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“Go back to your country” and “Get out of my country.” That’s what white men in Kansas and Washington state told Indian and Sikh men in recent weeks before shooting them ― it’s as if they were speaking from the same script.

Here are 97 times in the past two years that people hurled this kind of get-out-of-America hate, often with explicit language, at minorities ― whether it was yelled from car windows, spray-painted on buildings or written in threatening emails ― to make them feel lesser and like they don’t belong here. 

These quotes were collected, in part, using data from ProPublica’s Documenting Hate Project. If you’ve been a victim or a witness of hate, tell us your story.

 

“Get out of America!” and “Arab, you need to leave, asshole!”

― March 8, 2017, in Salem, Oregon

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― March 4, 2017, in Lansing, Michigan

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― March 3, 2017, in Kent, Washington. 

 

“Fucking Mexican. … Go back to your country.”

― March 1, 2017, in Brooklyn, New York 

 

 “Get out of my country.” 

― Feb. 22, 2017, in Olathe, Kansas

 

“Go back to where you came from.” 

― Dec. 31, 2016, in Las Vegas

 

“Go back to Africa.” 

― Dec. 28, 2016, in Kodiak, Alaska

 

“You fucking immigrant piece of shit. You Muslim. Go back to your country.”

― Dec. 11, 2016, in Bronx, New York

 

“Go back to Africa.” 

― Dec. 6, 2016, in Moonachie, New Jersey

 

“Go back to your own country.” 

― Dec. 5, 2016, in New York

 

“I will cut your throat — go back to your country.”

― Dec. 3, 2016, in Brooklyn, New York

 

“You can go back where you came from.”

― Nov. 31, 2016, in Cedar Falls, Iowa

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Nov. 26, 2016, in San Diego

 

“You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.” 

― Nov. 24, 2016, in San Jose, California

 

“You’re a terrorist. Get out of here.” 

― Nov. 23, 2016, in Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

“You don’t even — from here, you mothafucka. Fucking loser. Fuck you and your family, you terrorist motherfucker … You’re an Arab. You’re a fucking loser. Sand nigger … Trump is president, asshole, so you can kiss your fuckin’ visa goodbye, scumbag. We’ll deport you soon, don’t worry, you fuckin’ terrorist.”

― Nov. 17, 2016, in Queens, New York

 

“Go home.” 

― Nov. 17, 2106, in West Springfield, Massachusetts

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Nov. 16, 2016, in Philadelphia

 

“Fucking Muslims, go back to where you fucking came from, you’re so ugly.”

― Nov. 15, 2016, in New York

 

“Hijab-wearing bitch. This is our nation. Get the fuck out.”

― Nov. 14, 2016, in Fremont, California

 

“Cunt, you don’t belong in this country. Go back to your fucking country.”

― Nov. 11, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio

 

“You can all go home now.” 

― Nov. 11, 2016, in Iowa City, Iowa

 

“Trump might deport you … I think you’re an ugly, evil little pig who might get deported and I pray that you do.”

― Nov. 11, 2016, in San Francisco

 

“Let me see your papers. Get out of my country and go back to Mexico.” 

― Nov. 10, 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

“ISIS is calling! Muslims can leave!” 

― Nov. 10, 2016, in New Paltz, New York

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Nov. 9, 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

“You wetbacks need to go back to Mexico.” 

― Nov. 9, 2016, in Salt Lake City

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― Nov. 9, 2016, in North Bend, Oregon

 

“#GoBackToAfrica … Make America Great Again.”

― Nov. 9, 2016, in Maple Grove, Minnesota

 

“Go back to Mexico where you belong.” 

― Nov. 9, 2016, in Plano, Texas

 

“Have you started packing?” and “Go back to Mexico” and “Yeah, keep on packing” and “We’re more American than you.”

― Nov. 9, 2016, in Woodland, California

 

“Go back to Africa” and “Go back to Mexico.” 

― Nov. 8, 2016, in Edwardsville, Illinois

 

“Go back where you came from.” 

― November 2016 in Denver

 

“Go back to Mexico” and “Go back to Africa” and “Sorry, you have to go back.”

