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[Audio description: A woman sits on a wooden bench in a garden with raised planting beds. She wears a floral shawl over a navy top and jeans, with hands folded in her lap, looking toward the camera.] Hello, my name is Shay Olaifa and I'm here with Abi Savizon and we're both Rice University students and members of the Fondren Fellows Program, which is an initiative directed by Rice's

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Fondren Library, which aims to foster research projects centered around a theme of archiving material. Our project is focused on the creosote contamination of Houston's Fifth Ward, Kashmere Gardens, and Trinity

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Gardens. Today is March 26th, 2025, and I'm here with Huey German Wilson, and I'm a community advocate.

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Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. So, for the first question, Ms. Wilson, can you please tell me a little bit about

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yourself and your connection to Trinity Gardens? Trinity Gardens is home. I was born and raised here, and I lived here until I was probably 22 or

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23, got married and moved away, and then I moved back about 16 or 17 years ago. But I always volunteered in this community.

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I never moved away from that. My home church is across the street, and so I always had responsibilities here to my community to do various things.

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So, I'm connected. My parents were raised here about a block from here, and they both lived on Peachtree (Street), and they were raised there, and their parents,

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my great-grandparents, plotted some of the original property on Peachtree (Street). Thank you so much. Can you please tell me what makes Trinity

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Gardens so special to you? It's home. It feels like home. Like I said, I always lived here, or

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I've always either worked here or volunteered here in some capacity, and I never could imagine any place else to raise my children. When I thought about having children and raising

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children, I couldn't imagine any place better than this particular community because this is where we ran free as children and were raised, and it was really a village raising children.

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And so it was beautiful, and I thought that was the way children should be raised. And so I came back here to church communities here, my entire family lives within

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10 or 15 minutes, most of the time, of this particular area. We never move very far away, and my children are considering buying property and moving back,

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so I'm pretty excited that the history that we have will continue beyond me. And I'm sure my great-grandparents are just ecstatic that the seeds they planted, we continue

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to reap benefits from those. Thank you so much for sharing. I'm so glad that you had this amazing village growing up and that your children will

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also get to have it. That's so important. On that same note of growing up, can you please describe to me what life was

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like growing up, being a part of Trinity Gardens? What are some of your favorite memories, whether through music, people, food, or community events that

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made it truly special for you? I think I actually went on a tour earlier today to the elementary school where I went to school, and I actually started elementary

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school there, strange as it might sound, at about 18 months old because we lived across the street. And when my siblings went off to school,

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I followed them one morning, and they couldn't get me to come home. So my mother had to walk across the street and pick me up and bring me

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back home. But I always wanted to be in that space, in that learning environment. And for years after that, before I started

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school, I would sit on the steps of that school, and greet teachers and the custodians as they came to work, and then when school was over, I'd wait until the day

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was completely over and do my homework on that step, and then I'd walk home. And it was totally safe. My house was across the street, so, you

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know, just a few steps, and all the neighbors knew (who I was). And so those are some of the memories. We played baseball in the field at the

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school, so we were always engaged and involved there. I was a Girl Scout and went to Girl Scout camp because we had a Girl

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Scout troop leader that had gone through the years with my sisters as Girl Scouts, and then with my children. She was very old by the time we

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got to that stage. But it was just wonderful because everybody that I knew, knew my children. The lady that babysat me babysat my kids.

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That is so phenomenal. So the memories are plentiful. We were able to walk these streets and be very safe.

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I could walk from my parents' house to my grandparents' house. Actually, my great-grandmother lived in between, and she was 104 when she died.

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So we could walk by her house. My great-uncles lived down the street, and I could take my kids by to visit them.

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That was amazing to me, to have that much family so close. My dad and his friends heard that they were building a new dump site at the

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Whispering Pines. They said, we've had enough, we've got a lot of dump sites out here, and we don't want another one.

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So they piled all the kids in the car on a sunny summer afternoon and took us over to picket them adding this new dump site.

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And they were all arrested. And my father put my sister in his truck at 15 years old, and she drove all of us home because they were going

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to jail. And my father knew if my mother found out her children went to jail, he would not have a place to live.

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So he made sure that we all got home safe, and then they took them to jail. Wow.

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And that was one of my earliest memories. Now, 55 years later, we're still picketing that same dump site. I'm working on environmental justice in the community

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where my father taught me about environmental justice. I'm teaching my children about environmental justice. And it wasn't even a term at the time.

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There was no environmental justice in 1970. There was no term for it. Dr. Bullard, who is with the Bullard Center at TSU, coined that phrase and has been

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working in environmental justice in this community at that particular dump site with my sister initially 40 years ago, and now with me. And so it's just, you know, this is

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a beautiful space to be in. I know the history. At the time, I was young and raising kids 40 years ago, and now I'm an

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adult mother of grown children with my grown grandchildren, and we get to have these conversations. So this is wonderful that we are teaching one, and they can literally stand on your

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shoulders because you're still here to tell this story. Thank you so much for sharing that. Dr. Robert Bullard wrote a book called Dumping

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in Dixie, I believe. About that Whispering Pines location. About Whispering Pines, yes. That's actually so amazing.

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Speaking about Whispering Pines and the elementary school you went to, are there any other locations in Trinity Gardens that are particularly meaningful to you that you've been trying to advocate to

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protect and make sure that they're sustained? We advocate a lot for churches in the community because they're our trusted locations, and we work with a lot of the pastors out

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here on various projects that, again, are environmental issues because we've had an increasing number of disasters with climate change, and people need a place to go that they know where they're

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going to go. And typically, they go to churches and they go to city facilities. Our city facilities weren't always open.

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The city gets to decide if they're going to open them or not. Our churches are always going to either open their doors or be a source for people

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to understand where they can get to. So we make sure our churches have that information and we work with them very closely. Some of them are looking to add solar

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because of the grid being in dire circumstances. People will be able to say, okay, the grid failed, but the church may have some power so we can go there.

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We found a few years ago, besides our churches, besides the city facilities, we were trying to get a new library. We worked with the city of Houston to

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get the new Amanda Dixon Library. It's a TechLink library in Trinity Gardens. That's vital to us because when we did the research, when we brought the community in

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and talked to them, we had many people come out and advocate for it because that was where they went to charge their phone when they didn't have power, to have internet.

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When a lot of us don't have internet because it's too pricey for us, it was a good place for them to go in the cold or to be warm or to

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be cold. In the summer, it was a refuge for our students. And not only could they go there and

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read a book, but they have computers there. So we advocated a few years ago, and Aramco built us a new Amanda Dixon Library. It's a full-on TechLink library, so they

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don't have as many books there, but you can get books there. So the books come, you go in and swipe your card and tell them what book

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you want, and they'll deliver the book there a few days later, and you get it out of a vending machine. How 2025 is that?

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But we also have hotspots at the library. You can go and pick one up and check it out like a book for a while.

