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 Profiles of Community Leaders: Valorie Caffee is Director of Organizing at the NJ Work Environmental Council, a coalition of labor and environmental groups working for “safe, secure jobs and a clean, healthy environment.” She chairs the Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, and is a GreenFaith Board member.
"I believe that striving to help people obtain environmental justice is now part of my life’s calling. This work is essential to overturning racial discrimination and to guaranteeing that everyone lives, works, prays, plays, and goes to school in a safe, healthy, clean and sustainable environment. I feel very sad when I visit people who live in polluted neighborhoods and see how their quality of life is compromised. All of us have the right to enjoy the beauty and life-affirming bounty of nature the Creator gave us, and to experience the sacred in our natural environment." 
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"As a mother of three, member of First
Baptist Church of Nutley and youngest of seven siblings,
I have always lived my life with a belief that 'If it was
going to Be, It is up to Me' and with this I live my life
confronting environmental and social injustices to make communities
and life better for African Americans. My involvement in
the Environmental Justice movement is about establishing
networks and developing the next generation of Urban Environmental
Leaders because neighborhoods and populations are being disproportionately
exposed to multitudes of harmful substances at school, home,
work and community." |
When
asked why she's involved with the environmental justice movement,
Valorie replied, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
words, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,'
motivate me to include the struggles against environmental
racism and economic injustice in my lifelong commitment to
social justice activism. No group of people should be forced
to bear the disproportionate burdens of having incinerators,
landfills, sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, and other
polluters in their communities because of the color of their
members’ skin or income level. This is unfair and discriminatory.