Man: If you're working on clean air issues, you immediately start to center in on San Bernardino, the most polluted part of the United States.
Man 2: You can see it and you can smell it and you can sometimes taste it.
Man 1: The freight and logistics industry is the primary contributor.
Woman: They told me that my son had respiratory issues.
One of the doctors told me, no, it has to do with, you know, the environment.
What do we want?
Man: Let's start to explore what's really happening in our city.
The narrative versus the truth.
It doesn't matter how much the economic benefits are if no one's around to spend it.
Woman: Since it's mostly people of color in these communities that are being affected by it, they turned a blind eye to it.
Man: How far are we gonna let this go?
We have to put a stop to this at some point.
Man: "Earth Focus" is made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy, and the Orange County Community Foundation.
Woman: HASA is a proud sponsor of "Earth Focus."
[Machine hissing] [Children blowing] [Indistinct chatter] Man: 1, 2, 3.
We're gonna go one, two.
Ready?
One-two.
One-two, one-two.
At the gym when I encounter kids who I suspect have, like, some type of breathing-related illness, I don't necessarily, like, ask them outright because I know that for me when I was a kid, it was, like, deeply personal.
As soon as I tell them that I have it, they immediately say, "Well, OK, you understand inhalers and nebulizers and Augmentin and Albuterol."
Let's see.
One-two.
There you go.
That was nice.
One-two.
It's not all about achieving for these kids.
It's really just about being able to participate and have fun.
[Boy shouting indistinctly] Garcia: I was diagnosed with asthma before I was a year old.
I remember just wandering hospital hallways hooked up to the nebulizer and my inhaler.
I really loved riding my bike.
But if it was farther than, say, about 15 minutes' riding distance, then it wasn't a good idea for me to go.
As a kid, you begin to be, like, known as the kid with asthma or, you know, the kid who can't breathe or, you know, the kid you don't want on your basketball team.
1, 2, 3.
Like this.
Ah, ah, ah, ah...
Living in the Inland Empire, not a lot of people are educated on what is actually the condition of the environment.
It's been actually visible in terms of, like, how bad the air quality actually is.
You can see it and you can smell it and you can sometimes taste it.
Man: If you're working on clean air issues, you immediately start to center in on San Bernardino.
San Bernardino is just east of Los Angeles.
It's one of the most polluted, if not the most polluted, part of the United States.
You try to figure out what's causing that air pollution.
You realize the freight and logistics industry is the primary contributor.
Man 2: Air in San Bernardino in some ways is governed by the air quality upwind that is what is flowing to them from Los Angeles.
However, they also produce their own pollution as well.
It has to do with land use across Los Angeles and Southern California.
Many of those places, because of the cost of land, have been developed in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Martinez: You have a lot of local elected leaders who are allowing this to happen.
It's probably some of the most explosive growth in warehousing in the country.
Avol: We get almost 40% of the cargo traffic that comes to us from Asia, China, Japan, Korea, and then comes to Los Angeles and Long Beach.
And then they are put on the backs of trucks or rail and shipped out across the region.
Martinez: We saw e-commerce just boom during the pandemic.
We saw freight volumes come through the port at higher levels than we've ever seen.
We've seen diesel trucks and other trucks on people's roads.
And so, the harms continue to roll.
Those hit hardest by the pandemic are the folks who are hit hardest by this pollution.
They're literally building this stuff in people's backyards.
Avol: The effects of air pollution are actually much more dramatic and widespread than most people understand.
You know, with regard to whether air pollution is associated with asthma, with cancer, with other sorts of health maladies, the information is pretty clear that air pollution is a known carcinogen.
Woman: My son Leonardo, before he turned one, he ended up getting sick and it was a cold.
Then one night, he just couldn't breathe.
So, then we took him to the urgent care in Loma Linda and then they ended up giving him, like, steroids through, like, a oral syringe to kind of help his lungs expand and to help him breathe.
He's had that done since then, like, about 3 or 4 times and he's 3 now.
When they told me that my son had respiratory issues, I started crying because I got scared.
I thought I had done something wrong.
And then my husband told me, "No, you know, we've been taking care of him right.
You know, it's not nothing we did."
I asked them, you know, "What do you think caused it?"
One of the doctors told me, "No, it has to do with, you know, the environment."
So, just them kind of confirming that for me was a shock.
This is something that I can't Shield him from because I can't put him in a bubble.
Trains could usually run for about, you know, 5 minutes, sometimes if they're fast, but this one has been going on for about two minutes, 3 minutes now, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon.
It might sit there and idle like the one behind it, you know, and then there might be another one coming after it, because I think I do hear another one coming after it.
Yeah.
Avol: We have a surprising number of schools and parks alongside busy roadways and rail lines, and our recent research in the last few decades has shown us children who live closer to busy roadways, they actually had poorer lung function and smaller lungs by virtue of breathing the air.
It can affect their lifelong health and the duration of their lives.
Barrera: There was times where we did want to relocate out of San Bernardino to somewhere else because we wanted a better life for our child.
But at the end of the day, I decided this is where I had my child, this is where I met my husband, this is where I grew up.
