poor people. Poverty makes the situation even more devistating. Few of the poor residents can afford to move to a safer area. Forced to stay, they often don't have access to quality medical care -- even as they drink the contaminated tap water because they can't afford bottled water. Both Freedom Riders and JPAP members recognized that the system that has abandoned Columbia in poverty is the same system that disregarded their health in this disaster. After the tour of the community and lunch provided by JPAP, the Freedom Bus left for Jackson, Mississippi. We arrived at the Voice of Calvary Ministries guest house at six o'clock in the evening, for dinner and a discussion !
with civil rights leader Dr. John Perkins.
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