On July 25, 2015 hundreds of people from across the country – including members of the Sierra Club John Muir Chapter – traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan to stand in solidarity with the communities impacted by the largest tar sands spill in America in an event called Remember the Kalamazoo.
As a staff member of the Sierra Club – John Muir Chapter and anti-tar sands activist, I had known about the environmental tragedy and some of the human health impacts that Enbridge’s massive spill had caused for the Battle Creek and surrounding communities; however, Remember the Kalamazoo demonstrated that the damage caused by the spill stretched far beyond dying birds and respiratory infections in humans.
Before we gathered to prepare for the healing walk, we heard stories from community members who had lost their family members. One woman watched cancer take her father, her husband, and her brother. The community has watched children suffer from cancer. They’ve experienced the inability to speak out due to fear of lawsuits from Enbridge.
As we walked silently to the river the burden of grief in the community was tangible. Watching the expressions of the local community members as they walked back from the river’s edge, it was evident that this wasn’t just political or environmental – this was personal. The communities in the spill zone have felt silenced and alone. This made the healing walk much more than a tar sands event; it made the solidarity absolutely necessary.
But our journey toward understanding the impact of spills did not end there. On the way home, we stopped in East Chicago, Indiana at a BP refinery where many Enbridge tar sands are sent. Thomas Frank, a community member and activist in East Chicago, led us on a toxic tour through sprawling industrial landscapes. He told us about spill after spill that had been left in the area without clean up and without media or public scrutiny. The air quality in which this community lives is so bad that many of us had headaches within minutes of exiting the bus. One member of our group who has asthma couldn’t even get off the bus. And with Lake Michigan just a few miles away, these sitting spills leech into the water table and degrade the quality of water.
When environmental disaster strikes, it not only hurts the planet, but it hurts us as human beings. The healing process takes much more than a billion dollars and dredging of a lake, and the healing process can take much longer than five years. As environmental activists, we must also reach out in solidarity to impacted communities, and as a nation it is time for us to start building communities rather than building pipelines.
Take action to protect our region from future spills; click here to contact Senator Baldwin and ask her to demand a full review of the Alberta Clipper expansion.