Word: nevada
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That's what alarms Maria, Fabiola and Nevada. They don't go to school at Jefferson, nor do their brothers and sisters, but they are outraged just the same. Says Nevada: "It's terrifying that these kids are going to a school that's contaminated. In a way they are my brothers and sisters, because they are African-American and Hispanic children who one day may be my neighbors...
Maria and Fabiola worked for Clean & Green, a community-beautification program, before joining CCSCLA. Nevada is a seven-year veteran whose mother Melodie Dove is a CCSCLA leader. Formed in 1985 as one of the first African-American environmental groups in the U.S., CCSCLA is a force in the growing "environmental justice" movement, which questions why sources of pollution always seem to be located in poor neighborhoods...
CCSCLA campaigned for months to keep Jefferson New Middle School from opening, and the group's junior members were on the front lines. Maria, Fabiola and Nevada called government agencies, passed out flyers and went door to door to alert parents. But the school district determined that Jefferson was safe and opened its classrooms last July. Says school-district spokesman Erik Nasarenko: "The problem with the groundwater and the soils deep beneath the surface...does not affect people on the surface...
...next month the girls called a community meeting, inviting representatives from the school district and environmental agencies. After Maria, Fabiola and Nevada got through with them, they may have been sorry they went. When a schools official claimed that in an emergency, Jefferson's children would be evacuated to 9200 South Broadway, the girls pulled out photos proving that this was the address of a vacant lot. "We really nailed him down," Fabiola recalls. "We said, 'If you made a mistake like that, what other mistakes have you made...
Unafraid of confronting their elders, Maria, Fabiola and Nevada are proud of what they've done--and plan to keep doing. "We're the new generation," says Nevada. "One day you're going to have to stand up on your own two feet for something you believe in. Why not get an early start...