Majora Carter

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Majora Carter in Hunts Point reaching out to South Bronx residents
Majora Carter in Hunts Point reaching out to South Bronx residents

Majora Carter (born c. 1966[citation needed]) is an American environmental advocate and artist. She has demonstrated a range of environmental justice solution strategies in her hometown of the South Bronx, New York and currently works as the Executive Director/Founder of Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx).[1]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Majora Carter graduated from Head Start, PS 48, IS 74 and the Bronx High School of Science.[2] She went on to receive a B.A. in film studies from Wesleyan University in 1988, and in 1997 received an M.F.A. from New York University. [1] While at NYU, she returned to her family's home in Hunts Point to save some money, help care for her elderly parents (she is the youngest of 10 siblings), and work with a local youth/arts group,[3] serving as a project director for The Point Community Development Corporation, working on youth development and community revitalization in Hunts Point, in the Bronx. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 after determining that the environment and the local economy could be positively manipulated to alleviate poverty and public health problems simultaneously, and that project based initiatives were needed to demonstrate their viability.

[edit] Sustainable South Bronx

In 2001, Carter challenged New York City’s plan for a solid waste management plant to process 40 percent of the city’s garbage at a facility on the Hunts Point waterfront. Successfully diverting this plan, Carter formalized this action by forming the Sustainable South Bronx, for whom she serves as executive director.

With other groups, SSBx embarked on multiple projects including:

  • building a park on the site of a former concrete plant.
  • enabling public waterfront access where the shore was once littered with industrial scrap.
  • developing an ecological restoration workforce to protect and maintain the natural environment.
  • raised $1.25M in Federal Transportation Dept funding to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of the South Bronx Greenway, a bike/pedestrian greenway along the waterfront connecting neighborhoods to the waterfront and each other. The first piece of this greenway in existence is the Hunt's Point Riverside Park.
  • replace the disused/never-completed Sherridan Expressway along 1.25 miles of the Bronx River with riverfront housing, retail and community/recreational uses.
  • advocating for swimmable waterways through Storm Water Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.), a citywide coalition of organizations dedicated to improving water quality in New York City.

Majora Carter is connecting poverty alleviation and the environment in ways that benefit both concerns by demonstrating clean-tech solutions for our most persistent urban public health & global climate concerns, creating positive physical environments, demonstrating cool and green roof technologies, working to replace an under-utilized expressway with local value-driven development, and founding the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program - a program that creates a skilled green-collar workforce with personal & economic stakes in their urban environment.

In 2007 she was named one of Newsweek’s “Who’s Next in 2007”, NY Post’s 50 most influential women in New York City, Vibe Magazine’s New Power Generation, and awarded the National Audubon Society’s Rachel Carson Award, and was named one the 25 MOst Influential African-Americans by Essence Magazine in 2007 [1]

[edit] Other Projects

Carter has been a co-host on Robert Redford's "The Green", a weekly three-hour television segment dedicated to the environment, shown on the Sundance Channel.[2] She has also co-founded GreenForAll.org with Van Jones to help reach the goal of moving people out of poverty through green collar jobs. She is slated to carry the Olympic torch through part of San Francisco, California.

[edit] 2008 Olympic torch protest

Majora Carter was selected as a torch bearer for a portion of the San Francisco leg of the torch relay of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Many portions of the torch relay, including the San Francisco leg, were met with protests concerning the policies of the Chinese government toward Tibet. When Carter was passed the torch during her part of the relay, she pulled out a small Tibetan flag that she had concealed in her shirt sleeve, in an effort to show her solidarity with the pro-Tibet protesters.[4] At that point, according to Carter, "The Chinese security and cops were on me like white on rice, it was no joke. They pulled me out of the race, and then San Francisco police officers pushed me back into the crowd on the side of the street."[5][4] Carter explained her motivations: "We can't pretend that just because there's an Olympics going on, that there haven't been egregious human rights abuses, environmental abuses, that the Chinese government has absolutely perpetrated against the Tibetan people."[6] Carter's protest was the only move that made it past a vigilant group of police and Chinese paramilitary officers who diverted the run to a quieter area of San Francisco at the last moment. They changed the location of the run to avoid a large group of protesters waiting for them at the original location[7].

[edit] Awards

  • 2007 Honorary PhD. - Mercy College
  • 2007 Nat'l Audubon Soc. Rachel Carson Award
  • 2007 NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award. [8]
  • 2006 Municipal Arts Soc Evangline Blashfield Award
  • 2006 CORO NY Lewis Rudin Medal
  • 2006 NRDC Earth Day Environmental Advocates' Award
  • 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ("genius grant") [1]
  • 2004 Organic Style Magazine Women With Organic Style Award
  • 2002 Open Society Institute Community Fellow[9].
  • 2002 NYC Council Women's History Month Pacesetter Award.[10]
  • 2000 Environmental Advocate Award for Achievements in Community Development.[11]
  • 1999 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Quality Award.[12]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Majora Carter, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Current Fellows index. Accessed online 6 March 2007.
  2. ^ a b The Green on Sundance Channel. Accessed online June 17, 2007
  3. ^ Clinton Global Initiative. Accessed:June 17, 2007
  4. ^ a b Sou Youn and Bill Hutchinson (April 10, 2008). Olympic torch bearer from Bronx in Tibet protest. New York Daily News. Retrieved on 2008-04-10.
  5. ^ Torch rerouted away from S.F. protests (2008). Retrieved on 2008-04-09.
  6. ^ Olympic torch bearer shares her political views on Tibet (April 10, 2008). Retrieved on 2008-04-10.
  7. ^ Sou Youn and Bill Hutchinson (April 10, 2008). Olympic torch bearer from Bronx in Tibet protest. New York Daily News. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
  8. ^ [http://www.nyu.edu/mlkweek/award.html Accessed online: June 17, 2007.
  9. ^ http://www.ssbx.org/staff.html Sustainable South Bronx Accessed online: June 17, 2007
  10. ^ http://ssbx.org/MJCbioCV.htm
  11. ^ http://ssbx.org/MJCbioCV.htm
  12. ^ http://ssbx.org/MJCbioCV.htm

[edit] External links