During last Sunday’s edition of Hardline with Dave Debo on AM News Radio 930, the region’s weekly program of record, Columbus Park Association President Kathy Mecca fielded questions from callers. Listen to what happens when ‘John from Rochester’ asks, “Kathy, why don’t you just move?” The moment was tense but, as always, Mecca responded eloquently.
It’s hard to understand the logic that the caller expresses: that we should uproot generations of families and tens of thousands of people from the West Side, rather than simply rerouting the trucks. The mere suggestion is insensitive and unsympathetic — but one hopes that it could serve as a ‘teachable moment.’
“I want the caller to know that I suffered from breast cancer. Breast cancer is one of the epidemics here. It’s one of a number of cancers that we’re suffering from. Leukemia, neurological disorders. I am one of nine women — just on my block — with breast cancer. I was fortunate enough to recover, whereas many of my friends and neighbors did not. I feel that I was given a second chance to do something right. And I have the resources and the opportunity to speak out for those who are voiceless — and that has been my choice, not to move” Mecca responded. “As I talk to you right now I am struggling; I am severely asthmatic. I am one of 22,000; you can’t move an entire district. You can’t move the lake, but you can move the trucks, and that’s the most logical thing to do.”
“I’m four of six generations living in this community. We didn’t know that we were being poisoned by the trucks until the last several years,” adds Elizabeth, a caller who lives in the neighborhood. “People need to look at this community as one that loves Buffalo and wants to stay here. We shouldn’t try to just disperse people… Once capacity increases, that’s going to go deeper into the community. Then the next two blocks have to move; then six blocks.”
“While this debate has been going on about the bridge, HUD has built low income housing along the I-190 just south of the Peace Bridge, so those people who obviously cannot move are inhaling the fumes of 3,000 trucks a day, because the 190 is located between the lake winds and the projects,” explained another caller, Linda from Buffalo. “Something like 90% of those trucks are not serving WNY; most are going somewhere else. We are just hosting their fumes.”
The environmental justice struggle on the West Side ruptures the rhetoric of ‘progress’ that is so often espoused by our elected officials in terms of construction cranes and ribbon cuttings. But the neighbors of Columbus Park and Prospect Hill are all too familiar with politicians to be hoodwinked by political rhetoric. Their logic is keen, their insights are deep, and their resolve is unyielding.
A caller asks, why do you think federal and state agencies have been ignoring environmental laws?
“It’s an old proverb: it’s power, money, and politics. It’s much more expedient for advocates of the expansion to place politics and profits above the health of children,” Mecca concluded. “That’s just wrong.”