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You can still check out books. They still have things on the shelves for you. But they have a table that little kids

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can sit at the table and play games. They won't let me play there because I take over. But the little kids can play at this

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table, and it's a tablet of sorts, but it's as big as a table. And so they can either play individual games,

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or a teacher can sit there and teach different lessons on it, and it's in the little children's space. I don't know.

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I think Amanda Dixon would be over the moon to know that the library that she started in her garage in our community that she advocated for with Mayor Louie Welch to

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get built, unfortunately, she never lived to see that library built, but it was. And it stood for 45, almost 50 years before we had to rebuild it.

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And Aramco was kind enough to give us the state-of-the-art library that we have now. So libraries, we don't have a lot of,

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we have one hospital in the community. We're very proud of our hospital. It's LBJ. We're extremely proud of it because it meets

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the needs of our community, right? It's the only one we have. We don't have a lot of clinics. We don't have a lot of dentist offices.

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But what we do have, we are trying to embrace and work with and expand. So LBJ is looking at expanding their county clinics around and then opening them up so

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the community can receive more services there. And we're getting a new Harris Health facility at the LBJ site, and so we're very excited about that.

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That's all very exciting. Thank you so much. So a bit of a shift. Can you please tell me when and how

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you heard about the creosote contamination? Shortly after Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, we were attending lots of community meetings. Because we needed to get the community engaged.

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And historically, that's the work that I've done is community engagement. And it's an art to it. And it's a real art if you understand

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your community. Which typically people didn't care how we felt when they engaged us. But we do care because it's our community.

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So we were doing these community engagement opportunities where we were helping people get their houses either repaired from the storm or rebuilt from the storm or some resources that they needed.

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We were bringing those resources in. In the course of those meetings, we find that Pastor James Caldwell, who's with COCO in Fifth Ward, is having meetings about creosote.

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I grew up in this community and you can probably hear in the distance there's a train passing every few minutes. We all grew up with that sound.

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It was never alarming. Nor was the little sheen of oil on water in the ditches. I never knew that that was a problem.

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We grew up with it. My parents never allowed me to play in the ditch. But we saw it.

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We knew it was there. We didn't know that that was creosote, which is a wood preservative. That every light pole, all railroad ties are

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dipped in those. We started attending his meetings to see if we could help with the community engagement part. They were doing such amazing work with the

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data as a small group. Impact (5th). They were doing amazing work with that. Pastor Caldwell was trying to figure out how to up their game and move them along.

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Also working with Lonestar Legal Aid because they were the legal arm and a lot of us have to trust and depend on that legal aid arm.

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So he said, you guys come by the meeting and see how you can fit in. We attended probably two or three meetings. Before I said, myself and Keith Downey, I

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said, either you want me to say something or you want me to stop coming to these meetings. Because I've got to say something.

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I said, you guys have to move this to the community. You've got to bring the coalition that is your community into these meetings so that they

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hear what you're talking about and they can then move your message. We had a couple of more meetings and then they brought in the community.

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We had a big community meeting. The community was distraught because a lot of these communities see huge tracts of people that die from the same kinds of cancer.

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Strange cancers that nobody's ever seen. That is the problem that they saw in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens and nobody could ever really put their finger on what was

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going on. So they bring the community in, people are in tears, they're in wheelchairs, they're on walkers, they have no legs, they have no arms,

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they've lost their children. The entire families, an entire line has died and nobody is saying what happened to them. We bring the community in and the night

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of that meeting we made the suggestion, because we worked very closely with our late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, that we should bring her in so that, because she had a voice

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for the people and she knew how to move your cause along. So we call her up, run into her someplace and say, look Congresswoman, this is the

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problem we've got. She was very distraught because of all the people she knew in that community, nobody had said anything to her.

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Nobody had said a word. About a month later we invite her to the meeting and the crowd erupts. They're cussing and crazy and very, very upset

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because they want something to happen, but they never knew what they wanted to happen. She, a month later, we're at Wheatley High School where the Congresswoman brought in the State

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Health Department, the City of Houston Health Department, the Mayor at the time, the Commissioner for Precinct 1, which is where we all are, the County Judge, everybody who had probably had,

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may have had some rumblings or had heard something, never knew what to do. The Congresswoman knew what to do. And she brought Erin Brockovich.

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And it was very exciting. It was a packed auditorium at Wheatley. Community members came up. There were probably 100 people that spoke that

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night. They were devastated. Because, again, the farther out you got, it didn't diminish.

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You heard the same story over and over again. My mother died. My sister died.

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My father's dying. My brother's dying. They all died of this strange, some strange cancer nobody could account for.

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So she also brought in the EPA. So within six months, this was a full -on assault on the finding out what happened, who's involved, who was to blame.

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And it took off from there. So that was where we heard about creosote. We always knew about it, but nobody knew

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what it was capable of. And every day I learned something new about it. And we all should be concerned because we

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live here in a triangle that is the railroad. So any way you leave this community, you've got to cross a railroad track.

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All the communities out here have the same problem. So we have bridges that go over the railroad track.

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In some places, they have underpasses that go under the railroad track. But you live near the railroad track. This is a concern.

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And if it isn't that, if it's not Creosote that's killing us, we want to know what it is. Thank you.

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So you talked about how Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee brought in Erin Brockovich. Who is that, and what was his role? Erin Brockovich is a lady, and she has

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a movie. They did a movie about Erin Brockovich. She was an environmental advocate at a plant, I think, where she worked.

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And a huge Academy Award winning film. Well, Erin came in to boost the crowd, and the crowd boosted her because they were so excited that she came to Houston for

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this event to talk to us and to tell people, no, you're not crazy. You do have an issue, and you need to fight about this issue.

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Because, you know, we had Superfund Sites in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens, all around these areas, because black and brown people lived here.

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They dug a hole and put stuff in the ground. We don't know what's out here. And so we've got to figure that out,

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and we've got to start someplace. So the Creosote seems to be the thing we start with in Fifth Ward. What will we start with in these other

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communities? We've yet to figure out. Thank you. So you talked a bit about how Ms.

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Sheila Jackson Lee attended one of the community events, and then from there she hosted the event at Wheatley High School. And news conferences and meetings with the State

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of Texas Health Department. We spent all of COVID-19 on health department calls with the state of Texas identifying those cancer clusters because they had the data, but

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nobody had massaged the data to figure out some things. So some of the community members, Keith Downey and I and Pastor Caldwell, spent those years

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meeting regularly with the health department. And that's when they realized that there wasn't just one cancer cluster. There's more than one.

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There's at least two. One of them is a children's cancer cluster. I don't think you can break anybody's heart any more than saying children with cancer, and

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they're dying at record numbers. So, you know, old people, middle-aged people, you might be able to say, well, you know, it was their time.

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But children, there's never a time when it's going to be okay for them to just die suddenly. And horrible deaths.

