On January 9th, Cole, Willem, Jack and I called Jaqueline Patterson who is the head of the NAACP. We interviewed her asking questions, ranging from more philosophical questions like if you could change one thing about how we treat the environment and more specific questions like what are some examples of superfund sights. In specific, she told us about how they were working with low-income communities that are in unsafe areas and connected them with movie stars to make awareness for the issue as well as give them movie gear to film their own movies. She also told us about some current superfund sights. One of them is in east Chicago where there was a led smelter plant in 1972 and since then the site has been remediated multiple times. However, there is a low-income black housing project with 1100 houses. In this community, kids have 30x the allowable limit for led in their blood. I think that one of the next steps for our group would to try to see how we could help the NAACP in NY. Or maybe to see if there is a way to get in contact with actual people in the east Chicago complex. One thing I think I improved upon is my listening and response skills because I asked multiple follow up questions so that I would listen to her first response.
Logo for the NAACP, can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NAACP_logo_2010.png
