I worked with the Al Gore
Bi-National Commission with South Africa for the EPA. A South African
environmental leader, Jacob Ngakane told me of a community where miners working
for a U.S. multinational were reportedly dying from exposure to vanadium
pentoxide (a toxic ingredient used to strengthen steel). He described workers
who bled from every orifice, their tongues turned green. When I reported this
situation to my supervisor, I was told to "shut up" and redecorate my office.
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. The
civil rights movement and the Motown revolution was the backdrop to my
childhood. On special Sundays, my mom would take me to Reverend Franklin's
church, to hear Aretha sing in the choir.
My grandfather worked with other
Baptist ministers to welcome Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first
recitation of the I Have a Dream
speech in Cobo Hall in Detroit.
My grandmother was a member of the
Marcus Garvey movement and fought the Ku Klux Klan in her small southern
town. She kept a shotgun near her front door and used to tell me that if
those pointy-head people tried to come through her door she would be waiting
for them.
My mother fought the Detroit school
system when it tried to track me into "special education.' My mother visited
the principal who told me my mom had convinced him that I belonged in college
prep (my mom cleared her throat) and he added, "I'm sorry, I'm sure you really
belong in our honors program."
So, when the EPA asked me to look
the other way and not do everything in my power to help the victims of vanadium
poisoning. I said no! It was not
a part of my DNA. I was not going to be an accessory to injustice.
There were managers who called me an
uppity n-word, an honorary white man, an aggressive woman, a b*tch.
Truth-tellers have never been
popular. If they could have pulled out a
stake for a burning they would have done it.
I learned that managers
that discriminate and retaliate are rewarded and not punished because they are
following directives and carrying out their superior's orders. And yet we
wonder why our economy is stumbling?
And yet there was a good outcome after
my congressional testimony and trial -- which I won, earning the largest federal
payout yet - Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner and Congresswoman Sheila
Jackson Lee introduced the Notification and Federal Employees
Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002, the No FEAR Act.
I was joined by other whistleblowers
in the No FEAR Coalition.
Left up to people in power the
conditions that we met in the federal government would never change. We decided
to organize our colleagues and anyone else who would work with us. Some call it
democracy in action.
We created a non-partisan power
base.
And that's why I support the Occupy
Movement. I have led two demonstrations to EPA, called Occupy EPA -- that call
upon the EPA Administrator and the president to reverse their decision to
revoke clauses to eliminate pollution from the Clean Air regulations.
Everyone has a Rosa Parks moment. Even
Gandhi, the guru of non-violent resistance said: "Do not bend your knees
before an oppressor."
I have not stopped, I will not stop
and I cannot stop until we have fundamentally changed government from a
government of corruption and backroom deals with corporations, to one for, and
by, the people. Everything I do honors
the lessons of my grandparents and parents, they set the example. So did Rosa
Parks.
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