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Policy makers must work together to provide places to play in schools, parks, and green space so children can get physically fit and perform better academically. Without exercise at school, children are unlikely to get enough elsewhere. There are unfair disparities in access to parks and recreation space based on income, race, ethnicity, and access to cars.
Read more about Equal Justice, Human Health and the Built Environmenthere.
Click here to see The City Project’s policy report and maps on Healthy Parks, Schools and Communities: Green Access and Equity for Ventura County in English.
Síga este enlace para ver el reporte y mapas del City Project de Parques, Escuelas y Comunidades Saludables: Acceso Verde y Equidad en el Condado de Ventura en Español.
Click here to view other reports and maps in The City Project’s continuing series on Green Access and Equity for nine counties in Southern California.
Síga este enlace para ver otros reportes y mapas del City Project de Parques, Escuelas y Comunidades Saludables: Acceso Verde y Equidad en Nueve Condados del Sur de California en Español.
Click here to see The City Project’s policy report and maps on Healthy Parks, Schools and Communities: Green Access and Equity for Ventura County in English.
Síga este enlace para ver el reporte y mapas del City Project de Parques, Escuelas y Comunidades Saludables: Acceso Verde y Equidad en el Condado de Ventura en Español.
Click here to view other reports and maps in The City Project’s continuing series on Green Access and Equity for nine counties in Southern California.
Síga este enlace para ver otros reportes y mapas del City Project de Parques, Escuelas y Comunidades Saludables: Acceso Verde y Equidad en Nueve Condados del Sur de California en Español.
Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park commemorates Colonel Allen Allensworth and the only California town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans.
Allensworth is a best practice example for a monument to celebrate diversity, democracy and freedom and for the Heritage Parkscape.
Click here to read Tom Hayden and Robert Garcia on Occupy. . .
The New York Times has analyzed the demographics of the 1% in a series of features linked in green below.
The Wealth Gap
The wealth gap, as measured by net worth, is much more extreme than the income gap. The New York Times estimated the threshold for the top 1 percent in household income at about $380,000, 7.5 times median household income, using census data from 2008 through 2010. For net worth, the Times reports that the 1 percent threshold for net worth was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net holdings of $121,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances.
The Income Gap
According to the Times, “[T]he 1 percent . . . name conjures images of Wall Street bosses who are chauffeured from manse to Manhattan and fat cats who have armies of lobbyists at the ready.
“But in reality it is a far larger and more varied group, one that includes podiatrists and actuaries, executives and entrepreneurs, the self-made and the silver spoon set. They are clustered not just in New York and Los Angeles, but also in Denver and Dallas. The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast — from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.
“The top 1 percent of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country’s pretax income, about double their share 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they accounted for about 30 percent of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data. They received 22 percent of their income from capital gains, compared with 2 percent for everybody else. * * *
“Most 1 percenters were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 percent is more likely than other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99 percent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are more likely to be self-employed. Married 1 percenters are just as likely as other couples to have two incomes, but men are the big breadwinners, earning 75 percent of the money, compared with 64 percent of the income in other households. * * *
“The 1 percent are family-oriented, nearly twice as likely to be married as everyone else. They have more children, but not more cars, than middle- and upper-middle-class families. For them, education is critical. A vast majority of 1 percenters graduated from college, and in a whopping 27 percent of couples, both partners have advanced degrees. * * *
“The cutoff for the 1 percent varies depending on how income is calculated. On the low end, an analysis of census data puts the cutoff at $380,000 for a household and provides a wealth of demographic characteristics that were used in this article. On the high end, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which uses a broader measure of income that includes capital gains, yielded a cutoff of $690,000 in 2007, the most recent year of data available. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group, makes projections based on Internal Revenue Service data and adjusts for people who do not file taxes. It puts the cutoff at $530,000 per tax return in 2011. Even by that gauge, though, $380,000 would still put a family well above the 95th percentile. * * *
The Race and Ethnicity Gap
“Only two racial groups make up a greater share of the 1 percent than of the population as a whole: whites, at 82 percent, and Asians, at 7 percent. * * *
“Studies show that whites have more upward mobility than blacks and that parental education level is a strong predictor of success. * * *
What jobs do the 1% have? It depends on who you ask.
The Times reports that the 1% includes managers, lawyers, physicians . . .
Real wealth in America isn’t nuanced at all, according to Paul Krugman: “A large part of the rising share of the top 1 — about 60 percent . . . — is actually attributable to the top 0.1 percent. If you add together nonfinance executives, “financial professions”, real estate, and lawyers, you’ve got more than 70 percent of the total; plus some of the other categories are probably essentially business executives too. Basically, the top 0.1 percent is the corporate suits, with a few token sports and film stars thrown in.”
The Health Gap
“Money may not buy happiness, but the Fed survey suggests it buys good health. About 90 percent of the 1 percenters describe themselves as being in excellent or good health, compared with 75 percent of everybody else. About 85 percent expect to live into their 80s, compared with 68 percent of everybody else,” according to the Times.
What percent are you?
Enter your income in the Times’s interactive map to see where you stand . . .
Occupy D.C. Freedom Park
Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s former military dictator, was ordered by a Guatemalan judge on Thursday to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity leveled at him. He is accused of orchestrating the razing of Indian villages decades ago during the country’s long civil war. . . .
It came at the end of a daylong hearing in which prosecutors described mass killings, torture and rape in distant mountain villages almost 30 years ago and stressed that Mr. Ríos Montt, a former general, had full command over his troops and knowledge of their actions. . . .