― November 2016 in Spokane, Washington

 

“Go back to Africa.” 

― November 2016 in Poughkeepsie, New York

 

“Go back to the jungle.” 

― November 2016 in Englewood, Colorado

 

“Go back to Mexico. You don’t belong here.” 

― November 2016 in Sonoma, California

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― Oct. 31, 2016, in Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

“Go home” and “Go back to your country.” 

― Oct. 20, 2016, in Fort Smith, Arkansas

 

“Terrorist, leave, No one wants you here.”

― Oct. 14, 2016, in Dundalk, Maryland

 

“Go back to China … go back to your fucking country.”

― Oct. 9, 2016, in New York

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Sept. 22, 2016, in Lakewood, New Jersey

 

“Go back to Africa.” 

― Sept. 22, 2016, in Norman, Oklahoma

 

“MUSLIMS GET OUT.” 

― Sept. 19, 2016, in Lonsdale, Minnesota

 

”Get the fuck out of America, bitches. This is America — you shouldn’t be different from us.”

― Sept. 8, 2016, in Brooklyn, New York

 

“Go back to China.” 

― September 2016 in Orange County, California

 

“You should take your black ass back to Africa so this campus and America can be great again.”

― August 2016 in Bowling Green, Kentucky

 

“Foreiger (sic) go home” and “Go Home Indian” and “I will kill you.”

― July 24, 2016, in Pahrump, Nevada

 

“I wish that you were not in the United States, and you don’t deserve to be here, either.”

– July 24, 2016, in San Francisco

 

“You Muslims need to go back to where you came from.”

― July 2, 2016, in Fort Pierce, Florida

 

“ISIS motherfucker. Get out of my country.”

― July 2016 in Omaha, Nebraska

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― June 22, 2016, in Waterbury, Connecticut

 

“Get the hell out of the country you bitchass Muslims!”

― June 22, 2016, in Germantown, Maryland

 

“American’s don’t want you here and when President Trump gets into office, your (sic) going home!!! Back to the (expletive) dry sand and the desert.”

― June 17, 2016, in Plainfield, Indiana

 

“Muslim trash go home!” 

― June 16, 2016, in Boston

 

“You are Muslim and not welcome … Go away killers … America hates Terrorist (sic) like you!”

― June 15, 2016, in Tucson, Arizona

 

“You white bitch. You don’t belong here. Go back to your people.” 

― June 14, 2016, in New York

 

“Go back home and take [your] bombs with you.”

― June 13, 2016, in Queens, New York

 

“Take your rag ass back to your country. I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

― June 9, 2016, in Richardson, Texas

 

“Go back to your country, wetback.” 

― June 2, 2016, in San Jose, California

 

“Leave now before it is too late … I tell every sand nigger that I see to leave … American’s don’t want you here and when President Trump gets into office, your going home!!!”

― June 2016 in Plainfield, Indiana

 

“Go back to your country or we will blow your ass up.” 

― May 25, 2016, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

 

“I don’t want [those two Muslim women] near my country.”

― May 23, 2016, in Orange County, California

 

“Fucking Mexican. Go back to Mexico.” 

― May 15, 2016, in Tulsa, Oklahoma

 

“Go the fuck back to where you came from.”

― April 30, 2016, in Marshfield, Wisconsin

 

“Go back to Africa.”

― April 21, 2016, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― April 7, 2016, in Elkhorn, Wisconsin

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― March 21, 2016, in Oakhurst, California

 

“If you call yourself an African-American, go back to Africa. If you’re an African first, go back to Africa.”

― March 12, 2016, in Cleveland

 

“Go to Auschwitz. Go to fucking Auschwitz.”

― March 12, 2016, in Cleveland

 

“You want to live in this country, you better leave … brown trash … Trump! Trump! Trump! … Trump will take our country from you guys!”

― March 12, 2016, in Wichita, Kansas

  

“Go back to China. Go back to China. Go back to China.” 

― March 2016 in Lexington, Kentucky

 

“Go back where you came from.” 