What do we want?
People: Clean air!
Barrera: What do we want?
People: Good jobs!
Barrera: What do we want?
People: Clean air!
Barrera: What do we want?
People: Good jobs!
Barrera: I was never aware that San Bernardino had such bad air quality until probably, like, when I had my son 3 years ago.
I started to educate myself on what is happening and then, once I looked, I couldn't look away, since it's mostly people of color in these communities that are being affected by it, which is why, you know, I feel like people don't really care a little bit, because if it was a different demographic, I believe that it would have been changed a long time ago.
[Vehicle horn honking] Man: Amazon has got to go.
Hey, hey, ho, ho, Amazon has got to go... We're showing solidarity to all the warehouse workers and all the logistics workers across the region.
Amazon has got to go... 80% of the people here have family members or know somebody who works in the warehouse or logistics industry, be it driving a truck, working in a warehouse, or working near the railroad.
Our lungs are not for sale.
People: Our lungs are not for sale.
Man: There's a lot of people here that have family members with asthma.
There's people here who have family members who have passed away from cancer.
And now there's a growing consciousness about the issue and people are starting to fight back.
In one fell swoop, a lot of these corporations could mitigate the issue of pollution and they could create a high-road job sector.
This is what we're putting this banner up today for.
Basically symbolize, like, the region and our fight.
[Vehicle horns honking] [People speaking indistinctly] Avol: Diesel provides a lot of power to move big, heavy trucks and big, heavy vehicles.
In burning that diesel fuel, it creates very high concentrations of very small particles, so small that they can evade many of the defense mechanisms we have in our bodies.
Once it crosses the air-blood barrier in the lungs and gets into the circulatory system, it potentially has effects on any organ to where blood goes, which is every organ in the body.
Garcia: One thing about people in the Inland Empire is that, like, the material conditions here will make an organizer or activist out of just about anybody.
I grew up literally right up the street from the airport and I can see, like, I can see the planes taking off and landing from my parents' house, my childhood home.
And then we also have our newly formed Eastgate Air Cargo logistics hub, which is based out of the San Bernardino International Airport.
It is just goods coming and going.
And the main mover of these goods is Amazon.
Martinez: We have a case against the Federal Aviation Administration.
That's an agency that approves airport projects.
So, we filed suit challenging their environmental analysis that was done for this Amazon airport project.
One day, my colleague who's an attorney I work with finds this one email where the FAA was communicating directly with Amazon about how many airplanes were gonna come in and out of this project.
So, we kind of had this "aha" moment.
"Aha."
They've known that Amazon was engaged very early on in this project, yet they were hiding it.
And we filed that lawsuit in the United States Court of Appeals.
We were asking the court to stop the project until they do a lawful environmental review.
There's an immense power imbalance because you have a company like Amazon with infinite wealth.
You can't say that these entities can't afford it.
They may not want to pay to clean up their pollution and make it safer to breathe, but that doesn't mean they can't do it and they shouldn't do it.
This effort is truly kind of what people call David versus Goliath.
Community groups, they're just, they're just more nimble.
They know their community better.
They're communicating with their neighbors about the harms.
The passion for San Bernardino and their community, you know, Amazon doesn't have that.
They will never have that.
Garcia: This issue in this region in the Inland Empire is so intersectional because it has to do with your physical health, it has to do with structural inequity, it has to do with poverty and racism.
It definitely begs for attention because the problem itself is not going away.
Man: For today's meeting, there's about 5 topics that we're gonna cover.
Are mostly reminders about things about regarding the garden.
Sandra is saying that she's willing to...
This garden represents, really, the promotion of health, but not just physically, but again, mentally.
I'm Jorge Heredia.
I am a gardener here at the Garden of Health.
It's important for us to find these places where we can-- where we can meet each other and connect with each other.
Just hearing other people's stories and hearing their struggles with asthma, hearing their struggles with cancer, with obesity as well, with high blood pressure, because that's all connected.
You know, when you don't have access to healthy food, all of that plays in into the quality of health that we all have as community members and as a community as a whole.
This garden is, for me, a form of resistance.
It's a way that we can really, again, just stand up for ourselves, stand up for our health, and try to do what we can to improve our quality of life.
Yeah, the wind's picking up a lot of the dust.
Woman: I have my own interest things that I like to do, too.
One of them not playing in the dirt too much.
[Laughs] But I do like to come out and help him water from time to time.
I do enjoy the produce that he brings home.
I was diagnosed with cancer in 2016.
We didn't know, like, where I was gonna be, how my--if I was gonna improve because I was stage 3.
[Woman speaking indistinctly] Heredia: OK. [Woman speaking indistinctly] Thomas: Maybe that he connects with gardening because he's able to provide that.
It's something that he can do because I don't think he knew exactly what to do.
It's not like there's a Whole Foods here, so, you're not getting great produce.
Heredia: I was working at a warehouse when my wife was diagnosed.
You're working 10 hours at a warehouse.
You're discouraged from interacting with other people.
And it's a very lonely living.
These warehouses are massive.
I was moving throughout the whole warehouse and it was empty.