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So she organized all of that and kept us all moving. So when we thought, okay, I'm tired, Congresswoman, I can't do another thing, we're working on

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Harvey's stuff, we're working on the library, we're working on community stuff. She said, well, that's your lot in life. Then you just got to suck it up,

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Huey, and keep doing this work. Literally, those were our conversations. And what do I need to get for you?

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What do you need to see? Where do you need me to be? What else can I bring to this that you need?

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And she did that faithfully. So in the midst of all that, we still had disasters. We had the winter storm Uri.

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We had two hurricanes. And we were still moving because we had no choice. And she was there with us.

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What do you need? And if you didn't call her, oh, my goodness. If you didn't call her, you got a

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call at 2 o'clock in the morning. And she said, what do you mean you haven't called me? Did you know this was happening?

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Did you know that the state of Texas was taking back the money from the city? What are you going to do? Well, Congresswoman, what am I supposed to do

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about that? And she gave you your marching orders. And you did those things. So we had a record number of people

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sign up for Harvey. This past year, when we had two disasters, FEMA saw more sign-ups in this area than anywhere else.

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And we had never seen that before. Harvey was the beginning. But people are not resting on this. They are actually moving.

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Because when our houses are destroyed, we get a fraction of the money that they get on the west side of town, right? So they tell you, yes, you can rebuild

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your house for $35,000. I don't know what house they think you can rebuild for $35,000. But people on the other side of town

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get $300,000 to rebuild their home and buy new things. So that's been the work that came from this.

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And now that she's gone, we've got a Sheila Jackson Lee, environmental justice arm, that's coming in at LBJ that they're developing. We're very excited about that.

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Because the work that she did needs to live on. And we need to train people to do that work.

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And we're hoping that that center will be the catalyst for it. We're hoping that the resilience centers that we have will also be a catalyst for that

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training. So that we don't have to depend on outside people to tell us how to get these things done.

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We'll be doing our research. We'll be working with the universities. And we're so pleased that Rice is yet again stepping up to the plate.

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But we work with people at Rice already, I'm happy to say. Because before Harvey, we weren't doing that. And we miss out on a lot because

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we don't work with universities. Because you guys are studying. And of course I'm very concerned about what's going on now with the funding being cut.

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Because a lot of people won't be able to study our issues the way they had because the funding's been cut. But this is what we just figured out

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as a community in the last seven years. That universities are our go-to, they're our library of sorts of people and resources. So we're hoping that we'll be able to

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help carry on her legacy with that. I'm really glad that the important work she's done for the community has been so sustainable and long-standing and strong.

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It's amazing. Absolutely. On the same note of the Creosote contamination, can you please tell me what has been

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the biggest impact of the contamination on you and the broader community? I think understanding that it's not just something that we eat.

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It's not something that people eat. It could be, but it probably isn't. In communities like this, Trinity Gardens is a garden community.

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My grandmothers raised everything we ate. They raised chickens. They raised all the fruits and vegetables. And at the time, it seemed reasonable.

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Now that I'm an adult and I realize that my grandmother went to the store to buy sugar and flour and milk because she didn't have a cow.

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She had chickens and eggs, but she didn't have a cow. And butter because she didn't make her own butter.

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And then later on, my father made us make butter. But that's another story for another time. But my point is we were pretty self

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-contained here. What we're missing is grocery stores with valuable food items in them, things that we need. We have some stores, but they don't cater

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to us the way other stores cater to people in other communities. And so we're trying to develop a grocery system here.

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If we're in a garden, we're trying to train people on how to grow their own produce. We've built about 20 raised bed gardens across

00:25:47.230 - 00:25:53.530

our communities. We work with two other community gardens. This is a community garden. No gate.

00:25:54.030 - 00:25:58.510

You come in. You pick whatever it is you want to eat. If you want to come in on garden

00:25:58.510 - 00:26:06.110

day, which we had one last Saturday, you come out and help weed the garden, plant stuff, maintain the garden, water the garden, what have you.

00:26:06.370 - 00:26:20.630

We also have a 500-gallon watering tank, so we don't have to water it anymore. Not like that. But this has been another opportunity for the

00:26:20.630 - 00:26:33.970

community to just kind of circle in and figure out how valuable we are to each other. And so some of the history.

00:26:34.210 - 00:26:44.010

But on the other side of that, the impact that creosote's had on our community is a lot of people have moved away and they don't want to move back because they're

00:26:44.010 - 00:26:54.450

afraid. A lot of people, although we have over large lots, they grew up here, their parents lived here or still live here in a

00:26:54.450 - 00:27:05.070

lot of cases, and they're afraid to move back because they've heard about the creosote contamination and what it could mean to them in the long run.

00:27:05.070 - 00:27:17.290

And so I think that's part of the problem, the fact that we don't have a lot of housing stock because of some of these environmental issues that we face in these

00:27:17.290 - 00:27:28.450

communities that other people don't or they don't realize they have them yet. So while the publicity was great for the cause, it's also been a barrier to getting

00:27:28.450 - 00:27:40.390

people to move back into the community, to us being able to, you know, we lost probably 40% of the businesses that we did have before Hurricane Harvey, and probably not

00:27:40.390 - 00:27:53.110

even half of those have come back online. And I can't give you data on if it was creosote, but it is the fact that we've got these issues out here that we

00:27:53.110 - 00:28:01.310

can't explain. So how do you get people to move into these communities if they don't know what it is that's killing people or what it

00:28:01.310 - 00:28:17.770

is that because we do have high numbers of cancer, we have higher numbers of emphysema. We are only about two miles from Settegast, where we have the highest mortality rate in

00:28:17.770 - 00:28:28.110

Settegast is 20 years less than on the west side of town. So if you live to be 85 on the west side, you only live to be

00:28:28.110 - 00:28:38.890

65 in Settegast. That's alarming for people and nobody's trying to race towards those numbers and Settegast is literally two miles away.

00:28:39.050 - 00:28:48.710

So whatever the issue is over there, we could very well have that same issue on this side in Kashmere Gardens, we have the highest mother infant mortality in the state of

00:28:48.710 - 00:28:59.050

Texas, as of 2019. This is 2025 in the United States of America. Why are we wrestling with mother infant mortality

00:28:59.050 - 00:29:10.810

at this rate in this day and time with the with the information that we have with all of the services that we have with the science that we know why are

00:29:10.810 - 00:29:20.410

we still wrestling with that. We don't know what's causing it. But we do know it exists. And how do we do can't say that

00:29:20.410 - 00:29:26.470

it's creosote. I don't know where the creosote is. We have not tested all the soil over here in the garden.

00:29:27.950 - 00:29:37.110

But across the community, people don't just test their soil before they build a house they do for certain things, but not for everything. So we don't know.

00:29:38.390 - 00:29:48.290

And so we hear creosote a lot. And how do you believe this lack of knowledge about not knowing what's going on has affected your ability to

00:29:48.290 - 00:29:56.690

engage the community as effectively as you would like to. Well, it doesn't affect us at all. This is my community and like my family,

00:29:56.890 - 00:30:04.970

I get to say whatever is on my mind. I get to, I get to interact with our elected officials and tell them what's on

00:30:04.970 - 00:30:11.990

my mind. So whatever people are telling me, I take it into the broader audience and say, look, I get what you're saying.

