‘Help This Garden Grow’ podcast highlights environmental trauma inflicted on Black and brown communities

The name Hazel Johnson is synonymous with the term environmental justice.

For those who are not aware of that, Respair Production & Media’s podcast “Help This Garden Grow” spells it out, documentary-style, over six episodes.

The late Johnson was the founder of the nonprofit People for Community Recovery, an Altgeld Gardens community-based organization that has been fighting environmental injustices for 40 years. The injustices include the death of Johnson’s husband, John, of lung cancer at age 41 and the illnesses of her neighbors. There were many illnesses and they were as varied as the residents of Altgeld Gardens housing project on the Far South Side — a baby born with brain tumors and a 7-month-old who was so small she fit in a shoe box when she died of kidney failure, Johnson told the Tribune in 1995.

Johnson took up the mantle of service when she learned her community, which sits on the city’s southernmost tip at 130th Street with low-rise homes, had the highest incidence of cancer in Chicago. Johnson started researching and asking questions and found that the 190-acre public housing development was surrounded by dozens of landfills and industrial facilities where underground storage tanks leaked, which led Johnson to name the area “The Toxic Doughnut.”

Johnson, a native of New Orleans’ “cancer alley,” conceived People for Community Recovery in 1979 to help Altgeld Gardens residents advocate for themselves. Since then, PCR has been focused on effecting change and holding governmental officials, institutions and companies accountable to the communities they serve and the environmental issues they cause or ignore.

That cause is something Johnson’s daughter Cheryl continues to work toward after her mother’s death in 2011.

“Back in the 1980s, my mother was talking about changes in the weather pattern,” Cheryl Johnson said. “I remember that my mother said there would be great opposites: floods and droughts, massive earthquakes and record hurricanes and rainfall. You can’t keep abusing the land and not have repercussions.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration there have already been 23 extreme weather events in the United States this year that have cost at least $1 billion. The number surpasses the record of 22 set in 2020.

In the “Help This Garden Grow” podcast series, Cheryl Johnson shares stories about her mother’s work ethic and the ongoing fight to protect people and neighborhoods with podcast hosts Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger. Included in the more than six hours of content are stories about politicians’ connection to the movement; the lawsuit Altgeld Gardens filed against the Chicago Housing Authority; how environmental issues intersect with all facets of one’s life, including violence; and how the environmental justice movement continues to grow with the aid of mothers and caregivers, one neighborhood at a time.

“I don’t think we think of this work as storytelling,” Kisslinger said. “We’ve always thought about it as a contribution, building a rich humanizing archive with people now and in the future to find, and a way of really marking and celebrating the work that people do that goes unheralded.”

He cited the Johnsons’ work. “The reason we came to this was because we view the work of Cheryl and her mother as transformative, significant, world changing and important for us to know in our lineage of trying to do this work,” Kisslinger said. “So if what we can do is help people feel their own significance, that is of great value.”

Williams and Kisslinger spent two years speaking with community organizers, policymakers, historians and movement members locally and nationally to create the podcast. Cheryl Johnson says the series inspires people to grow their own minds when it comes to the scope of environmental justice. Williams hopes the documentary work is seen as more than just entertainment.

“‘Help this Garden Grow’ is a metaphor for Hazel’s legacy and that legacy is physical in terms of this movement,” Williams said. “We hope people learn from it ... but that learning is not to be abstract. Hazel didn’t have a trainer or a guidebook. She just started doing the work. So maybe start doing the work and you’ll find your people.”

After hearing about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plans to step up environmental justice measures in his administration, the Tribune talked with Cheryl Johnson, Williams, Kisslinger and Adella Bass, PCR’s health equity organizer, at a listening party and organizing event at Kelly Park in the Brighton Park neighborhood about their movement’s work.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What’s the main goal for PCR with the new administration?

Johnson: It remains to be seen. Let’s acknowledge the fact that (environmental justice) conversations, EJ issues are in chambers. ... When we started years ago, it was unheard of, so to see that transition happening today is promising. But, I gotta see some action. I want to be optimistic, but I have a little skepticism in how this is all going to play out because corporate America runs Chicago. We know that. The industries have a lot of influence at the end of the day. So it remains to be seen. I’m happy there’s awareness for citizens to embrace, but we’ve got to embrace it and we’ve got to keep that wheel turning because it can be in vain.

