This is the second part of the commencement address Lana Pollack delivered at the University of Michigan on April 26, 2008:
Before Silent Spring was published in 1962, Rachael Carson faced serious legal threats from Velsicol Chemical, the company that produced DDT in St. Louis Michigan, (which is still one of the worst Super Fund sites in the U.S.). Fortunately, Houghton Mifflin, her publisher, held fast to its determination to publish Silent Spring, offering Carson protection in the face of serious threats of a lawsuit. After publication, Carson suffered all sorts of attacks on her science and her character. But she was brave and never backed down. Unfortunately, Rachel Carson died of cancer before she could see the full, revolutionary impact of her bold and brave work.
Countless lesser-known people have also been brave enough to blow the whistle when they saw a cover-up of gross public health or environmental threats—people whose names are not in the history books like Rachel Carson or so much in the news as NASA’s Jim Hansen.
In the 1970s, Love Canal biologist Beverly Paigen supported a community of New York homeowners, led by Lois Gibbs, in providing scientific information essential to the federal government’s decision to move the entire community out of harm’s way. And in the early 1980s, at the EPA, veterinary pathologist Adrian Gross blew the whistle on his superiors, who were in cahoots with chemical companies denying the negative human health impacts of their pesticide products.
In recent years, the whistle-blower list has grown long with brave public servants who’ve taken steps to call out the politically appointed heads of their own agencies for being in bed with the industries they were charged with regulating. In every case, these people have paid an emotional price, and too often their insistence on pursuing right behaviors has come at financial costs as well.
My favorite stories are of the brave people I know here in Michigan. These people are working hard and withstanding pressure to protect a small watershed, a favorite cold-water trout stream, a neighborhood, or a local park. Occasionally a local newspaper will tell their stories, but often it’s hardly from the activist’s perspective. Blogs and emails tell of their efforts, but seldom is this carried to a big audience.
Some individuals take risks quietly. It was not unusual during the years of Michigan’s previous governor for the Michigan Environmental Council to receive calls from state
employees letting us know about specific cases where their agencies were issuing permits to pollute that violated the law and would damage Michigan’s waters. With this information we could file a Freedom of Information Act request specific to that instance and, in some cases, we could get the decisions modified or reversed. I leave it to you to judge the bravery of individuals who made the confidential calls, but there’s no doubt that their actions helped protect Michigan’s environment during a period of serious environmental threat.
To recognize people who might otherwise not be so honored for their courage, the Michigan Environmental Council established Michigan’s highest environmental award, the William and Helen Milliken Distinguished Service Award. This year the honor is going to SNRE professor Bunyan Bryant, in recognition of his pioneering research and writing on environmental justice; his extraordinary success in teaching, guiding and inspiring students; his vision, persistence, and personal generosity in bringing the University of Michigan’s Environmental Justice Initiative to life; his international reputation as a leader in social and environmental justice; and of course his positive impacts on Michigan’s environment.
In the context of what I’m saying today, Bunyan Bryant has demonstrated a lot of bravery over the years by persistently advancing a subject that many of his peers in the academic world originally—and erroneously—dismissed as an irrelevant sideshow.
Eight years ago, the Michigan Environmental Council added the Petoskey Prize to recognize grassroots activists who demonstrated courage. While we didn’t plan it this way, the honors have mostly gone to individuals who’ve found themselves as underdogs with little or no money, facing off against multi-billion-dollar interests that were damaging Michigan’s environment. The Petoskey Prize winners, all of them working as volunteers, have time and again taken on the most powerful forces in their communities.
