In 1990, when Zulene Mayfield bought her first home in the city of Chester, she noticed there was a new building project across the street. What she didn’t know was what was being built: the Covanta / Reworld incinerator, the largest trash-burning facility in the world, which opened in 1991.
Since then, Mayfield says, her community has been inundated with toxins that have made her neighbors sick. NOx (nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide), VOCs (volatile organic compounds), benzene, cadmium, arsenic, lead and mercury all spew from the stack. The resulting ash is trucked through the community, where it wafts into the air and leaves a film on the ground.
In 2002, Mayfield walked away from her home because of the pollution. She couldn’t sell it, didn’t feel right renting it out, and couldn’t live in it any longer. “We have porch homes and no one sits outside because of the smell, and the trucks,” she says. “There were at least another four families who abandoned their homes as well.”
Chester is among the communities in Southeastern Pennsylvania that are most affected by both climate change and a long history of environmental injustice. Poor communities of color — including Chester City, Eastwick, Kensington, Strawberry Mansion, Pottstown, Lower Bucks County, and others — are more often located near industrial polluters. They are also among the neighborhoods that are closest to flood plains and heat islands — the two biggest climate change risks according to the Philadelphia Climate Action Playbook.
For the last 30 years, Mayfield has been an organizer with Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL), which has fought to keep other polluters out of the neighborhood and to protect the mostly Black residents who are saddled with the incinerator in their backyard. That work is getting a whole lot more urgent under the Trump administration, as the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding and legislation to support environmental justice communities has been obliterated as part of the federal attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and climate resilience programs.
Every other day we have to scream for the right to breathe and live. But today we are not downtrodden. Today, we are not overwhelmed. Today we are suited up and we’re ready to fight.
Into that breach comes the Climate Justice Organizing Fund, a new grantmaking program distributed by Bread & Roses Community Fund, with support from the William Penn Foundation. The fund will support grassroots groups organizing to change the policies, practices and processes that create and maintain climate injustice. It will also provide grants for community-based groups to strengthen their capacity to organize or develop a climate justice organizing strategy.
Through my work as a climate and social justice consultant, I had the opportunity to facilitate the community engagement process with groups across the Philadelphia region whose insights were used to design the fund. One of the people I spoke to was Mayfield. This interview touches on some of the climate justice issues she has faced in her work, and why this fund can help community organizations like hers. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Charity Tooze: How did you get involved in the climate justice struggle in Chester City?
Zulene Mayfield: I always wanted to walk into a house that belonged to me. I was 30 and had the opportunity to buy a house in Chester. My mom lived 13 blocks from me. I was at her house and saw this flyer for a community meeting about the trash incinerator that was being built across the street from my house. When I went home, I looked for the flyer but didn’t have one. No one in the immediate area of the incinerator had received a flyer. So, I went to the community meeting.
The average age of the people at the meeting was 60. I was listening to the people from Westinghouse, former owners of the incinerator that was being built, the City Council, and representatives from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) explaining to the community about the development of the incinerator. They were gaslighting the community. I got up and said, “I am sure you are all good at what you do” but the condescending nature of the way they spoke to the residents who were not well educated on these issues was appalling. They didn’t put in any effort in trying to fool us. I walked out.
My neighbor said he wanted me to be a part of this group and that’s how I got involved.
What is the mission of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL)?
CRCQL was founded in 1992 and is a community-based, democratically-run resident organization. Initially, CRCQL intended to work on many issues, from schools to economic development. But it was the incinerator and its pollution that led us to focus on environmental racism. We strive to simultaneously address the egregious health issues from the incinerator while opposing new toxic business proposals like the LNG Natural Gas and Hydrogen Hub projects.
We’ve always had to be like an octopus — dealing with many things, all the time, every day, all at once.
There is no magic bullet for this work. What has worked well for CRCQL has been to stay true to our mission — to speak — unafraid. We don’t care about reprisals or threats or what people think of us. Our mission is to love and support each other. That has been our strength and that has been what has kept us together. Every two weeks, we come together. We uplift and protect our community. Our goal has always been the same, we’re going to fight and resist whether we have $10 or $10,000 in our account. Our fight is not determined by our budget.
Can you explain the issue with the Covanta / Reworld Incinerator?
The Covanta / Reworld Incinerator in Chester City is the largest in the country. It is also the closest to residents. Over the past 30 years, we have watched our community become increasingly sicker. About 27 percent of our children have asthma — that’s four times the national average. We have been working with some of the colleges to pull together cancer information. One of the professors participating in that research said thyroid cancer in Chester is nine times the national average. All the cancer rates are five to seven percent higher than the national cancer rates. But we don’t need professors to tell us, we know these things — we live them.
A few weeks ago, a young man, an athlete, died of prostate cancer. Another man died three days later of prostate cancer — they lived across the street from one another. On the 200 block of Ward Street, in every house, someone has died from cancer. Outside of that, we have lost the sense of community. We have porch homes and no one sits outside because of the smell, and the trucks. I walked away from my home many years ago because of the pollution. I couldn’t sell it and didn’t want the responsibility of renting it to someone and them getting sick. There were at least another four families who abandoned their homes as well. On top of that, the incinerator sits on the waterfront and inhibits the economic development of the waterfront.