00:30:12.490 - 00:30:21.410

And so, but I also say, when we're at the podium advocating for things in the community. I can't be, I can't have plants behind

00:30:21.410 - 00:30:28.350

me. I need people behind me. And I think that was the beauty of the Congresswoman was that every press conference we

00:30:28.350 - 00:30:37.390

ever did with her. We were standing behind her. She made sure you couldn't say "I have a doctor's appointment."

00:30:38.250 - 00:30:47.990

She made sure that the community that she was representing was standing behind her so that people knew the faces of the people that were affected.

00:30:49.130 - 00:30:59.470

That was by design. We continue that whenever we're talking about things in the community. People that are affected need to be standing

00:30:59.470 - 00:31:05.710

with us and they need to have a script for what they need to say as well. But if you're not comfortable with that, I'll

00:31:05.710 - 00:31:14.760

say it, but I'm not going to stand alone and say it. You've got to have it there. Thank you.

00:31:14.840 - 00:31:22.360

Community is so, so important. And I'm glad that like y'all have been able to mobilize so effectively. The lifeblood of this community is people.

00:31:23.540 - 00:31:31.620

Wow. The lifeblood of this community is community, it's people. It is not anything else because we don't

00:31:31.620 - 00:31:39.880

have grocery stores. We don't have lots of stores. We don't have other economic development. We have churches and they're doing okay.

00:31:40.820 - 00:31:47.620

We don't have clinics. We don't have hospitals. We have the one hospital. We don't have, I mean, even our schools

00:31:47.620 - 00:31:58.040

have been closed in record numbers. Closed, never to return. Some of them closed and torn down. So the community is the driving force.

00:31:58.260 - 00:32:08.700

And as long as we keep moving forward as a community, we keep moving forward. So that's where we are. And that's what we're saying every day.

00:32:09.560 - 00:32:18.520

We're food insecure. We're working on food insecurity. There is almost nothing that you can mention that either we're not working on it or

00:32:18.520 - 00:32:29.040

we're not encouraging our other nonprofit partners to do. We don't work on homelessness. But we support an organization that does.

00:32:29.720 - 00:32:38.340

And we support them wholeheartedly and we go out and seek funding for them to be able to do what they do. So the burden is on us to make

00:32:38.340 - 00:32:45.400

sure that everybody's equally funded or at least partially funded for the things that they can do. They do homelessness.

00:32:45.800 - 00:32:52.460

We want to make sure they have everything they need to do that job. Because nobody else is doing that job in mass numbers out here.

00:32:53.060 - 00:33:01.880

Right. We support our schools in numerous ways. Kashmere High School is just the other side of the railroad track.

00:33:02.260 - 00:33:11.260

And we are all Kashmere graduates, so we want to be involved. But we support Kashmere High School. We usually give scholarships every year for the

00:33:11.260 - 00:33:22.180

last 10 years or so. We give about 20 scholarships out. Our elementary schools and middle school, we make sure that they have the things that they

00:33:22.180 - 00:33:28.580

need. If they call and say they need something, we're running there. And we're encouraging everybody in the community to

00:33:28.580 - 00:33:36.040

do that because we are the backbone. The community is the backbone of the community. So we encourage them to do that as well.

00:33:36.560 - 00:33:44.740

And they show up for us in big ways. Thank you so much. So, a bit prior, you talked about how

00:33:44.740 - 00:33:56.160

you used to have meetings with Reverend Caldwell, as well as the health department, to talk about the contamination. So, in regards to those meetings, what do

00:33:56.160 - 00:34:06.640

you wish other people knew about the creosote contamination and how it's affecting the community? I wish they understood better who the audience is.

00:34:06.640 - 00:34:17.300

Who they should really be angry with and how they should be attacking this thing. I think if we understood that better, we would not attack each other.

00:34:17.740 - 00:34:24.000

So a lot of times I find that I show up at a meeting and when I hit the door, I get cussed out by somebody.

00:34:24.800 - 00:34:32.420

And so I'm like, yeah, well, okay. But if you don't show up in the spaces where I'm showing up, you cussing me out doesn't mean anything.

00:34:32.420 - 00:34:41.840

I'm going to continue to show up for this community because, my favorite term, so goes Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens, so goes Trinity Gardens.

00:34:42.900 - 00:34:52.600

So if I'm not helping to advocate for them, when it's my turn, I may need somebody to come in and advocate for me. So we advocate for them wholeheartedly.

00:34:53.960 - 00:35:07.160

I want community to understand that, that we're advocating for the community. And I need that community to get everything they need to feel whole again and be

00:35:07.160 - 00:35:17.560

the community that we remember. A thriving community with businesses and all kinds of things happening. And they're trying really hard with that.

00:35:17.960 - 00:35:32.020

I need them to keep that thing going until they reach whatever their pinnacle is. So why do you believe that there's animosity or people not wanting you to do the

00:35:32.020 - 00:35:42.120

work you're doing? I think it's this misplaced anger about what's happening. Because, you know, Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens

00:35:42.120 - 00:35:50.980

are a community or two communities away from where I live. When I have the same train that runs through their community runs through mine.

00:35:50.980 - 00:36:03.340

The same issues that plague their community plague my community. I just know that my father died from throat cancer that was associated with asbestos.

00:36:05.980 - 00:36:14.780

When I was in that trauma with my father, I would have loved for somebody to advocate for me and for my father.

00:36:15.300 - 00:36:24.760

I will only do for people what I want somebody to do for me. So I do all I can over there. We still meet.

00:36:24.860 - 00:36:29.060

We meet with the EPA. We have a CAG. I'm on the CAG. Keith is on the CAG.

00:36:29.360 - 00:36:36.000

We still meet with them about these issues and do we need them to bring in more testing? Do we need them to bring in more

00:36:36.000 - 00:36:43.300

scientists? The EPA is still actively engaged and working on that. And the community needs to understand that the

00:36:43.300 - 00:36:50.920

EPA is not your enemy. You need to just deliver a clear message on what it is that you need that will help you feel whole.

00:36:52.160 - 00:37:01.520

That's what this really means. They have the scientific knowledge and if you feel that things aren't going the way you think they should or the way they are,

00:37:01.760 - 00:37:13.040

then you need to be asking the people that can get those things for you, the EPA, to bring them to you. So if I had any message to give,

00:37:13.140 - 00:37:22.580

your anger at the people that serve on the CAG or the people that served on the CAG with the City of Houston or people that we literally walked that community to

00:37:22.580 - 00:37:33.360

make sure we had enough responses to even get the EPA here. That's time I'll never get back. And does anybody remember that?

00:37:33.460 - 00:37:39.760

No. And I don't care that they don't remember. What I care about is this is important to your community.

