A Hunger for Justice
It takes a hunger strike for a citizen to be heard when health dangers loom large for an environmental justice community.
By Melissa Ludtke
In Massachusetts, only after a man goes on a hunger strike does he receive a response from government officials who are charged with protecting the state’s citizens from dangerous exposure to toxins injurious to their health.
As I write this, this man has not eaten in 98 hours — seven hours longer than the hunger strike of suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop, who after being arrested and jailed for “militancy” went on a hunger strike. Hers was the first of what would become a tactic used by the suffragettes. Her jailers released Dunlop after 91 hours due to ill health.
This man’s hunger strike is the latest chapter in what’s been a long-running story of utter disregard for citizens’ concerns and broken promises by our government leaders. It’s been a story of voices crying out for state oversight and being ignored, of the state leaders indifference to health warnings conveyed to them by public health officials from across their state. Sadly, too, it’s been a story of our top leaders being unresponsive to the requests by local and national officials who asked them to listen to the citizens and scientists, learn from them, then lead.
However, at its core, this story is the erosion of humanity. In this story we see powerful interests — financial and political — shutting down the pleas of those who have reason to fear what could happen to them and their children if corrective actions aren’t taken. It is not that these people — many of whom live in nearby environmental justice communities — have not tried to be heard. They have, time and time again, in countless ways. The evidence of potential dangers that they’ve brought forth has been ignored as they’ve been turned away.
Before this man began to starve himself, our state leaders pretended not to hear these people’s voices, including his. Employing Houdini-like double-speak, state officials tied themselves in bureaucratic knots to avoid acknowledging that they have a responsibility to act.
Even more disheartening than political calculations is the inhumanity in play. How can Governor Charlie Baker refuse for months to even acknowledge the presence of a mother who sat outside his office for 211 days? She came there only to ask to speak with him about her fears for her family’s wellbeing. Yet, our state’s Governor never spoke with her about her concerns. Day after day he walked right by. Only once did he speak to her saying, “You’ve been so brutal to me. I have nothing to say to you.”
So here is what I know of this man’s hunger strike.
I know he is taking this scary action only after every other action he tried failed to get the state leaders to respond.
I know he is on this hunger strike for a cause he deeply believes in.
I know that by endangering his own health, he is fighting to protect the health of residents in Weymouth, MA who live on the frontlines of this project.
Despite several years of push back from physicians and scientists, residents and climate change activists, the state has let construction of a huge fracked gas compressor station go forward on land poisoned by decades of industrial use. Thousands of people live close by, and now their health is threatened both by its the compressor station’s construction and later by its operation when unhealthy emissions get spewed. As the protester’s sign tells us, 3,100 children live within one mile.
I know this, too, that this man refuses to eat until Governor Charlie Baker and our state’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Martin Suuberg, act to put in place these three basic protections for residents.
At first Nathan Phillips, this man who is on a hunger strike, did what citizens are told to do when they need to remedy a public wrong. He wrote to his state officials with concerns and, in his case, he conveyed evidence of the dangers, too. (Phillips is a Boston University professor in the Department of Earth and Environment.) He telephoned their offices, leaving messages along with thousands of others. He participated in rallies at the Statehouse to protest. He stood outside the Governor’s office with hundreds of others. No messages they sent were heeded, nor calls returned. He tweeted, a lot. He attended meetings with state officials where he spoke up and shared the evidence that backed up the fears that residents had.
He did all of this to no avail.
Then, he participated in acts of civil disobedience. He was arrested, as dozens of others were, as well, for protesting at state office buildings and outside the construction site.
Still, no one with the power to stop this project stepped forward to put in place even the most basic of health protections.
On January 21st, FRRACS — the large activist group in Weymouth protesting this compressor station — led a powerful delegation to the DEP office where they led a two and a half hour occupation and did a teach-in. The result: a four-hour meeting will take place soon with DEP officials to discuss all of the community concerns. (This meeting will be public, streamed on the FRRACS Facebook page.)
On January 23rd, while a guest on Boston Public Radio, a WGBH local affairs talk show, Governor Baker, responded to a caller’s plea for the long-promised installation of an air monitor capable of tracking toxic pollutants at the site. The Governor said he would act within “a couple of days” to install this air monitor. It’s not there yet, though the state DEP now promises one will be there, soon.
Six days later, on January 29th, believing there was no other way to push urgent action needed to deal with this nightmarish situation, Nathan Phillips, a Boston University professor, went on a hunger strike.
Still, every workday, trucks leave this compressor station construction site carrying soil that is threaded with arsenic, asbestos and coal ash and drive it through residential areas, which is against the route agreed up before the digging began. The trucks’ tires carry toxic residue onto these streets and into neighborhoods since the vehicles are not being decontaminated before they leave the site — another promise broken. Nor is testing being done of furnace bricks or coal ash on the site. Add that to the trail of broken promises made by those with the power to act.
After his hunger strike began, Nathan Phillips sent Commissioner Suuberg an email stating his three demands (shown above).
On Twitter he shared Suuberg’s response. One sentence, in particular, leapt out at me, for its hard to imagine writing what he wrote to a man who is two days into a hunger strike begun to protest inaction by the Governor.
Suuberg wrote: “As you are aware, the Baker-Polito Administration has made the installation of a long-term monitoring station in the Fore River Area a priority.”
He went on to tell Nathan how much his department looks forward to beginning data collection.
Nowhere in his response did Commissioner Suuberg step back from the stilted, dehumanizing language of a government bureaucrat to speak as a fellow human being.
In his email response, Nathan Phillips, said his hunger strike would go on until government actions fulfill “three conditions, widely recognized as reasonable, indeed to be expected, are met.”
So here is what I know.
I know a man is on a hunger strike in the name of environmental justice for fellow human beings.
I know his hunger strike led one public official to finally respond with a correspondence long overdue.
I know that promises made are never promises until they are fulfilled.
Lastly, I know that when our state’s Governor and DEP Commissioner act, Nathan Phillips will eat. ##
Melissa Ludtke is a veteran journalist who is writing a social narrative history of her legal fight against Major League Baseball in 1978 to bring equal access to women reporters. She is a member of Mothers Out Front.
NOTE: This story has been updated with new information that I learned after writing it.
If you’d like to add you voice to those trying to bring about positive action for the residents of Weymouth, please:
Call Governor Charlie Baker 617–725–4005 and Mass DEP Commissioner Martin Suuberg, 617–292–5500, extension for messages 71098
Say: “I am calling to urge you to meet the three demands that will allow the ongoing hunger strike of Nathan Phillips to cease.”
Or Tweet to them #Hunger4 JusticeMA . @MassDEP @MassGovernor @FRRACS_MA
