Environment

Outdoor Afro Connects African Americans to Recreational Activities

Published

8 years ago

September 20, 2016

Rue Mapp began chronicling the natural world in 2009 as a blog writer, as a way to telling the story of how she was influenced by nature.

“The blog was an idea to create interest in the outdoors,” said Mapp. “I would go outdoors to different parks, but I really didn’t see that many people that looked like me.”

This was at the start of Facebook, and Mapp found that her posts were starting to get a buzz and create a lot of interest from her friends and different readers who shared her posts.

“I would find out by my readers and friends that they were also outdoors people,” said Mapp. “They were interested in national parks, the outdoors and seeing all that nature had to offer.”

The blog led to Mapp founding Outdoor Afro, a grassroots organization that supports connecting African Americans with outdoor recreational activities.

These activities include camping, fishing, hiking, biking, skiing, hunting and bird watching. Outdoor Afro has now become a national organization with leadership networks in 30 states, including Illinois, Texas, Georgia and Washington D.C.

“We have not only been able to get people outdoors, but we have been able to respond to the needs of the Black community,” continued Mapp. “We need to make sure that leadership and staffing at national and state parks looks like the parks that surround our parks and public lands throughout America. They need to be more diverse and representative of the people who use these lands.”

The support for outdoor activities in the African American Community, can be seen in a recently conducted New California Media National Public Lands study, “America’s Public Lands: How Diverse, How Inclusive” survey, which polled Asian, Latino and African Americans voters about there reactions to national public lands.

Four out of five voters approve of President Obama’s commitment to public lands, according to the poll.

“We found interest in outdoors to be strong among voters of color, with 70 percent participating in outdoor activities commonly offered on public lands,” said Anthony Williams, special projects director for Bendixen & Amandi International, which conducted the poll.

“In addition, 57 percent of voters surveyed have visited national public lands,” said Williams.

The polling comes at a time when the National Park Service is celebrating its Centennial. The poll was commissioned by the New America Media and released in partnership with the Next 100 Coalition, surveying 900 African American, Latino and Asian voters nationwide.

The poll found that if these communities were more engaged by targeted outreach and education measures, communities of color would show a much greater interest in the outdoors and national parks.

The findings run counter to the perception that outdoors lands, nature and national parks are the domain of white people. People of color are very interested in public lands, as Mapp has argued over the past seven years.

“These places are part of our national and cultural heritage, and many Blacks embrace them,” said Mapp.

America is going through dramatic changes demographically. By 2020 half of the youth in America will be people of color, and by 2043, a majority of the residents will be.

Interest in National Parks and the US Forest Service by Blacks and other people of color will only increase in coming years.

“People of color support by large majors more urban parks, more historical and cultural programming, enhanced recruitment and hiring diversity,” said Sandy Close, the Executive Director of the New America Media. “There needs to be increased focus on the contributions of communities of color in the sites protected by the U.S. Congress and the president.”

The polling found that there needs to be improved access and more cultural diverse offerings when it comes to public lands. Four of five voters of color support the creation of new parks and monuments that tell the story of underserved communities.

The Next 100 Coalition is made of civil rights, environmental justice, conservation and community organizations that advocate for more diversity and inclusion in national park lands. Some of the national park lands include Civil Rights landmarks in Atlanta, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad in Maryland, the San Gabriel Mountains in California, Fort Ord in California and the San Juan Islands in Washington.

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City Government

San Pablo Appoints New Economic Development and Housing Manager

Kieron Slaughter has been appointed as the economic development & housing manager for the City of San Pablo. Since 2017, Slaughter has served as chief strategic officer for economic innovation in the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development. Previously, he served in a 2.5-year appointment in the Pacific West Region as one of 10 Urban Fellows in the United States National Park Service.

Published

14 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Kieron Slaughter. Photo courtesy of the City of San Pablo

The Richmond Standard

Kieron Slaughter has been appointed as the economic development & housing manager for the City of San Pablo.

Since 2017, Slaughter has served as chief strategic officer for economic innovation in the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development. Previously, he served in a 2.5-year appointment in the Pacific West Region as one of 10 Urban Fellows in the United States National Park Service.

Before that he was an associate planner in the City of Richmond’s Planning and Building Services Department from 2007-2015.

San Pablo City Manager Matt Rodriguez lauded Slaughter’s extensive experience in economic development, housing and planning, saying he will add a “valuable perspective to the City Manager’s Office.”

Slaughter, a Berkeley resident, will start in his new role on Nov. 12, with a base annual salary of $164,928, according to the City of San Pablo.

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Bay Area

Alameda County Judge Blasts Defendants Over Delay in West Oakland Fire Trial

Judge Kimberly Lowell excoriated the RadiusRecycling/SchnitzerSteel defendants in court for causing delays in prosecuting this case. Since the defendants first appeared in court on July 23, they have obtained three extensions of the arraignment date.

Published

1 day ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Criminal charges announced this week are related to the August 2023 scrap metal fire at Radius Recycling Inc., formerly Schnitzer Steel. Photo courtesy of Oaklandside.

Special to The Post

District Attorney Pamela Price announced that a hearing was held on October 30 in the criminal prosecution of the Radius Recycling/Schnitzer Steel involving a fire at the West Oakland facility on Aug. 9-10, 2023.

The Alameda County criminal Grand Jury indicted radius Recycling and two of its corporate managers in June 2024.

The court clarified that the defendants will not receive more extensions on their arraignment and plea.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price agreed with the court that defendants should not get preferential treatment. Price and her team appreciated the court for clarifying that future delays by Radius will not be tolerated.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) public data shows that during and after the fire, the smoke plume traveled across Alameda County with high levels of PM 2.5 (Particulate Matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter) detected around Laney College in Oakland, Livermore, Pleasanton, and West Oakland.

PM2.5 is particularly harmful to infants and children, the elderly, and people with asthma or heart disease.

“This fire posed a great health hazard to the people of Alameda County,” said Price. “High, short-term exposures to a toxic smoke plume have been shown to cause significant danger to human health.

“Additionally, in this case, Oakland firefighters battled the blaze under extremely dangerous conditions for 15 hours with assistance from a San Francisco Fire Department fireboat and a fireboat from the City of Alameda Fire Department,” Price observed.

The team prosecuting the case from the DA’s Consumer Justice Bureau looks forward to resolving any future motions and having the defendants arraigned in court on Dec. 9.

The media relations office of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office is the source of this report.

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Community

Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

7 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.