00:37:40.380 - 00:37:49.980

When I have an issue, I need people to run down Lockwood to Trinity Gardens and help me with my issue. I can't be angry at you because you

00:37:49.980 - 00:38:01.980

came to help me. So that's been probably the most distressing thing. But it doesn't keep me from my work. Thank you.

00:38:03.540 - 00:38:14.400

I understand you would like the community to have a better understanding of the EPA's intentions, but do you think the EPA could respond better to the community as well?

00:38:15.040 - 00:38:28.920

I think the EPA could respond more holistically. There are times when I ask people, could you just state it? I don't need all the extra that goes

00:38:28.920 - 00:38:37.400

with it. You're talking to your grandparents. And so I don't need the jargon. And so I wish they would state it

00:38:37.400 - 00:38:46.360

better. But they too feel the stress of people being angry with them in a situation that they have no control over.

00:38:47.300 - 00:38:56.860

You do realize that when these issues happen across the country, the EPA doesn't come in in six months. It usually takes years.

00:38:57.940 - 00:39:10.780

This issue was elevated to the EPA in a six-month span. The EPA administrator was here within six to nine months of us having the community on

00:39:10.780 - 00:39:24.580

board, getting some results back, and they were active in the community from that point on. That's unheard of. That's what happened in Palestine when the train

00:39:24.580 - 00:39:32.600

derailed and dropped all those chemicals. And you saw them come in in a matter of weeks and contain and clean up and start to do...

00:39:33.480 - 00:39:42.840

The EPA is moving at the rate that they should be moving because they have to be thoughtful, and they have to be thorough, and they must do some things.

00:39:43.300 - 00:39:55.320

We have people angry at the health department. The state of Texas health department. What are you angry with them for? But they didn't understand what the health department's

00:39:55.320 - 00:40:04.460

role was, and so we took a lot of time to explain that. We tried to explain what the EPA's role is, but for a lot of people, it's,

00:40:04.580 - 00:40:11.160

I can see them and touch them, it's their fault. And the EPA can only do what they can do.

00:40:12.020 - 00:40:24.220

They didn't decommission the Superfund site that was in Fifth Ward or Kashmere Gardens. They don't, they're not decommissioning anything. That is an administration call, and so blame

00:40:24.220 - 00:40:30.080

the administration. And if you're going to be angry, be angry with them. But I just, I don't think people realize.

00:40:30.760 - 00:40:40.600

And I'm not, I don't work for the EPA, but I do understand their role in this thing. So if you've got some issues, push those

00:40:40.600 - 00:40:47.820

issues forward. But we can't continue to attack the people that came to help us, because then they change the way they help you.

00:40:48.640 - 00:40:55.280

And they have a right to. I'm not going to be attacked every time I show up someplace, and continue to show up in an authentic way.

00:40:58.080 - 00:41:05.060

That's very fair. Thank you so much for sharing. A bit prior to this, you talked about how you serve on the CAG.

00:41:05.400 - 00:41:11.980

Can you please explain what that is, how you began serving on it, and what your recent work on the CAG has been regarding this issue?

00:41:12.660 - 00:41:21.920

The CAG is a community advisory group that the EPA has set up whenever they have an issue like this. So when they come in, they come in

00:41:21.920 - 00:41:31.620

and have the community find people across the community that have been working on the issue, interested in the issue, and they found that we had, you know, they voted us in.

00:41:31.760 - 00:41:39.780

And I say they, the community voted us in. Each community had a number of votes in whoever they wanted on their CAG.

00:41:40.320 - 00:41:48.400

So Kashmere Gardens had votes, Fifth Ward had votes, Denver Harbor had votes. And they voted us in. But they voted us in based on the

00:41:48.400 - 00:41:57.980

fact that we've repeatedly shown up for them in this particular issue, and they trusted that we would bring them back information and continue to push the issue along.

00:41:58.600 - 00:42:14.800

Most recently, with the CAG, we've asked for some additional technical assistance from scientists, from our scientists that we know that can volunteer and help us decode what the EPA is saying

00:42:14.800 - 00:42:22.380

to us. So when they bring us all these numbers back and say, you know, one one-hundredth of a, we don't understand that.

00:42:22.500 - 00:42:33.800

So we have experts that we've asked for, both volunteer experts that are already working with us, and then their experts that come in and explain things to us.

00:42:34.060 - 00:42:42.580

And so we had a meeting just the other night and they were there, and they're going to decode some of the results that we've gotten and bring those back to us

00:42:42.580 - 00:42:52.320

in a one-pager so we can share that with the community. And they won't get the binder of information that they have, that this technical assistance group

00:42:52.320 - 00:43:01.680

has. They'll get some very clear question and answer one-pagers that's probably front and back, really, so that they better understand what the results

00:43:01.680 - 00:43:09.520

are saying. So EPA is publishing the results to the community? Well, the results that they have.

00:43:09.820 - 00:43:20.220

Now that's not the final results that we're looking for, but they are publishing things. For the last six months or so, they've been sharing information with the community.

00:43:21.140 - 00:43:29.700

That's nice to hear. Yes. So in regards to the EPA, do you have any questions or clarifications that you'd like

00:43:29.700 - 00:43:38.440

to give to the EPA, the health department, etc.? Every community is different, and how they react and how they move is different.

00:43:39.500 - 00:43:49.970

And so you really need to go in and kind of identify your community leaders, the strengths in the community, before you start pushing these things along.

00:43:49.970 - 00:43:59.830

Because you don't always have a clear group. In this case, there was a clear core group. There was a group that surrounded them, and

00:43:59.830 - 00:44:12.930

then there was the community. And so they could have done a little more to help educate that core group and the group that surrounded them, so that they

00:44:12.930 - 00:44:25.550

would not possibly have quite the animosity they see at this point. And you don't want to blame the victim. And the community is the victim, because you

00:44:25.550 - 00:44:33.630

have to remember that they've lost their loved ones. They're telling me there's something wrong with my soil, with my air, and with my water.

00:44:34.050 - 00:44:45.590

But nobody seems to know exactly what that is, and that has to be very stressful. I need the EPA to understand that and address it better.

00:44:46.690 - 00:44:54.490

I think the health department could do a better job. We had the health department, when we first went out, when Congresswoman first brought them in,

00:44:54.550 - 00:45:02.290

the City of Houston Health Department, and we love the health department. They do an amazing job. But they came in, and they don't do

00:45:02.290 - 00:45:11.950

community engagement well. So they came in, they brought in people from their office on a Saturday, so they gave up their time to come and do

00:45:11.950 - 00:45:21.510

these surveys around the community. And they came back and said things like, there was a dog near their house, so we couldn't get their survey.

