Cory Booker in St. James Parish: Corp. polluters attack families, 'steal folks health,' livelihoods
ST. JAMES — Visiting rural western St. James Parish on Monday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called the industrial pollution spewed on vulnerable, minority communities "absolutely violence" and "an attack on families" that is often due to "corporate villainy."
Booker added that it is a "hateful hypocrisy" to put such high levels of pollution on poor communities like St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes.
"… it's corporate villainy where folks are outsourcing the costs and the burdens of their economic enterprise onto others and privatizing all their profits," Booker said at Mount Triumph Baptist Church in the heart of southeast Louisiana's industrial corridor along the Mississippi River. "It is absolutely unacceptable to steal folks' livelihoods, to steal folks' health and, literally, drive down the cost of their land."
Booker, a liberal Democrat and former mayor of industry-heavy Newark, New Jersey who has been discussed as a possible 2020 presidential candidate, said he will pursue legislation that would require environmental justice to be taken more seriously on the federal level. But he said he would also press federal agencies to better use their civil rights offices to look at the disparate impacts of industrial activity on communities of color.
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