Adapted from an interview with Miguel Acosta, Co-Director of Earth Care, conducted by Amy Laura Cahn.
Tell us a little bit about you and your community.
Miguel Acosta: I usually tell people that I was made in Mexico, born in Chicago, and I’ll die in New Mexico. I’m the Co-director of Earth Care. We do work around climate justice and environmental justice on a statewide level. I manage the environmental justice and community development and community health work at the local level here in Santa Fe.
Santa Fe is an arts and culture mecca. Kind of fancy. High income. We’ve got a world-renowned opera [and] an art scene. But those of us that work here with frontline communities know that none of that can work if it’s not for low income, immigrant, people of color, and Native communities that have been displaced and urbanized [and are] a source of surplus labor.
Because of the history and the culture of Santa Fe, it’s a very segregated community. Low-income minority and immigrant populations are segregated into a particular quadrant. That’s where we work. It’s next to an industrial area and there’s very few amenities. Those are the struggles in terms of environmental justice and community health, and community development. Where they all intersect [is] right in this part of the city where we focus our work.
How do you experience environmental racism in your community?
Environmental justice starts where you live. We’ve got two or three families per mobile home, which is an environmental justice issue. Families don’t have parks or recreation spaces. Many of those mobile home parks are very strict in terms of outdoor activities. You know how they manage people’s bodies? You get fined for too much noise, or too many kids outside, or too many bicycles or too many cars. It’s a very controlled environment to live.
We’re [also] right next to an industrial area. On top of all the existing health challenges, plus overreliance on automobiles and older automobiles because of lack of public transportation, all these things contribute to the environmental injustices people are experiencing. Plus [this area is] directly east of [Santa Fe’s] industrial area, so everything floats this way. We’re next to a highway that goes towards Los Alamos, and another highway that goes into the city. All that pollution also wraps around our community.
The less green area[s are] in this part of the city—a lot more concrete and asphalt. It’s hotter. We don’t have clinics, libraries, [or] amenities related to health. There is lower access to health and wellness resources [and] insurance coverage, [and] more small children per family. Higher asthma rates, high blood pressure [and] hypertension.
It was the hardest hit area during COVID but it was under-reported and under-resourced. The COVID crisis ended, and we still had not had appropriate outreach in Spanish from the city or county. Even once they said [the pandemic] was done, hotspots were still there.
A lot of this information gets lost because the reporting areas are rather large. All the mobile home parks are within broader census blocks. When you look at census block data, [the data on our communities] disappears.
[Jurisdiction] is also an environmental justice issue. [This] area had been county and was disregarded and disinvested by the county. Ten years ago, [the area] was annexed into the city. Since then, the city has also disregarded it.
What does the fight for civil rights look like in your community? How have you been using Title VI in your advocacy and organizing?
What got us involved in this work with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC) was a declaration by an asphalt plant right next to our communities that they were [planning to] increase their capacity. They were going to combine two plants into one and ask for a new permit to allow them to operate 24/7, 365 days a year. That’s when we got involved, filed a complaint, and asked for hearings from the New Mexico Environment Department.
We got testimony from young people and families and teachers and schools right nearby [about] how they would be impacted. We pushed for hearings. We started demanding full access using Title VI language. We needed things in Spanish. We needed things translated.
[Agency officials] said, “we put the flyer out in Spanish.” Well, that’s not enough. Full access means having a capacity to participate, not just being present while other people are talking. Understanding what the issues are, what the options are, and what your rights are.
We got a lot of pushback. [They said,] “It’s too much.” And then we find out that [the agency was] already out of compliance and had an agreement from five years ago that they were supposed to have done this and that hadn’t happened.
That’s when Maslyn [Locke, Senior Staff Attorney at NMELC] said “we may need to talk to EPA directly,” because there already was an agreement in place and the Environment Department was not even following that. So we kept pushing. We kept doing the translations that we needed to do to help build capacity and [help] the people that wanted to testify. And [we] made sure that when the hearing came that the Department would be ready to support everybody’s participation. And they failed. They failed miserably when the hearing started.