Q: For people who aren’t in the EJ movement, what can they do to help?

Johnson: Our philosophy is to meet people where they are at, find their passion and help them grow in that passion. People tend to come to work with us because they are frustrated by the issues; if it fits within the mission of what we’re trying to do, then let’s do it. That has been our strategy from Day One. My mother didn’t know what she was doing, she just knew something wasn’t right and she was going to try to make it right. ... I tell people today, we died because we wanted to read and learn. But we die today because we don’t read and learn, and we have to change that mindset. If somebody challenges you about something and they can’t provide the black and white, then don’t believe it. You find the black and white and tell them because that’s what we had to do for the government ever since we started. We had to prove to them something they already knew (when it comes to the harms committed).

Bass: Being an organizer … I wouldn’t say it’s not teachable, because it is; but you still have to have that fire. You can’t have a barbecue without charcoal or lighter fluid. You can care about a particular situation but in order to get through those mental days where you’re just exhausted, or keep hitting brick walls, you have to have that fight to carry you. I don’t think a textbook, a class or a seminar can teach you that. Mrs. Hazel Johnson was fighting for things because she cared. It was something that came natural to her. I think that’s how you get into community organizing, having that natural connection to wanting to do the right thing.

Kisslinger: When you hold space like this, have a rally or protest, really who it transforms most are the participants. The people who showed up and marched down the middle of the street when they only walked on the sidewalks before are never going to look at that street the same way. That’s how people build skills, frameworks and that passion through activation. That’s what brings people in, the act of showing up once you feel that fire and you feel held in that way. And you have all these things that have never felt right to you that people have been saying or you felt like you were crazy for feeling that way. All of a sudden you’re not the only one going “that isn’t right.”

Q: The word reparations has been vilified. How can the Black community get past negative connotations to see real repair?

Williams: I think we often have limited the idea of reparations as a top-down decided settlement and institutions of power initiating admitting harm, or taking responsibility. I don’t think that that is how reparations work. In my personal experience, I’ve worked closely with the Chicago Torture Justice Center, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials — the first form of reparations of police harm against Black people in the history of the United States. And that did not come from any heroic mayor. That came from mothers, coming from folks who were tortured and put on death row. It came from survivors. They came from organizers and artists, building exhibitions and doing outreach. It was more than just a check. ... So what repair would look like is doctor bills being paid for and the investment into a health care system, an investment into a Hazel Johnson Environmental Justice Center that can test and build processes for new organizers to develop. Instead of one person getting a check, what does it look like for a family to be the institution.

Bass: Working on policy, making sure that the magnitude goes beyond just a check, goes beyond the family that’s here to get it. It continues on, keeps teaching and keeps rolling. The magnitude of the repair that needs to be done is so great that a dollar amount isn’t the only thing. It has to reach so many different people, not only for us, but also the people that caused it, their grandkids and children, so they don’t continue toxic behavior.

Kisslinger: It starts with a shared acknowledgment, an accurate telling of the harm. An apology, restitution and commitment to it not happening again. You can’t do any of them without the other. At the root of reparation is repair and we have processes for how you can address and repair harm. Truthfully telling the story is important. If the story is told, it moves from “I heard this” to “this is what the record shows.” And then it makes it a bit more possible for that harm to be acknowledged on a shared basis, and a clear pathway to move forward.

Q: What do you see under the PCR umbrella that’s the most dire at this point in Chicagoland?

Johnson: When you’re dealing with industry, it’s the application process for them to operate in our neighborhood that we have no voice into. That’s a huge thing because we have no say in anything and most of these industries are in residential areas. Even in the pre-manufacturing districts, there are areas where communities live. We have to reform our Illinois Pollution Control Board along with our Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Having the right to be engaged in decisions that’s going to affect the quality of my community is a priority in the work that we do every day. Listen to us, hear us out and look at the past legacy history of these industries in our community. Are they good players or bad players? Don’t allow the bad players to continue to be bad players, based on money.

Bass: Getting the people’s voices that are directly impacted is important because if you’re looking at numbers and stats, but you haven’t talked to the people, at the end of the day your computer can say something different than what’s actually happening and going on. Get from behind those computers and come talk to the people.