― Feb. 9, 2016, in College Station, Texas

 

“Stay in your desserts [sic] and follow your religion in your own countries. … Go back to your own country; America needs to get rid of people like you.”

― Early 2016 in Elmwood Park, New Jersey

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Jan. 28, 2016, in Edina, Minnesota

 

“Terrorist, go back to where you came from!”

― January 2016 in Tucson, Arizona

 

“Go back to your country. Fuck you.” 

― Dec. 20, 2015, in Brooklyn, New York

 

“Mother fucking tacos! Go back to Mexico! Go back to Mexico! Nobody wants you!”

― Dec. 16, 2015, in Phoenix

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Dec. 11, 2015, in Lancaster, New York

 

“GO BACK TO MEXICO NOW.” 

― Dec. 8, 2015, in Pittsburgh

   

 “Go home.” 

― Dec. 1, 2015, in Bismarck, North Dakota

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― December 2015 in Clifton, New Jersey

  

“Go back home, you terrorist.” 

― Nov. 17, 2016, in New York

 

“Get out of my country. Go back to where you came from.” 

― Nov. 14, 2015, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

 

“Yeah, go back where you came from.” 

― Nov. 10, 2015, in Milwaukee

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― November 2015 in Queens, New York

 

“FUCK THE KURAN. FUCK MUSLIMS … TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT … Get out of my country, yes my MUTHA FUCKIN COUNTRY”

― November 2015 in Hudson County, New Jersey 

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― Oct. 10, 2015, in Spokane Valley, Washington

 

“Learn English or go back to Mexico.” 

― Oct. 7, 2015, in Waterloo, Iowa

 

“Terrorist, go back to your country.” 

― October 2015 in Columbus, Ohio

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― Sept. 14, 2015, in Dallas

 

“Go back to your country.” 

― Sept. 10, 2015, in Sterling Heights, Michigan

 

“Terrorist!” and “Bin Laden!” and “Go back to your country.” 

― Sept. 8, 2015, in Darien, Illinois

 

“You Muslim scum, go back to your country.” 

― September 2015 in Austin, Texas

 

“Go back to Mexico.” 

― Aug. 27, 2015, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania

 

“Get out of my country.” 

― Aug. 25, 2015, in Dubuque, Iowa

 

“You guys need to get out of this country” and “go back to where you belong. … Go back to your country. … We don’t like you, especially your kind.”

― July 26, 2015, in Lewiston, Maine

 

“Go back where you came from.” 

― July 4, 2015, in Houston, Texas

  

This story was reported using data from ProPublica’s Documenting Hate Project. This project is collecting reports to create a national database of hate crimes and bias incidents for use by journalists and civil-rights organizations. If you’ve been a victim or a witness, tell us your story.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

It’s Women’s History Month, and the Girl Scouts of the USA are celebrating trailblazing women with a photo shoot and video posted on the Girl Scouts blog Thursday.

Photography studio Toddlewood styled the girls, who were chosen by application in the New York area. They dressed up as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, the NASA pioneers who were the focus of the film “Hidden Figures,” as well as Amelia Earhart, Mae Jemison, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Celia Cruz, Madam CJ Walker, Lucille Ball, Whoopi Goldberg and Girl Scouts’ founder, Juliette Gordon Low.

Rather than just talking to girls about women’s history, the organization wanted to give them a chance to walk in the shoes of the 11 iconic women who broke barriers in their fields, according to Andrea Bastiani Archibald, Chief Girl and Parent Expert at Girl Scouts of the USA.

According to Bastiani Archibald, the girls not only had a great time playing and laughing at the shoot, but they were truly inspired by the boundary-shattering women they were portraying. 

“It wasn’t just a dress up day: each of them learned the stories behind these iconic women, and honored their achievements. They truly became that woman for a while – they walked out of that shoot a little more inspired, confident, and assured of their own strength,” she told The Huffington Post. 

Bastiani Archibald says that this is the message that the Girl Scouts wish to broadcast to the world with their photo shoot. 

“We want every girl to know she can be a leader, shatter ceilings, and make a difference in the world. Girl Scouts are making history every single day, and they become the history-makers of tomorrow as well,” she said. 

