The Igniting Youth Action for Climate and Environmental Justice Conference, co-hosted by the Marie Harrison Community Foundation and Leaders4EARTH at the end of last month, wrung wisdom from the past to better the future.
Standing under a mural of the Fillmore’s past and before a young audience facing an uncertain future, Connie Peña celebrated the timeless power of Nature.
“I would like to start with a blessing to the four elements,” Peña, an instructor from the Mission Cultural Center, declared in kicking-off the 2024 Bayspark Convention at the Southeast Community Center on Saturday, September 28. Decked out in rattling ankle ayoyotes and gorgeous feather headdresses, Peña and three dancers performed the “Danza Azteca” to a steady drumbeat, honoring earth, wind, fire and water.
“This is the way we pray. Through our bodies,” a breathless Peña said after three rigorous routines. “This is for the children.”
Arieann Harrison, founder of the Marie Harrison Community Foundation and co-host of the event, picked up that theme in her opening remarks. The busy workshops upstairs and the loaded tables outside had one goal: connect local youth to current climate leaders in order to develop future leaders who can carry on the fight for environmental justice.
“If you’re interested in helping a kid to make it to the next level, reach out to us,” Harrison says. “We need clean air, water, and land.”
Before releasing the exuberant crowd to the day’s activities, Harrison pays homage to her mother.
“The reason that we’re all here today is Marie Harrison. Marie Harrison was the mother of the environmental justice right here in San Francisco.”
Vendors outside explain the elements Danza Azteca celebrated inside, from the California Air Resources Board to the Wild Oyster Project to the Sierra Club, to name a few. Marie Harrison’s defense of the elements defined her environmental justice legacy, as well.
When brown liquid ran from the taps of Geneva Towers, affordable housing built by legendary architect Joseph Eichler that was ultimately dynamited, Harrison fought for the tenants’ rights for clean water. When she suspected air pollution from the outdated Hunters Point Power Plant was causing nose bleeds for her grandson, Harrison helped call for the dynamite that brought the plant down. And Harrison’s defense of the soil, a defense continued in Hunters Point to this day, is highlighted at table called “Radiation 101.”
“We’re part of a program called RadWatch at Berkeley,” Dr. Ali Banks said from behind her table that had cool-looking radiation detecting equipment instead of just stacks of pamphlets. “The intention of RadWatch is to raise awareness about what is radiation and be a resource for people if they’re concerned about radiation. Specifically, in the Bayview community.”
Empowering the Bayview, the slice of San Francisco that San Franciscans don’t talk about, was the clear aim of the RadWatch table. From receiving almost all of San Francisco’s waste to being the site of a major superfund clean-up, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, Bayview has long felt treated not as a community but as a place to treat sewage.
Words become action on the second floor of the Southeast Community Center as Banks leads a workshop on collecting and testing soil. Banks demonstrates the hands-on procedure, start to finish. After picking up a soil sampling box at the Marie Harrison Foundation office, those interested in testing their soil would scoop out the soil (protective gloves and masks recommended), taking careful note of the time, location, weather conditions and the depth of collection by filling out a form on the RadWatch website.
“Soil at different depths can have different amounts of contaminants,” Banks explains.
Once they’ve collected enough samples, the first testing will begin. “Sophisticated instrumentation” will identify the sources that are in the sample and at what concentrations, data which will be made public.
“And we do plan to measure more than just radiological since other local toxins are also a concern in the Bayview,” Banks said.
After the presentation, Mishwa Lee of 1,000 Grandmothers for Future Generations explained her interest in testing Bayview soil for toxins. She lives in Northridge Cooperative Homes, which shares a community garden.
“We have a fairly large orchard, and we grow lots of vegetables and some fruits,” Lee said. “We want to make sure that the food is safe for residents. We’re within a half a mile of the Shipyard.”
The Shipyard history is elemental to understanding the Bayview. Although San Francisco voted overwhelmingly for Prop P in 2000, demanding a full clean-up of the Shipyard, the EPA admitted in 2022 that the Shipyard can never be fully cleaned to such a standard. Falsified soil samples in 2018 and a damning 2022 Civil Grand Jury Report on toxic groundwater is more than enough to push citizens like Lee towards their own science.
Aside from the practical concerns about her community garden, Lee has personal connections to today’s event.
“Marie Harrison was a friend of mine. She introduced me to the challenges that people of color in the Bayview face. My son is black, and I wanted to make sure that we were connected with the leadership in the Bayview when we moved her in 1989.”
Some of that leadership towers over our conversation. We sit near expansive floor to ceiling windows, flooding the space with a natural light that illuminates Phillip Hua’s “Building a Better Bayview,” a three-dimensional photo-collage mural honoring the community activists known as the Bayview “Big 6”: Alex Pitcher, Elouise Westbrook, Espanola Jackson, Harold Madison, Ethel Garlington, and Shirley Jones.
Lee shared that she wouldn’t even have a home without the 1960s activism of the “Big 6” who fought for funding for the Northridge Co-Op. She quietly considered the powerful activism represented in the mural, then shared a personal reflection.
“I’m 76 now, and Marie Harrison died when she was 71. I know there’s a health discrepancy among people due to race. That likely allowed me to have a longer life than Marie.”
“So that really strikes me. Even having another year, let alone another five years of life, you can do so much. More time with family, or for community work, or just, you know, to relax and explore the world around you.”
Lee pauses again. The silence allows the buzz in the pavilion outside the towering glass windows to reach us. Packs of energetic Gen Zers, clutching pamphlets and laughing with friends, bounce in groups from table to table, grabbing any resource —or lifeline—they can. The Big Six watch, elders lost to the past but present in spirit.