Two things happened. One person [from the state] told us they didn’t want to hear about “human impacts,” because the [permitting] requirements did not include [consideration of] human impacts—as long as they checked off all the boxes about the impacts of their new levels of a release of contamination. None of those boxes talked about impacts on human beings. They just talk about whether they were keeping things under a certain level based on the air quality monitoring. And those air quality monitoring stations were like four miles away. So immediately [public officials] told all our families and kids that were lined up to testify that they couldn’t testify about how this might impact them personally. They could only talk about the science and the check boxes.
And then [the state] failed in terms of the interpretation. They couldn’t get it together. The guy made some comments to one of our people that was testifying, “I think your English is good enough. So just proceed.” And she was totally terrified. Other people that didn’t even have her level of English just bounced out of the meeting. They’re just like “I’m not gonna embarrass myself.” So we filed a complaint with EPA.
What have the challenges been of trying to seek relief through filing a Title VI complaint?
[EPA] put on this big dog and pony show at the beginning. Lots of emails back and forth clarifying what’s going to happen. Then we have this meeting. There’s like 20 people there, and they’re talking about this whole informal process for resolving [the civil rights complaint]. Which sounds great. They use a lot of the language that we use, right? And they ask for us to come with recommendations to make things better.
We show up to this meeting. We sit for all this time and we share all this information. [And EPA officials say,] “Okay, we’ll get back to you.” And then silence. Silence in English and silence in Spanish.
A couple of years later, when we finally hear from them, it’s to let us know that they resolved the issue. And it’s like, “How do you mean?” They didn’t even compel the state to be part of the conversation. They just convene the meeting and let us know that they resolved it. And we’re done.
They said, “we’re sure that they’re not going to do this anymore.” And we said, “well, that’s what they said five years ago.” There was just no explanation.
[Before EPA informed us about the resolution agreement,] we had submitted new information about the hearing officer. In another meeting [about a different project] in another community, he had told people explicitly. “Yes, we want to hear how this [project] impacts your health.” [He had told our community,] “we don’t care how this impacts you. We just want to know whether the science is right.” Two different communities, one immigrant, one white and affluent.
[EPA’s response was to say], “Well, it wasn’t really new information, because it didn’t relate to language access issues.” We tried to share at that meeting that, of course it does. Language is part of culture. It’s not just because [our community members] speak Spanish, it is because of who they are they are being denied due process, denied a voice. And in this [other] community, [it is] not just because they speak English, but because they’re affluent, white, etc. that they’re provided a different sort of welcoming and a different kind of context for the conversations. But now [EPA] says, “No, we’re done. we resolved it.”
What do you need from EPA and other federal agencies to vindicate your civil rights?
We need the commitment to yes—not no [from EPA and other federal agencies.] They need to operate on the basis that “we’re here to ensure people’s health and maintaining care for the environment.” And not “we’re here to protect people’s investments and people’s work and make sure that it doesn’t harm people too much.” There [are currently] acceptable degrees of the collateral damage. We need them to operate [as if] there [are] no acceptable levels of collateral damage. Let’s figure out how we make that a reality.
What is the benefit of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for your work? How would you explain Title VI to someone who was not aware of it?
There’s the law and then there’s what enables us to use the law to protect our community. The enabling part of the legislation [is] what gives people some power. It’s the organizing space. It’s one thing to have a law on the books. But if there’s no way to use it or make it actionable, then [it is just] a law on the books.
[Title VI and civil rights laws are] beneficial in the organizing itself, especially with new communities. We’re standing on the shoulders of the folks . . . I was back there, one of them, 50 years ago, when I started in this in this work. It is part of the popular education [and] the historic context of the work that we’re doing.
People can put that constitution around them, the Civil Rights Act around them, and say, “this is what protects me.” This provides energy to our movement. All the work that happened over these years [is] a resource to draw upon. What have other people done in in similar situations? What has been [the federal] government’s, the state’s response? How [have] the courts talked about it?
The life of the Civil Rights Act and Title VI provides the sustenance for all our work. If that’s not known, then the attacks on it are not understood. If we don’t have that to share with people and to help build their capacity, then the threats to the Act are not understood—in terms of the magnitude [and] potential threat that they pose.
The content of this interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Earth Care is an empowerment and community development organization located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Earth Care grows grassroots leadership from the ground up by training and supporting youth and parent leaders who organize campaigns to build a healthy, just, and sustainable world.