It's like, I would--I wouldn't see anybody down the aisles.
You know, that was kind of the-- that was kind of like, again, I was like, I was working there.
I was, like, crying.
Like, I'm walking through these aisles, like, crying, because I don't know what the future looks like.
I'm very uncertain what the future looks like.
How far are we gonna let this go?
We have to put a stop to this at some point.
Man: There's two different types of oleander.
That one, there's a bushel.
They grow into, like, a tree.
Garcia: Oh, yeah.
Man: Here, let me get this edge.
I want to pull some of this dirt over here.
Garcia: I grew out of asthma around 15.
I kind of hit the ground running as a teenager once I kind of, like, understood that I got my lungs.
Man: Yeah, so, anyway, Garcia: I have a hard time accepting that my dad is-- he's going through the same thing that I experienced.
They thought that they were gonna probably grow that way.
His doctor actually told him that, like, the environment that we're in is actually actively contributing to the decline in his ability to breathe.
Man: Well, I moved here in 1970.
In 1970, San Bernardino was still regular community.
I've seen and now we're here in '21, and we got trillions of trucks taking over our streets, tearing up our roads.
Little by little, before you know if your eyes are closed, the next thing you know, "Wow, look at that big warehouse.
Why are they building right here--" not even two miles away, they have a monster warehouse.
And that's where people live.
They ain't gonna go any higher.
That's good.
[Laughter] Still on our mind we could move, you know, and it might help me.
It just, you know, you just have to make a choice, you know.
If it gets worse, we might, you know, we might sell out and move somewhere else and try it out.
Andres Garcia: It's a big move because we've been here for so long and all of our family is here and there's so much roots here.
Martinez: We believe the only way we're gonna get out of this air quality crisis is if we shift to zero emissions, particularly in the freight industry, as soon as possible.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District is the agency that's responsible for making sure we breathe clean air in the region.
And so, for years, we have been pushing that agency to adopt what's called an indirect source rule or rule to require warehouses to implement clean technologies to clean up their operations.
Man: I'm also reminded that I represent the Wilmington Community.
You have a lot of these warehouses in the Wilmington community, a disadvantaged, impacted community.
Man 2: And all of us trust, not just [indistinct].
[Indistinct chatter] Man: House member, are you ready to testify?
Man 2: I am ready.
As an elected official, I hear you.
This is a pipeline.
You make it happen here with this bold move.
I make the rest happen in my city.
Today, I'm accompanied by tons of environmental justice advocates, organizers, especially, who've been putting in the ground work in support of an indirect sources rule.
So, basically, that is any kind of logistic development warehousing that is over 100,000 square feet would be responsible for their carbon footprint and just their diesel emissions, everything, to and from the warehouses, as opposed to prior, where there has been none.
But the reality is that without this rule being implemented, nothing is going to change.
The logistics industry will continue to rule the region and nothing will ever get better when it comes to our health.
It doesn't matter how much the economic benefits are if no one's around to spend it.
The indirect sources rule, if that passes today, it would be the first type of legislation, policy, that is actually enforceable.
Today, they're voting on that, finally.
Woman: Those truck are still gonna be on our freeways and they're still gonna be spewing [indistinct] because nothing in this rule gets rid of diesel trucks.
They'll be replaced here by other... Barrera: I don't think she understands what the indirect source rule reads because she-- oh, my gosh.
Rutherford: That's why I'll be voting against it and appreciate my... [Indistinct chatter] Reynoso: We just have to connect the dots and let's start to dig into the employment practices.
Let's start to talk about the wages.
Let's start to talk about the temporary employment.
Let's start to explore what's really happening in our city and the narrative versus the truth.
Just the attempts to get logistics to be responsible for their footprint and what they do to our communities, 6+ years.
Man: With that, would the clerk please call the roll.
Woman: [Indistinct].
Woman 2: Aye.
Woman 3: Yeah!
Woman 1: [Indistinct].
Man: No.
People: Boo!
Woman: Oh, Vanessa Delgado said yes.
[Cheering and applause] Barrera: So, the board actually just passed the indirect source rule.
That just means that, you know, all the work that we've done so far was heard and was appreciated and now, you know, we can go on to the next step, which is trying to make sure that it's regulated in a way that's safe for everybody.
This is where, you know, I built my life, pretty much, and I feel like this is why I fight so hard for my community, because this is my home.
Heredia: So, if we all are able to come together and to realize the impact that we can all do by coming together, I think we can really make a difference on how this story continues to unfold.
Avol: Regulators are slowly stepping up and saying the community is important.
The economy, industry, manufacturing, that is important to us, but so is the health and vitality of our community.
Health, for too many years, was not even at the table in these discussions and now it is.
[Machine hissing] Andres Garcia: It's difficult to envision an environment for a family in San Bernardino.
It's obvious that, like, the air is getting worse and I want to have children of my own.
It encourages me and it motivates me to find every single alternative solution so that, like, everybody can live a comfortable life.
Man: "Earth Focus" is made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy, and the Orange County Community Foundation.
Woman: HASA is a proud sponsor of "Earth Focus."