Shale Maulana, Center for Environmental Citizenship

Shale Maulana is Northwest summit coordinator for the Center for Environmental Citizenship and a student and activist at Seattle Central Community College.

When I start my days, I always check my email, then get to the phone messages. The bulk of the emails I get are concerning our upcoming student summit -- either volunteers or people interested in attending it. Today, I had a lunch meeting with a staff person from Jobs with Justice, a labor action organization, to talk about how students and labor can work with each other in the future. It was a good meeting, and we started to make plans for the fall. It's great to be able to connect with other organizations and find out how we can collaborate.

Last week, my boss and I had a meeting with Yalonda Sinde from Community Coalition for Environmental Justice. At that meeting, we were able to get contact information for someone at Save Our Valley, an organization we had been hoping to work with on a campaign to ensure that a planned light-rail system in Seattle doesn't harm low-income communities and people of color. I did a lot of research on this issue (bless the Internet), finding out the good side and the gruesome bad side of the light-rail plan. Unfortunately, as it turns out, a collaboration with Save Our Valley might not come together.

Seattle, my hometown, has some of the worst traffic congestion in the nation, and Washington state has the highest asthma rates, notably where there are poorer neighborhoods and people of color. Light rail would do a lot to relieve some of the congestion and pollution by providing alternatives to driving. A light-rail system would be faster and more reliable than the current Metro bus system. The bus system works for a lot of people, but bus service can be unreliable at times, and it often takes quite a while to get where you are going. I usually ride Metro buses to get around, if I'm not walking, and sometimes walking can actually be faster.

If the light rail is successful in getting cars off the road, it would help with Seattle's air and water pollution, which is continually getting worse, causing more and more children to get asthma each year, and putting salmon increasingly in danger. Light rail would also reduce petroleum consumption and would be a great step in developing clean-energy alternatives, helping Seattle to grow in a healthier way.

But at the same time, there are a lot of Seattleites raising concerns about the lack of community accountability in the planning process and the way light rail will impact communities. Consider that most of the light rail will be constructed underground, but it is planned to be above ground in Seattle's Rainier Valley, the most demographically diverse part of the city, with people of color and immigrants from around the world. An above-ground light rail would destroy many businesses and homes in that area. Most of these businesses are small, family-owned operations that can't afford to move and would have to shut down entirely. The type of light-rail system being planned is also the most dangerous type in terms of fatalities and vehicle collisions. The light rail would run down the middle of the street every three to five minutes. Rainier Ave. and Martin Luther King Way, the proposed streets for the rail, have schools and businesses as well as homes along them. The light rail would also seriously affect emergency response, since only 14 of the 54 intersections of these major arterials would be available.

There is no reason why the light rail could not run underground the whole way, except that it would be more expensive. But one must weigh the monetary cost against the human cost. If the light rail is constructed above ground in the Rainier Valley, it would gravely hurt communities of color that are already struggling.

There is no structure within the light-rail planning process for community accountability. Since tax money is being used to construct it, and it's made for the benefit of the citizens, there definitely should be a clearly defined way for community members to play an active role in this decision-making process -- especially members of communities that will be affected the most.

In the struggle for a cleaner environment, there has to be a way for communities to be protected. It shouldn't be an either-or situation, as it's becoming with the light rail. What is the point, then, of a cleaner world if our communities are destroyed in the process?

Save Our Valley, a community-based organization working on this issue, recently lost a lawsuit against Sound Transit, the light-rail authority, which means that the light rail will likely be built as planned. It will be truly devastating to the Rainier Valley community. It's not a coincidence that the planning of the light rail did not involve any community input, and that Save Our Valley lost the lawsuit. It's all symptomatic of the racist way things are done in this city, and across the country. Communities of color almost always bear the burden of expansion and industrialism.

It is unfortunate that EnviroCitizen could not team up with the Save Our Valley effort. In organizing, things don't always work the way you'd planned. In this movement, as in any, there will be successes and failures. Not to say that it's totally over with the Rainier Valley. It's not over 'til it's over, right? But for now it looks gloomy. Now more than ever, we need to be doing anti-racism work to make sure things like this do not continue to happen.