WUSUP

WUSUP
West Oakland Urban Students Uprising against Pollution
Oakland, California

Students from Ina Bendich’s class at EXCEL High School in Oakland had little idea how much they would be impacted when their teacher handed them a list of pollution laws and took them for a walk down the street from their school. Jamelah Isaac, 16, was part of the second class to walk by Custom Alloy and Scrap Sales (CASS), notice the smells coming from the building, and take action to stop the pollution.

The students used pie plates and test tubes to collect dust samples from around the school and their houses and send the samples to a laboratory for testing. The results showed that the air contained dangerous amounts of lead and other metals. Wanting to make a change, the students wrote reports describing their results and contacted news outlets to get the word out about the pollution.

Two years later, the students are still attending neighborhood meetings, conducting surveys and taking air samples in order to bring about a cleaner environment in their community.

What do you consider to be your group’s biggest success?

By like telling all the neighbors that live around the factory what’s going on, now they want to get something done. So they’re complaining a lot, and now the CASS Company is trying to move their company.

What’s the best response to your work?

There are so many. … Adults have been saying “Good job.” And if it wasn’t for us, nobody would still have a clue what’s going on.

What advice would you give to other kids who want to get involved with the environment?

When they do something like this, they have to really be into it. They have to make sure they have all their facts straight, because they don’t want to be in the middle of something and have someone be like, “No, that’s false information.” What else? Let the community know what you’re trying to do. Have support.

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