Judging by the photos, these girls are off to a great start.  

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

WASHINGTON ― Remember when pundits hailed the election of Barack Obama as the beginning of a “post-racial” America?

After the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, it seems like a distant memory. But in 2008, it was the prevailing wisdom among political commentators.

Cornell Belcher, a long-time Democratic pollster who worked on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, started seeing through the mirage of racial harmony well before Trump’s election made it obvious. In Belcher’s book, A Black Man in the White House: Barack Obama and the Triggering of America’s Racial-Aversion Crisis, released weeks ahead of Trump’s election, he presents years of research showing that white resentment grew steadily under Obama.

He too had hoped Obama’s presidency would usher in a period of post-racial politics. But in his public opinion research in the ensuing eight years, he told HuffPost on Thursday, he saw a “rise in racial aversion … which accumulated in a sort of perfect storm for a candidate like Donald Trump.”

To measure “racial aversion,” Belcher surveyed people’s responses to “a range of questions … from affirmative action questions to government doing too much for people of color, to people of color not being as patriotic.”

The answers, collected over the course of eight years, showed a hardening of white attitudes toward people of color. Belcher attributes that trend not just to Obama, but to the rising coalition of communities of color that elected Obama.

Obama won reelection with just 39 percent of the white vote nationwide, not just by turning out more people of color, but also by taking advantage of the fact that the country simply had more voting-age people of color to turn out, Belcher noted. The changes that made that victory possible scared many of the white voters who went on to vote for Trump, according to the pollster.

Trump “is a George Wallace-like historical figure. The difference is that George Wallace could not win the Republican primary. He couldn’t win the nomination and become president,” Belcher said.

“But Donald Trump could, because now, with the rise of really, not Obama, but the Obama coalition, the wolf is now at the door,” he continued. “And what I mean by the ‘wolf is at the door’ is, I mean America is going through dramatic shifts, demographic shifts.”

Now Belcher is warning against Democratic analysts who see a message of economic empowerment alone as the key to rebuilding the party.

“[The country is] only going to get browner, so we have to solve for this, or we lose the future,” he concluded. “And again, that’s not pointing fingers at so many working-class whites, who, you know what, their world has changed, and the changes that are happening in our country, in this country, are stark. And we shouldn’t be surprised that some people are uneasy about it. But we should have that conversation about that unease, and a prescription about that unease that doesn’t pit us against each other.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Kerry Washington will play a hand in bringing an impressive debut novel ― Brit Bennett’s The Mothers ― to the screen, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

The novel is the story of Nadia, a girl living in a black community in California, who begins dating the son of the small town’s preacher, Luke. At 17, she gets an abortion, choosing her promising collegiate future over raising a family with Luke, a decision that reverberates through their young adult lives. Luke begins a relationship with Nadia’s more chaste friend, Aubrey, but Nadia and Luke’s past creeps up on the couple.

A rich examination of religion, judgement, masculinity (Luke, an injured ex-athlete, copes with life post-sports), and the public conversations that so often surround the private decision to get an abortion, The Mothers lends itself well to adaptation. (Full disclosure: HuffPost praised the book as full of psychological insight when it was released last year.)

The film will be produced under Simpson Street, the Warner Bros. arm behind the Emmy-winning show “Confirmation.” Washington will co-produce it with Natalie Krinsky, who has worked on book adaptations in the past. Bennett will write the movie’s script.

The news comes at a time when the lack of diversity in both the film and book industries is being called into question. Washington and Bennett’s project is just one more step in the right direction.  

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Peaches Monroee is back to take what’s hers.

The internet star, who’s real name is Kayla Newman, told Teen Vogue that she plans to trademark “on fleek.” Newman uploaded a video to the now defunct Vine on June 21, 2014 in which she sits in a car and says, “We in this b***h. Finna get crunk. Eyebrows on fleek. Da fuq.” 

Newman’s clip gained millions of views. “On fleek” quickly became a viral sensation and a cultural staple. Celebrities and companies a like profited off of incorporating the phrase into their music and marketing. But the 18-year-old didn’t see a dime.

