Environmental Justice at Cal State LA
Dear Academic Workers,
Together, we must fight for environmental justice at Cal State LA. At the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, organizers and scholars developed 17 Principles of Environmental Justice. One of them states, “Environmental Justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.”
A third of a century later, we continue to struggle with grave environmental injustices at Cal State LA, a campus whose students are largely from working class, immigrant, and communities of color, and whose faculty and staff are systemically underpaid and often struggle to afford safe housing ourselves.
Just Friday, CFA-LA learned that King Hall again tested positive for asbestos, somewhere on the fourth floor. Cal State LA management indicated to CFA-LA that they have notified the affected parties directly.
We say: we are all affected, as we are all connected.
It was not until today that Cal State LA management choose to send a campus-wide communication.
We encourage you to make an informed choice about your return to work, especially if you work in King Hall. You may also make a complaint with OSHA here. We encourage it, as King Hall has existed as a hazard illustrative of environmental injustice on our campus for decades, a disgrace to the person, Martin Luther King Jr., whose name it bears.
CFA-LA is committed to continuing actions to promote environmental justice on our campus and in our communities. We will hold a Town Hall on this topic, and welcome your suggestions for building the movement going forward.
In the meantime, we simply wanted you to know: today, more asbestos was found in King Hall.
In solidarity,
the CFA-LA Executive Board