Martina Cartwright: Dedicated to Environmental Justice
by Vicki Wolf, November 2011

“My environmental work is a labor of love,” says Martina Cartwright an active board member for Gulf Coast Restoration Network (GRN), Texas Campaign for the Environment and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS). Cartwright, a busy mother with a 5-year-old son and full-time job, expresses her dedication to environmental justice in her willingness to give personal time as a volunteer. For more than a decade she has been helping communities fight toxic landfills and other pollution issues. Her influence has permeated minority and low-income communities with the confidence and tools they need to stand up to what she calls the “entrenched power structure.”

Cartwright is an attorney and law instructor with a JD in International and Environmental Law from American University-Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C. and a BA from the University of Baltimore. Her environmental work in Houston began in 1995 - the early days of the Environmental Law and Justice Center at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Southern University in Houston. She was hired by Grover Hankins, the center’s first staff attorney, as interim director and clinical instructor of the Environmental Law and Justice Center to do community outreach and education.

As Cartwright became involved in environmental issues she began to realize that not all communities are treated the same. “It was an eyeopener for me to see that the more things change the more they stay the same,” she says. “We have the Civil Rights Act. Minorities have a voice. But why are we still living in redlined communities (an area denied loans or other services because of income level or race)? Near unregulated dumps? Why doesn’t the city get around to cleaning it up? Why are our lives worth less?” She says all this is true for low-income communities as well as for minority communities.

The Environmental Law and Justice Center was created in 1994 and closed in 2006. In that decade Cartwright and the small staff of four people managed to help minority and low-income communities impacted by landfills, and other polluters near their homes understand that information is power. “Overcoming the fear that you are going to ask the wrong question is the first step of empowerment.” At first people in these communities didn’t was to get involved, Cartwright says. “Their response was that ‘nothing is going to change.’”

Cartwright continued to inform and educate the community, and the people became more involved. “We had communities standing up to entrenched power structure, willing to challenge elected officials,” she says. “Once their eyes were opened to how disproportionately they were affected -- their health, their property, the future of their community and families -- they quickly went from fear to anger.”

The seeds of Cartwright’s awareness and involvement in environmental issues were planted long before she moved to Houston. While still in her teens, Cartwright caught a glimpse of how people are impacted by environmental issues. She dated someone from West Virginia who was involved in fighting mountaintop mining -- the removal of trees, the chemicals and lagoons of toxic waste. “I started listening to old-timers talk about what West Virginia looked like before.”

In college she took an environmental law class with Perry Wallace. “He talked about a new fangled term -- environmental justice,” she says. Cartwright had not connected with the environmental movement because she thought it was mostly about protecting endangered species. She was more concerned about issues that were familiar and visible in her life as an African American woman; issues that affected the health and well-being of people and communities. In the class, Cartwright learned about environmental justice issues and how they impacted communities, and the environmental movement started to make sense.

After the Environmental Justice and Law Center closed, Cartwright continued with the Thurgood Marshall School of Law as managing attorney and clinical instructor in the Law, Wills and Probate Clinic. She also is pursuing an MPA in Environmental Policy from the University of Houston.

Cartwright’s work with the Gulf Coast Restoration Network includes providing input on activities, fund-raising and litigation. “The Gulf Restoration Network covers a very broad area,” she says. “Agricultural runoff, the BP explosion, the petrochemical industry -- they are involved in anything that can detrimentally impact the gulf.”

As a board member of TEJAS, Cartwright makes presentations and holds workshops on environmental justice issues involving the community and policy. “I remain on boards so that there is an environmental justice voice presented,” she says. “I want to ensure that.”