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Extreme
poverty, environmental degradation and toxic hazards in poor
communities in the United States are facing increased international
scrutiny following an inspection of rural Alabama communities by a
United Nations official. The conditions struck the official as
shocking and completely out of step with prevailing conditions in the
wealthy, developed world.
The tour
by Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and
human rights, has cast a light on an issue known well to
poverty-blighted communities and oppressed nationalities in the U.S.:
inequitable local policies that safeguard environmental racism by
literally concentrating toxic hazards in the backyards of the poor.
“Some
might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human
rights would visit a country as rich as the United States. But
despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and
inequality,” Alston said.
The U.N.
official's tour aims to provide transparency to the human rights
violations, destitution, and lack of access to crucial basic services
that have blighted oppressed communities throughout the United
States. U.N. investigators have also toured cities and towns in
California and Alabama, as well as Washington, D.C., West Virginia
and the colonial territory of Puerto Rico.
According
to Alston, the level of degradation he found can only be compared to
the disparities that exist in the poor peripheries of the global
economy – where the vast majority of people have known little
besides maldevelopment, impoverishment and the institutional violence
of inequality.
During a
tour of a rural Butler County community, Alston witnessed "raw
sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open
trenches and pits," with one home's water line running
straight through the fetid outdoor pool.
"I
think it's very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that
one normally sees. I'd have to say that I haven't seen this,"
Alston commented.
Prior to
the Civil War, the southern Alabama region was a cotton-farming area
where antebellum plantation owners exploited the labor of thousands
of Black slaves on vast estates.
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