00:45:25.110 - 00:45:34.390

Or, they didn't recognize us, so they wouldn't talk to us. And so we listened, we stood and listened to everything they had to say, because we

00:45:34.390 - 00:45:45.130

had also teamed up and went out into the community. And they said, they had a gate. Okay, so okay to all of that, I

00:45:45.130 - 00:45:52.830

get it. So we stood there that Saturday morning and just kind of broke it down for the health department and said, look, you need community

00:45:52.830 - 00:46:02.490

people to poll these people. They'll get results for you. And two weeks later, we came back on another Saturday morning, brought in community people, folk

00:46:02.490 - 00:46:11.530

that look like us. So, you can't speak English? That's okay, we've got somebody. You don't like the way my hair is?

00:46:11.550 - 00:46:18.850

It's straight? It's okay, we've got somebody. So we went back in, and then we went to churches the following Sunday.

00:46:19.230 - 00:46:28.250

We met them at the grocery store and said, everybody's not going to answer you at their front door. They may not even have a front door.

00:46:28.750 - 00:46:37.550

So they answered us at the grocery store. We polled them at church. We got 300 or 400 responses to the 30 they got that Saturday morning.

00:46:39.030 - 00:46:48.270

We gave those off to the health department, and they were very grateful. But understand your community. Where are the safe spaces for people to

00:46:48.270 - 00:46:58.230

give you information in your community? And if you're not going to set up a community meeting every week, then what are you going to do?

00:46:58.790 - 00:47:08.310

Meet them where they are. And that's how we handled it. But I hope we taught them a lot with that, but I don't know.

00:47:10.470 - 00:47:17.250

Thank you so much. I feel like meeting people where they are is so, so important, especially when you're dealing with issues such as environmental racism.

00:47:17.670 - 00:47:27.590

This is where people live, so they need to know that their concerns are actually being heard and amplified. On that same note, are there any things

00:47:27.590 - 00:47:35.110

that you believe or the community is confused about and would like more clarity regarding the work that the EPA is doing on the contamination?

00:47:38.490 - 00:47:50.290

I think the community is confused about the way the testing is being handled, but that's pretty par for the course. I don't know that the community is their

00:47:50.290 - 00:47:59.490

experts in this. We've got a few experts out there that are just kind of peeking over their shoulder trying to make sure, but I don't know

00:47:59.490 - 00:48:15.570

that the community fully realizes that. But the EPA is doing things the way they're supposed to do things. There's a certain standard that they have set

00:48:15.570 - 00:48:27.830

that they have to operate on, and whether they get the samples from Union Pacific or whether they have people sampling on their own, they're still going to send them through the

00:48:27.830 - 00:48:43.490

same rigorous testing and that kind of thing, and I think the community should better understand that there's still some integrity in the process. Thank you so much for your insight on

00:48:43.490 - 00:48:52.850

how you'd like the community, the EPA, and the Health Department to respond. Do you have any wishes for the people outside of the community?

00:48:55.270 - 00:49:04.230

A lot of people that live over here grew up over there, and so they're very concerned. If they didn't grow up over there, they

00:49:04.230 - 00:49:18.510

also worked for the railroad. And so there are people that feel very left out of this process, because in 1975 they lived near that railroad, that intersection, those

00:49:18.510 - 00:49:32.510

areas where they're now testing and that are ground zero for this. They're very left out, and I think what Council Member Plummer is doing with the cancer

00:49:32.510 - 00:49:42.510

testing that she's doing, they're kind of trying to cast a pretty wide net so that people start to get some comfort. Now that comfort may be that you find

00:49:42.510 - 00:49:59.110

out you've got some markers for cancer in you that you're going to have to deal with, but I hope that people have something, and they're

00:49:59.110 - 00:50:08.450

sitting at home on their sofa for months waiting for somebody to tell them where to go and what to do. So I'm hoping that, I'm ever hopeful, that

00:50:08.450 - 00:50:27.050

as they cast this really wide net in trying to get samples from people, from them for their bodies, so you've got to give blood, so

00:50:27.050 - 00:50:35.890

you've got to give for themselves. Thank you so much. I feel like the work that Dr. Plummer is doing is so vital and so important,

00:50:36.130 - 00:50:46.910

and before we started filming, you talked a bit about how you're also doing similar work to kind of ensure that there's more safe spaces in the community where people feel comfortable

00:50:46.910 - 00:50:56.650

going to. Would you mind talking about that a bit? We worked with the city of Houston for a number of years now to develop what

00:50:56.650 - 00:51:08.070

we call resilience centers. They have many names. We found out from Dr. Erthea Nance, who was our Region 6 administrator, but before that,

00:51:08.190 - 00:51:21.090

she was at TSU when (Hurricane) Harvey happened, and we met her and we looked at that concept and said, well, we're not going to be able to do lily pads.

00:51:21.170 - 00:51:32.970

That's not really a Houston thing, right? But we also thought, we started to look at other avenues, and what we came up with was these resilience centers where people could

00:51:32.970 - 00:51:43.690

go and feel safe and know that things would be open and available to them there, if at all possible. So we looked at our multi-service centers,

00:51:43.930 - 00:51:51.090

and most of them were not open after (Hurricane) Harvey. For two weeks, the city did not open a multi-service center, which is a trusted

00:51:51.090 - 00:51:57.970

place. People could have gone and gotten resources. There are Blue Sky Day places that you go and get information.

00:51:58.790 - 00:52:07.370

Both the Northeast Multi-Service Center and the Kashmere Multi-Service Center have programs, the reentry programs, SNAP benefits. You can go there and apply for SNAP,

00:52:07.430 - 00:52:17.830

or you can go there and apply for WIC, or you can go there and get all kinds of information, right? We found that during disasters, everybody shuts down,

00:52:18.150 - 00:52:27.750

and then they have people trying to figure out what to do via the news. Well, there's no power. Or they've been decimated.

00:52:28.090 - 00:52:40.970

As with Harvey, where half, over half of Kashmere Gardens flooded, Lakewood, at least half of that community flooded. They lost their homes and all of their

00:52:40.970 - 00:52:49.530

cars. So how do you ask people to figure it out when they don't have a TV and they don't have a computer and they

00:52:49.530 - 00:53:00.190

have no way to get around to get that information? We have these trusted sources that are either community-owned or city- or municipality-owned.

