Economics (News)

By Margot Roosevelt

Environmental justice, a movement to focus attention on pollution in low-income communities, is a burning cause for Lisa Jackson, the first African American to head the U.S. Environmental Protection agency.  Over the last several months, Jackson has toured poor white, black and Latino communities with a message: Eco-issues aren't just for rich folks.

On Saturday, the EPA chief took a bus tour of low-income neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay area, stopping at a Superfund site where the federal government is coordinating toxic chemical cleanup, and an urban food cooperative.

The Obama administration’s special adviser for environmental jobs, Van Jones, has resigned citing what he described as a “vicious smear campaign” against him. For the past month, Fox News has run a series of reports on Jones’s alleged association with communists and his decision to sign a petition calling for a congressional probe of the 9/11 attacks. Jones is the founding president of Green for All and author of the book The Green Collar Economy. We speak with James Rucker, who co-founded the group Color of Change with Van Jones, and with Malkia Cyril, founder of the Center for Media Justice. We also talk to Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.

By  Bernard Marszalek

Two weeks ago sacked workers on the Isle of Wight, off the British coast, occupied their plant to protest the loss of 600 skilled jobs. The Danish owned transnational Vestas Turbines closed the manufacturing plant and the accompanying research facility claiming that it was unprofitable. This was the only wind turbine manufacturer in Britain.