How can funds like the Climate Justice Organizing Fund support groups like CRQCL in the Philadelphia region?
We are not the Sierra Club, Earthjustice or the National Resources Defense Council — larger, more sophisticated, and well-funded groups. CRCQL has some grant-writing support but many organizations don’t. Unpaid staff are overwhelmed by the environmental racism and climate injustice issues plaguing their communities and don’t know where to start. Additionally, we often don’t know that grants exist or how to leverage the larger grants.
Funds like the Climate Justice Organizing Fund (CJOF) mean everything. Accessing these funds means having the money to produce literature, generate signage, make a donation so you can get airtime, draft a professional press advisory, buy posterboard, etc. Larger groups take for granted the expense of these things. A lot of folks can’t print at home. If they need 500 flyers: That’s a cost. If they want to do an event, funds like this help so we can at least provide donuts, coffee and juice. These funds go further when they are dedicated to frontline organizations — donors get more bang for the buck. These funds help us fight.
What do communities need to organize effectively?
In these types of battles, you have to walk, talk, chew gum and wear high heels at the same time.
To effectively fight you have to be educated. You don’t need to be a systems engineer or an epidemiologist, but you have to know something about these issues because no one is going to come in and give you tools to educate your community. The federal, state, or even local governments are ignorant. All they see is dollar signs. Communities have to develop adept knowledge and skills to fight effectively.
The biggest victory for CRCQL is that we suit up every day.
Groups like CRCQL know that climate justice information has to be turned into plain language for community members. People are busy, you have to capture them in 5 to 10 minutes and give them a basic understanding of what impact the incinerator or other toxic businesses are going to have and how to fight back. You have to share information in the first person — tell stories about real people — tell your story.
We have people power. To achieve a collective goal you have to have a strategy. This includes identifying what we want to achieve and deciding on the tactics that we’re going to use to achieve those goals. For example, developing printed materials, media campaigns, advocating at the Governor’s office, and identifying if we want a City Council member or the Mayor to take a stand about the issue. Once the community is educated and organized, strategy activates them.
What kinds of programs does CRCQL have?
The Campus Coalition Concerning Chester (C4) is a student-chapter organization dedicated to building alliances between local colleges and CRCQL. Last semester, I was at a community farm. There was a young lady there, she was a student who worked with CRCQL in 1993. Christopher Folk, a member of the Climate Justice Organizing Fund Community Advisory Committee, graduated last year and continues to volunteer with us. We have two C4s at Harvard, Major and Tyler who are still connected to CRCQL and doing work for us. We have Anna who graduated last year. Working with us changed her whole perspective. Now she is going into law because she wants to help CRCQL.
CHOICES is CRCQL’s youth leadership group for kids eight to 18. We are teaching them how to be leaders. They named themselves Choices, which reflects their desire to help others in making positive choices. One of the first things they wanted to do was to end gun violence, so we organized a workshop for them.
We have also shut down seven companies [that were planning to open here].
In at least one case — when Penn America LNG proposed a liquefied natural gas terminal in Chester — the Mayor pitched it as a way to bring much-needed middle-class jobs to the community. How do you balance that need with your work?
We looked up Penn America jobs on CareerBuilder and Indeed, and they said the jobs would require two to five years of experience — which residents didn’t have. That means the jobs would go to people outside the community or folks who the company brought in. So we didn’t see a significant economic opportunity that would outweigh another polluting industry in the community belching out greenhouse gases and polluting the water.
Share about some of CRCQL’s other wins.
The biggest victory for CRCQL is that we suit up every day.
We get up every day to support the residents with all the issues they face — bad schools, our city in bankruptcy, people struggling to pay bills, violence, our children’s behavior, and mental health needs, a school system in receivership — a government under receivership. Our community is trying to figure out how to survive and thrive under these economic challenges. Ain’t no white knight coming in here on a white horse. We are the calvary. We are exercising our choice to live and ensure that the next generations — can just have the freaking ability to breathe — to breathe!
Hell, I haven’t been married for 30 years, but I have been committed to this. I got a squad that is unequal to anywhere. During our environmental justice march, a shuttle load of nuns, average age 70, walked from the incinerator to city hall. Sister Joyce, one of our volunteers, calls the legislators to advocate for our community. Who can say no to a nun!
I am pissed that after 30 years we still have to do this work. Every other day we have to scream for the right to breathe and live. But today we are not downtrodden. Today, we are not overwhelmed. Today we are suited up and we’re ready to fight.
Charity Tooze is a climate and social justice consultant partnering with foundations, nonprofits, and progressive companies. Charity is experienced in leading community-centered projects, like the Climate Justice Organizing Fund process, locally and globally. She lives in Philadelphia.
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