Activist Petition to COP21 Calls for End of ‘Sacrifice Zones’


Kalamazoo, MI – A petition has been posted to all participants of the United Nations Conderence on Climate Change calling for the end of ‘sacrifice zones.’

The petition appears on a website for Edison Ducks In A Row, a non-profit effort to educate children about culture and reintroduce them to animals that help make food we all use, by reintroducing children in neighborhoods like Edison with ducks, chickens, goats, and small livestock.

The petition begins:
“They call us “sacrificed.” We live in homes, neighborhoods, communities, and regions where industrial pollutants invade our waters, our air, our lands and our bodies.

We are the inhabitants of blown apart mountains, we walk atop the land of aging and feeble pipelines, we are those who wait at the intersection for the tanker trucks and bomb trains that run day and night through our communities. We are the children of oil streaked and fracking contaminated waters, of the deadly and toxic tar sands, of the stolen trees and scorched earth, of the uranium polluted desert sands, and the survivors of those living and dying in the shadows of refineries and chemical plants across the continent.

We are the residents of justice denied, and we write to you today in one voice.”

The petition urges the COP 21 participants that the people “do not want false solutions” and calls for “the Precautionary Principle be enacted in all situations of future energy and chemical development, the encouragement of food sovereignty over industrial agriculture, that 80 percent of remaining fossil fuels be left in the ground, an immediate end to the government subsidizing of polluting industries and also the role of market mechanisms in climate politics.”

And it warns of the influence of well-resourced entities which can derail real solutions: “The forces that perpetuate the abuses and injustices of our world, although multiple and well-resourced, must not control the curative of our problems.”

The entire petition is posted at GoPetition.com.


JD Sullivan

JD Sullivan is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Green Action News. He has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism/Mass Communication. JD is passionate about journalism & sustainable living.

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