Newman, who’s currently studying nursing, told Teen Vogue that she was pleased to see the cultural impact she had, but disappointed that she wasn’t given any credit. Which is why she recently launched a GoFundMe to raise $100,000 for her new cosmetic and hair line. As of Friday, she’s raised more than $13,000.

On her fundraising page, Newman wrote that this is her chance to follow her dreams and finally receive her dues.

“Just so everyone can know my plans, with this money I plan on starting a website, get this project on legal papers with a good team of lawyers, etc. and making sure my dreams come true as far as this ‘fleek’ thing,” she wrote. “I feel like this is my second chance and I will not mess this is up.”

The teen plans to create a multicultural hair and makeup line, which will include eyebrow pencils, eye shadows and foundation. She told Teen Vogue that she doesn’t have a name for the line yet, but she wants her line to send a positive message.

“I want to send a message that everyone can enjoy makeup and be ‘on fleek,’” she said. “I want people to use my products and feel good about themselves. I would consider that to be my impact on beauty.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Joseph Nicolosi, the pioneering force behind the torture practice known as “conversion therapy,” has died. 

Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic confirmed his death in a Facebook post on Thursday, citing complications from the flu as the cause of death. He was 70 yeas old.

Nicolosi founded the clinic and served as its director, where he claimed to assist “men and women ― mostly, persons who are still at a crossroads about their sexual identity ― to reduce their same-sex attractions and explore their heterosexual potential,” according to his website.

Conversion therapy can involve a number of different practices, including talk therapy, electroshock therapy, treating LGBTQ identity as an addiction issue like drugs or alcohol, in an effort to get gay men and women to align their sexual desires with heteronormative expectations. There are no mainstream psychiatric organizations that support conversion therapy as a reputable practice.

Conversion therapy can have life-long effects on its victims. In an interview last November, one survivor stated that “we were no longer people at the end of the program.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Julissa Calderon remembers clearly how her family disparaged her curly hair as a little girl, and she’s not alone.

The Pero Like producer sat down four Latinx for a video about the impact of being told they have “pelo malo” (or bad hair) growing up and how they feel about their curls today. 

“I am all too familiar with that phrase, I grew up thinking that my hair was of pelo malo,” one woman says in the video. “I was like kind of ostracized and they would bully me for my hair because I was different.”

Another woman says her hair gave her “some deep-rooted anxiety” and was hurt by how much anxiety it gave her grandmother. The participants also discuss getting their hair chemically straightened, or relaxed, and how long it’s taken them to love their natural hair. 

“I remember the first time I got my hair relaxed, I felt beautiful. I felt like was happy, it really sucks,” Calderon says in the video, holding back tears. “Yea I felt happy, I felt pretty, I felt like I belonged.” 

Watch the full video above.  

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie doesn’t care how “likable” she is. 

In an interview with The Washington Post published on International Women’s Day, Adichie discussed feminism and her new book, Dear Ijeawele. The acclaimed feminist author and mother initially wrote Dear Ijeawele as a letter to a friend asking for parenting advice. Adichie told WaPo the book includes suggestions on how to raise daughters in our sexist culture, including lessons like “teach her self-reliance” and “never speak of marriage as an achievement.”

“It’s not your job to be likable. It’s your job to be yourself,” Adichie told WaPo. “Someone will like you anyway.”

Adichie writes in Dear Ijeawele that she feels these conversations with children, but young daughters especially, are imperative to breaking down sexism, according to WaPo’s Nora Krug.

“I think it is morally urgent to have honest conversations about raising children differently, about trying to create a fairer world for women and men,” she wrote. 

Adichie told Krug that gender roles are so often learned from a young age. 

“The knowledge of cooking does not come pre-installed in a vagina. Cooking is learned,” she said, adding that she really dislikes the “Can women have it all?” conversation. “It’s a debate that assumes women do all of the child-raising and domestic work ― and we give her a special cookie when she works outside the home. When dad picks up a kid one time, he gets seven cookies.”