00:53:01.470 - 00:53:12.850

And in this case, we helped the City of Houston develop a resilience center at Kashmere Multi-Service Center. It has solar panels that have not been

00:53:12.850 - 00:53:27.130

connected yet, but they're there and they could be operational with a plug. They also have a generator that they requested generators be installed at all of the multi

00:53:27.130 - 00:53:37.910

-service centers. I think there are 12 on order, which means that when we have a disaster, those multi-service centers can open quickly, preferably before

00:53:37.910 - 00:53:48.650

the disaster, so that in the case of the winter storm we had two months ago, people were able to go to the Kashmere Multi-Service Center and sleep there and stay

00:53:48.650 - 00:53:57.550

there so they could be warm those three or four days that we had the winter storm. We also need community-owned because we get

00:53:57.550 - 00:54:08.810

to determine as a community what we open and what our disasters are because there may be a disaster that's so isolated to a certain community that your resilience center is the

00:54:08.810 - 00:54:18.370

place that you need to go because the Kashmere Multi-Service Center or the Northeast Multi -Service Center might not be affected or may not be effective for you to go there,

00:54:18.570 - 00:54:25.950

right? But if we have regional I mean if we have our own little hub and spoke model so we have the Kashmere Multi-Service

00:54:25.950 - 00:54:40.310

Center, we have a community-owned resilience center, we have the Northeast Multi-Service Center, we have a church in your community. The trains can blow in certain areas or they cannot

00:54:40.310 - 00:54:49.270

blow because they have what they call a quiet zone. And out here we have the setup for the quiet zone but not the money to

00:54:49.270 - 00:55:00.910

pay for the actual quiet zone to be put into effect. So if you've got an esplanade, a two -lane street that has an esplanade and at

00:55:00.910 - 00:55:10.850

the railroad crossing it has where the arms can go down on both sides, you can have a quiet zone. We have that on all four of these

00:55:10.850 - 00:55:23.110

intersections but we don't have a quiet zone because the city hasn't affected it, nobody's gotten it done. We've asked repeatedly for about 15 years to

00:55:23.110 - 00:55:32.090

get those quiet zones because they don't have to blow if they have the right components but they blow all the way through. And this is at 2 o'clock in

00:55:32.090 - 00:55:37.230

the morning or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Very distressing. Very distressing.

00:55:38.750 - 00:55:46.510

I'm so sorry but it seems that it doesn't bother you anywhere at this point which you shouldn't be desensitized to it. That's also not okay.

00:55:47.110 - 00:55:53.490

And I'm also not desensitized to the fact that the train will pull up and stop on the track and stay there for two or three hours.

00:55:54.030 - 00:56:03.330

We've had them sit for six hours and I'm sitting well I'm not going to sit there because I know five different ways to get around that but when I get to

00:56:03.330 - 00:56:11.530

the other side and stop I've already taken a picture of the number. I'm calling Union Pacific to say that train has been there all day.

00:56:12.470 - 00:56:19.370

It's crazy. Very. What were we talking about before the train came?

00:56:23.850 - 00:56:31.050

The generators for the multi-purpose centers. Oh generators for the multi-purpose centers. Oh we were talking about the resilience centers. Yes.

00:56:31.090 - 00:56:38.450

So the resilience centers are pretty crucial to us and we are not getting fewer and fewer disasters. We're getting more and more.

00:56:38.590 - 00:56:46.910

Every year we we knew what a derecho was before May of last year. We'd never seen that before. And then two months later we have a

00:56:46.910 - 00:56:55.910

major hurricane. All on the same side of town. And basically Hurricane Beryl affected the entire city. I think the derecho was pretty impactful across

00:56:55.910 - 00:57:02.670

the city but we saw more of it out here. You can't tell now but this is a very lush green area of town.

00:57:03.110 - 00:57:11.010

We've lost about 40% of our tree canopy. Yeah and we've got a heat island effect going out here.

00:57:11.190 - 00:57:20.030

We're hotter than a lot of communities. Both here and I think Alief we were in a study with the city of Houston to measure that and because we were some

00:57:20.030 - 00:57:30.550

of the highest numbers in the city. But we've lost a lot of tree canopy. These disasters continue to come. When they come we know for certain that

00:57:30.550 - 00:57:43.530

during the winter storm we had we were without power longer than a lot of people. And a lot of that was because you had they weren't coming to us first.

00:57:43.770 - 00:57:53.510

They were going to other areas first. And so with our own resilience center with our own being able to open that when we need to open it as a community

00:57:53.510 - 00:58:01.430

if that's because a train fell off the track or a truck fell off the freeway and people need to be evacuated someplace. We have a place for them to go.

00:58:01.430 - 00:58:08.490

And we're fully set up and ready to accept them. And we're FEMA affiliated and you know we have all of these components.

00:58:09.030 - 00:58:18.610

That is the plan for these resilience centers. So that we look like every other side of town when we have disasters. And we have Blue Sky programming so we

00:58:18.610 - 00:58:27.190

continue to train our disaster case managers. We do our search training. We continue to have different activities at these sites for students.

00:58:27.650 - 00:58:39.370

Our youth leadership corps that we're working to establish we continue to have activities for our seniors to come in and do at the resilience centers because we need to keep them

00:58:39.370 - 00:58:45.510

moving. And we work with a couple of non -profits destined for empowerment. They employ senior citizens.

00:58:46.550 - 00:58:57.590

And so everybody's not working at Walmart when they retire. They can go to destined for empowerment and either SEAR or AARP will compensate them to

00:58:57.590 - 00:59:03.490

do and look for work and be able to do the jobs they normally did in the workplace. And it's great.

00:59:03.770 - 00:59:10.450

And they do pantries. They have exercise programs. They have all kinds of activities going on for our seniors.

00:59:10.610 - 00:59:16.530

And if we need a call center there are occasions where I need a call center for something. As a non-profit we call them.

00:59:16.930 - 00:59:24.550

And they put their call center on it. So it does multiple roles for us. But how wonderful is that that our seniors are still active.

00:59:25.550 - 00:59:31.610

And they're getting social security but a lot of them don't get a lot in social security. So it helps.

00:59:32.110 - 00:59:39.290

These resilience centers will be yet another resilience space for them. We can have a clinic in our resilience center.

00:59:39.970 - 00:59:48.750

We can do job training in our resilience center. One of the locations we looked at we'd like to have a warehouse space there because

00:59:48.750 - 00:59:57.330

for as many warehouses as we have in these areas nobody will give them to us. We're non-profits. We can't afford to buy your warehouse space.

00:59:57.430 - 01:00:03.970

They won't give it to us because they occupy our communities. Why won't you give us 10,000 square feet?

01:00:04.470 - 01:00:10.070

They don't. So we need to have some space for that. Churches usually do that for us.

01:00:10.450 - 01:00:21.430

Trinity Gardens Church of Christ we've warehoused things there before so that when a disaster happens we're not waiting three days to get water and non-perishables.

01:00:22.190 - 01:00:31.670

During Beryl and the derecho we took our disaster case managers out and fed probably over that three days that the lights were out and it was really hot.

01:00:31.810 - 01:00:42.250

We fed about 600 people across the community. Seniors that lived in apartments that were two or three stories they couldn't come downstairs. We had kids that would come by and

01:00:42.250 - 01:00:50.330

they'd run their food up to them and we gave them food and snacks so they were set for a day and then we came back the next day and start it all

01:00:50.330 - 01:00:55.490

over again. And that's the work that we do. We deliver ice. We deliver water.

01:00:55.870 - 01:01:07.490

We deliver supplies. One of the groups West Street Recovery had little rechargeable batteries that you could plug in your phone and a fan and a lamp.