During the 17 months of Mr. Ríos Montt’s rule in 1982 and 1983, the military carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the Mayan highlands as soldiers hunted down bands of leftist guerrillas. Survivors have described how military units wiped out Indian villages with extraordinary brutality, killing all the women and children along with the men. Military documents of the time described the Indians as rebel collaborators.
A truth commission backed by the United Nations, set up after a peace accord in 1996, found that 200,000 people were killed during the civil war, mostly by state security forces. The violence against Mayan-Ixil villages amounted to genocide because the entire population was targeted, the commission concluded. . . .
Click here to read the rest of this story in the New York Times . . .
Click here to read about the torture of Guatemalan people by the United States . . .
Click here to read about the ghosts of Guatemala . . .
Click here about the continuing United States devastation of Guatemala through the war on drugs . . .
In Riverside County, huge areas of federal, state, and county-managed natural open space, such as San Bernardino National Forest, Cleveland National Forest, Joshua Tree National Park and Mount San Jacinto State Park, are a wonderful resource for serious nature-seekers but most are located far from the major population centers and require access to a vehicle, as well as planning and some expertise…
Click here to see The City Project’s policy report and maps on Healthy Parks, Schools and Communities: Green Access and Equity for Riverside County.
I am a civil rights attorney. I have represented people on Death Row, helped free Geronimo Pratt, the former Black Panther leader, from prison after 27 years for a crime he did not commit, prosecuted public corruption and international drug trafficking conspiracies, and litigated international banking cases against Iran.
Fighting for the simple joys of playing in the park and school field for children of color and low income children is the hardest work I have ever done. I will be writing in this space to talk about green justice.
What is green justice?
Green justice includes green local jobs, parks and recreation, quality education (including physical education), alleviating health disparities related to the lack of physical activity and healthy eating, transportation justice, climate justice, and other issues that lie at the intersection of equal justice, public health and the built environment. Green justice includes questions of governance and democratic participation. Green justice also includes action – concrete action – like creating new parks, greening urban rivers, keeping public beaches public, and keeping school yards open after school and on weekends.
What do things like soccer and obesity and buses have to do with civil rights? Plenty.
Today a person’s health is determined more by where they live, the color of their skin, and how much money they make than by individual behavior, or the amount of money spent on health care. This is what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls “the social determinants of health” – and health inequities. WHO also defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” WHO calls for health in all policies, and health equity in all policies. While the debate rages about health care reform and “socialized” medicine, prevention is primary to improve health and cut health care costs. The old adage remains true – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
In the Los Angeles region, for example, children of color living in poverty with no access to a car have the worst access to parks and to schools with five acres or more of playing fields. They suffer from the highest levels of obesity. They face the greatest risks from gangs, crime, drugs and violence. Similar patterns are true throughout Southern California and in many other urban areas across the nation, as illustrated by evidence-based research, social science and history. Increasingly, people are noticing these patterns and beginning to take action. The National Park Service, for example, recently launched an initiative for “Healthy Parks, Healthy People,” which recognizes that park and health disparities can go hand in hand.
Los Angeles illustrates what could have been, and what could still be. In 1930, for example, Bartholomew & Associates and Olmsted Brothers – the firm started by the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York’s Central Park, created the field of landscape architecture, and was passionately committed to equal justice through the abolition of slavery – published a report called “Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region.” If that report were published for the first time today, it would be considered a best practice of insight and creativity. The Olmsteds did a better job in 1930 than local politicians and planners are doing today.
According to the Olmsted Report:
Continued prosperity will depend on providing needed parks, because, with the growth of a great metropolis here, the absence of parks will make living conditions less and less attractive, less and less wholesome. . . In so far, therefore, as the people fail to show the understanding, courage, and organizing ability necessary at this crisis, the growth of the Region will tend to strangle itself.
So how are we doing today in relation the recommendations put forth by the Olmsted Report?
Each of the Olmsted recommendations remains valid today – but unfulfilled.
Implementing the Olmsted vision would have made Los Angeles one of the most beautiful and livable places in the world. Powerful private interests and civic leaders demonstrated a tragic lack of vision and judgment when they killed the Olmsted Report. Politics, bureaucracy, and greed overwhelmed the Olmstedian vision in a triumph of private power over public space and social democracy.
Parks, physical education in schools, and related health disparities are civil rights issues because access is not equal, disparities are based on race, color, national origin, income and poverty. The urban greening movement is doing something about it. That’s what green justice is about.
Today marks Chinese New Year’s Day and the reign of the Black Water Dragon. Here are some interesting aspects of the Black Water Dragon to consider for the upcoming year!
“Ever since 1996 the year element has been in a destructive relationship with the fixed element of the animal sign. That is the longest unfavorable period in the 60 year cycle of Chinese Astrology, and that means a scarcity of good luck. The year 2012 is thus blessed not only by the lucky Dragon but also the end of that destructive cycle.
Furthermore, under the influence of the Dragon it is a yang year. Yang Water is like a flowing river rather than a stagnant lake. Things will move, ideas flow, creativity abound, economies boom, and love blossom in this environment. It is likely to be an exciting year indeed.
There will be significant upheavals in 2012. Soaring stock markets, natural disasters, and noteworthy, cultural and political developments will be more the norm than the exception. There will be celebrations of all kinds. And, good luck will be coming your way.” - excerpt from 2012 Dragon.