She pointed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an example of how gender roles are much harsher for women. Clinton’s Twitter bio starts with “wife, mom, grandma,” Adichie told WaPo. But Bill Clinton’s first word in his Twitter bio is “founder.” 

“We want women seeking power to be tempered by a more domestic side. We don’t expect the same of men,” Adichie said. “Women have to straddle a line so that they are seen as not so forceful that they are a shrew or emasculating, but not weak. It’s a kind of juggling that men don’t even have to consider at all.” 

Head over to The Washington Post to read the full interview. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

O.J. Simpson is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping in 2008. But the former football star could be free as early as this October. According to TMZ, if that happens, reality TV producers will be scrambling to sign him. 

The website reports that, after reaching out to various players in the reality TV industry, reactions ranged from some “recoiling in disgust” at the idea of working with him, to those eager to capitalize on his infamy.

Given the often-exploitative nature of reality TV, combined with recent renewed interest in Simpson — thanks to several projects from 2016 including FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” — this shouldn’t surprise anyone. 

Simpson is no stranger to reality TV. He once starred in a super low-budget rip-off of “Punk’d” called “Juiced,” which aired in the decade after he was acquitted in the murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Those who watched the Oscar-winning doc “O.J.: Made In America” might remember clips of the prank show, filmed during Simpson’s time living in Florida. These clips felt like the darkest part of the documentary, which is strange, given much of the film dealt with a horrific and brutal murder.

There was also Simpson’s memoir, If I Did It, where he outlined how he would have hypothetically killed Brown and Goldman were he the murderer. Reviews of the ghost-written book (published by the family of Goldman, who seized the manuscript as part of a lawsuit payout) said that it essentially amounted to a confession. The former athlete also shot a TV special with Fox, which never aired due to public outcry.   

The producers TMZ spoke with say they know someone in the industry will probably attempt to re-create that unaired TV special. However, they acknowledged there would also be concerns that any project with Simpson could provoke public outrage, which could mean a harder time getting the show picked up on a network or cable channel — and finding willing advertisers. 

Of course, given what’s already on TV today, it’s safe to say there’s definitely someone out there willing to give Simpson his own reality show. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

With the abrupt resignation of its leader, the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice program appears to be practically sealed.

On Thursday, InsideClimate News reported that Mustafa Ali, who has been heading the EPA’s environmental justice work and helped found the program in 1992, had resigned from his post.

Ali told the site in an interview that he sees the work he was part of as critical to the EPA’s overall function, but indicated that he doesn’t believe the agency’s current leaders share that belief.

“My values and priorities seem to be different than our current leadership and because of that I feel that it’s best if I take my talents elsewhere,” Ali said.

The program, which helps disadvantaged communities push back against industry pollution, appears bound for a drastic, 78-percent funding cut according to preliminary Office of Management and Budget numbers reported by The Oregonian and confirmed by other media outlets last week. The cuts would essentially gut the program, reducing its funding from $6.7 million to just $1.5 million.

In his resignation letter, shared widely across Twitter on Thursday, Ali pleaded with EPA chief Scott Pruitt to continue to support the office. Ali credited it with bringing together community groups, government and industry interests “to find collaborative solutions to many of the country’s most serious environmental and public health issues and concerns” in more than 1,000 communities over the course of his time there.

“I strongly encourage you and your team to continue promoting agency efforts to validate these communities’ concerns, and value their lives,” Ali wrote in the letter.

EPA officials did not respond to a request for comment on Ali’s resignation, but Lisa Garcia, who previously headed up the agency’s environmental justice work, said she was “outraged” by the news.

“I think this shows that this administration has no idea how valuable the office of environmental justice is,” Garcia, who left the EPA in 2014 to work at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, told The Huffington Post.

The program has operated for years with a shoe-string staff and a tiny budget — just 0.08 percent of the agency’s $8 billion budget, which itself represented just 0.22 percent of federal spending last year.

So, Garcia added, if the agency is going to be tasked with doing more with less, the environmental justice program should be emulated — not eliminated.