01:01:08.490 - 01:01:18.270

And sometimes that's all people needed. So we need a space where we can house those things so that when we need to distribute them we're not waiting for somebody

01:01:18.270 - 01:01:24.770

to offer it to us. We have our own. And that's very important to us. I think we gave away a wheelchair the

01:01:24.770 - 01:01:33.090

other day. Somebody called and said my grandmother doesn't have rubber on her wheelchair anymore. So we found them a wheelchair and delivered

01:01:33.090 - 01:01:40.110

it to them. So we're able to do a number of things from those resilience centers. And it's important that we be resilient.

01:01:40.530 - 01:01:50.150

People are like I'm so excited. I can't tell you how many seniors we saw after Harvey and after Beryl and derecho that said oh no, don't give me anything.

01:01:50.570 - 01:02:00.270

Give it to my neighbor because I'll be able to make it but they can't. And it broke my heart. But fortunately when I got to your house

01:02:00.270 - 01:02:08.450

I usually had something I could give your neighbor so everybody benefits. But that's not always the case but it was in this particular case.

01:02:08.570 - 01:02:18.350

And so we're able to make this work. But the community wants to be resilient. But we want them to be able to be resilient with some dignity.

01:02:19.290 - 01:02:29.510

So we want to have our own. And sending them to the George R. Brown with 10,000 other people is not resilient nor does it give them dignity.

01:02:30.810 - 01:02:41.710

And so our families, our seniors, our disabled need to be able to come someplace safe and be housed there and be able to while they're there we can figure out what

01:02:41.710 - 01:02:49.090

we need to do at their house or help them with their car or transportation or whatever the case may be. That's such important work.

01:02:49.210 - 01:02:58.830

Thank you so much for being so passionate about it. Every time the thought that my mother would not have a place to go during Harvey

01:02:58.830 - 01:03:06.670

and everything did not start with Harvey nor did it end with Harvey but during Harvey I got a call from a young lady and her father was bedridden.

01:03:07.530 - 01:03:17.890

And they lived in a two story house near the intersection of two bayou systems in Lakewood. And she called me and said she needed

01:03:17.890 - 01:03:26.590

some help getting her house repaired but she and her dad were in the house with wet carpet everything because she could not take him just anywhere.

01:03:26.990 - 01:03:35.010

He needed his bed. And fortunately it worked after the storm. But when she told me that when the fire department came to get them when the

01:03:35.010 - 01:03:46.410

house had flooded up to the second floor they floated him out on his low air mattress and to get him out of the house they made her go to the

01:03:46.410 - 01:03:56.030

boat but they dipped him under the water because it flooded up to the top of the door and to get him out they had to dip him on that mattress underneath

01:03:56.030 - 01:04:01.970

the water and bring him up on the other side. Oh my gosh. That would have been my mother but my

01:04:01.970 - 01:04:09.770

mother passed years ago but that would have been my mother. And that's that broke my heart in places I can't even describe to people.

01:04:10.350 - 01:04:17.090

And trying to help her get her house repaired you know we did everything we could to make sure that we could help her to get that done.

01:04:17.890 - 01:04:24.890

It was difficult. It was very difficult. And we had groups that came in and helped to to gut their house out and

01:04:24.890 - 01:04:34.070

make sure everything was out. We had groups come in from all over the country that we had them partnered with these with these families to get their house

01:04:34.070 - 01:04:47.210

repaired enough for them to live in it until the CDBG dollars came in and they were able to get their houses truly fully repaired or replaced and a whole different fiasco.

01:04:47.990 - 01:04:56.110

But it was it worked. But when she said they had to dip them under the water I said that was best that you were in the boat already.

01:04:56.410 - 01:05:02.930

Because I wouldn't have made it. Yeah it was devastating. That's so distressing and I'm so sorry. Yes.

01:05:03.770 - 01:05:12.370

So and we had lots of situations. We delivered food one day in a community in Lakewood. And those people had

01:05:12.370 - 01:05:23.710

flooded houses over there up to the top of the house. It took brick mailboxes off the base. And we're walking along with hot food that

01:05:23.710 - 01:05:32.010

people had donated from all over the place. They were bringing it in and were passing out these plates of food. And it didn't really matter what it was

01:05:32.010 - 01:05:38.330

because people had no way to cook so we're passing this food out. And I get to this lady and I got two plates in my hand and she

01:05:38.330 - 01:05:47.970

literally falls in my arms. And her son walks up behind me behind her and he takes the two plates and he said she didn't speak English and he

01:05:47.970 - 01:05:59.970

said she thought nobody was ever coming. And you guys showed up. And so I stood there holding her while she cried.

01:06:01.130 - 01:06:07.770

And then I couldn't pick that lady out of the lineup. She doesn't know who I am. But that story still sticks with me.

01:06:08.210 - 01:06:16.230

So when I'm doing this work I'm thinking about all the people that are waiting for somebody to show up. And thank you so much for being that

01:06:16.230 - 01:06:27.690

person that shows up. There's a ton of us out here and equally passionate because it was pretty hot during Beryl when we were having to deliver food.

01:06:28.230 - 01:06:35.570

But I had an endless supply of volunteers that said where are you going to be I'll be there with you. And they showed up every day.

01:06:36.230 - 01:06:43.050

The power of a community. The power of a community. Okay. That reaches the end of the questions we

01:06:43.050 - 01:06:50.630

had listed to ask you. But is there anything else that I didn't ask related to contamination or the broader community that you'd like to talk about?

01:06:53.150 - 01:07:01.310

We're very concerned about the cuts to the food programs. We don't know how that's going to affect our communities.

01:07:01.550 - 01:07:07.610

We are food insecure. We are 15 minutes from downtown Houston and food insecure. All of us.

01:07:07.650 - 01:07:14.710

All of us. Because we don't have grocery stores that offer us what we need. So we either drive six miles to the

01:07:14.710 - 01:07:22.330

north or eight miles to the south. If you don't have a car that means you don't get that. So we have to have pantry programs.

01:07:22.950 - 01:07:30.310

We have a farmer's market at LBJ. But you still have to be able to get there. But those are very real concerns in our

01:07:30.310 - 01:07:36.950

life right now. And our food programs are sending us letters every day saying hey this is going to be cut off in May and we don't

01:07:36.950 - 01:07:44.030

know what's going to happen in the summer. And that's for our students as well as their families. That's very troubling.

01:07:44.810 - 01:07:54.330

So if I were to say anything it's how are we supposed to do this when you cut up a billion out of food programs.

01:07:55.950 - 01:08:02.810

For children. For children. For our seniors who are in a lot of cases raising grandchildren.

01:08:04.030 - 01:08:15.950

We need that money. And the Houston Food Bank delivers in huge ways to get us things because they can operate on a shoestring budget but they can't

01:08:15.950 - 01:08:26.490

operate on no budget. So that would be if I had to say something that would be a really huge thing for us right now.

01:08:27.790 - 01:08:33.350

But thank you ladies so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for being willing to share your story and speak with us.

01:08:33.410 - 01:08:35.630

It means a lot. Always. Always.