Free Your Voice: Protecting the Community of Curtis Bay against Air Pollution

by Jaida Rhea

From the author:

I wrote this paper for WRT320: Technical Communication at Goucher College, where the goal was to write about an issue local to Baltimore. I am very interested in environmental justice, and while I was doing research for this paper, I came across the youth-led movement called Free Your Voice based out of South Baltimore in Curtis Bay. Free Your Voice has been established for a little over a decade. While their current opponent is the massive freight transportation company CSX, who recently transported over 8 million tons of coal from Appalachia through South Baltimore, the first movement started at Benjamin Franklin High School in 2011. Their first fight was the proposal of the nation’s largest waste incinerator less than a mile from the high school, and through the students’ peaceful protests, the incinerator was never built. Today, they take on a much larger opponent. This story follows these young people fighting for environmental justice in their community, and highlights past studies that show just how important their fight is for South Baltimore.

Read: Free Your Voice: Protecting the Community of Curtis Bay against Air Pollution (PDF)

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