She stated, “People don’t think about what they breathe every single day.”
Johnson hopes to transform a vacant school in her Altgeld Gardens neighborhood of Chicago’s Far South Side, into a training center for environmental workers.
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She said, “We don’t have the workforce to clean up our community that’s been poisoned for so long.”
It’s only one of many projects designed to improve the community’s health and environment. A health fair was held by PCR in the housing complex.
They also prioritize conducting air quality tests to ensure South Side residents are not excluded from the clean energy economy.
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Johnson’s mother Hazel Johnson, founded PCR. Hazel Johnson faced resistance when she began speaking out for environmental justice in 1970s.
Johnson said that “She being black, being widowed, and living in public housing, more than strikes that was against me, but that didn’t bother her.”
Her mother’s fight to combat industrial pollutants brought her face-to face with elected officials, state and federal officials, and even presidents. For her efforts, she was called “The Mother of Environmental Justice Movement”.
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Hazel was inspired to take action after seeing the suffering of so many people in her area from respiratory, skin, and lung diseases. Hazel Johnson lost her husband, Cheryl, to lung cancer at the age of 41.
“She did her own research. Johnson said Johnson was able find out that there are 50 landfills and more than 250 underground storage tanks.
Johnson warned that the community faces many environmental challenges. However, Johnson said that environmental racism is less prevalent now than it was before Johnson’s mother’s hard work.
Johnson’s mother passed the torch and she knows she will have to carry on this environmental work.
“In ten years, I hope to see this building up and running, that Hazel Johnson’s Environmental Sustainable Institute would be up, and that we’re all working together. She said, “I want to fulfill my mother’s dream.”
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