“This decision shows how fiscally irresponsible they are and how they are absolutely making uneducated decisions,” Garcia said. “They aren’t looking at the facts and they really don’t care about people because this is the one program that focuses on some of the most vulnerable communities. It smacks of elitism and racism if this is where they think the cuts can come from.”

The EPA’s environmental justice program, which was originally called the environmental equity office, was established in 1992 following the release of a series of damning reports that found industry polluters like toxic waste sites were disproportionately located in low-income communities of color when compared to wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.

The program aimed to address the problem of minority and low-income communities’ heightened exposure to these pollutants, providing small grants to help communities both create and implement local solutions to environmental justice concerns where they live.

It’s had many achievements. In just one example, a community organization in Spartanburg, South Carolina, helped a neighborhood surrounded by Superfund sites and Brownfields leverage a $20,000 EPA grant into cleanup efforts that led to more than $270 million in investments like community health centers, affordable housing, a recreation center, gardens and green space.

In a 2015 agency blog post, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy called the Spartanburg effort “a shining beacon of what’s possible when folks impacted by community decisions have a seat at the table.”

Garcia cited other examples of the program’s success: A small EPA environmental justice grant helped the residents of Tonawanda, New York, study the level of toxic benzene in their air — information that they used to force an industry polluter to cut its emissions, resulting in improved air quality. Another similar grant helped Asian-American groups in Seattle develop stormwater retention solutions that helped them revitalize the city’s Chinatown district with urban gardens.

Improvements like these don’t appear to be a priority for the EPA under the Trump administration. Though Pruitt has commented in recent interviews that he will push back against certain agency cuts proposed by the OMB, he has not named environmental justice among them.

This would provide a stark contrast to the way in which environmental justice was prioritized at the EPA under the Obama administration, most plainly evidenced by the long-term goals set forth in the Plan EJ 2014 and 2020 EJ Action Agenda reports that mapped out a comprehensive, agency-wide environmental justice strategy.

The EPA clearly has a long way to go in that regard. A report released last year by the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights found that the agency has a long track record of extremely delayed responses to environmental justice concerns. A separate report from the Center for Public Integrity found that the agency has been “chronically unresponsive” to such complaints.

“This decision shows how fiscally irresponsible they are and how they are absolutely making uneducated decisions.”
Lisa Garcia, former head of the EPA’s environmental justice program

Despite the previous administration’s mixed record on environmental justice, advocates fear that the program’s gutting will cause the agency to backtrack on the progress that has been made at a time when situations like the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, have shown how high the stakes in these matters can be.

Still, the cuts did not come as a surprise to some environmental justice advocates like Kay Cuajunco, a spokeswoman for the California Environmental Justice Alliance.

“We knew that environmental justice communities  — low-income communities and communities of color  — would be the first and worst hit under the new administration,” Cuajunco told HuffPost. “They have always been disproportionately impacted by pollution, and now the scale of attack will be bigger and the few backstops we’ve had will be gone.”

Other advocates are already preparing to push back against the cuts. And it starts with holding Pruitt to remarks he made during his Senate confirmation process, according to Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance nonprofit.

In response to questions from Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Roberts noted, Pruitt indicated that he recognized the importance of environmental justice efforts and planned to “protect human health and the environment for all Americans.”

“We would think that whatever these programatic changes he’s proposing would uphold the words that he listed off that he would honor during his hearing,” Roberts told HuffPost. “If he’s committed to all those things, the environmental justice program is not on the chopping block. But I’m just using his words.”

The OMB’s proposed cuts to the EPA total about 25 percent of its overall budget and would eliminate 1 in 5 of the agency’s employees. Some programs — like beach water quality state grants and Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound restoration efforts— are essentially eliminated in the proposal, while climate and Brownfield programs are also slated for major cuts.

Many of these cuts beyond the environmental justice program would also disproportionately impact lower-income communities and communities of color, environmental groups have noted.

“While this ‘zero out’ strategy would impact nearly every community in the United States, a close examination shows the burden of these cuts will fall hardest on the health of low-income Americans and people of color,” Travis Nichols, Greenpeace USA spokesman, said in a previous statement. “This is environmental racism in action.”

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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices