Yudith - Youth for a Better Future
Yudith Nieto: Speaking Out for Environmental Justice
by Vicki Wolf, February 2014, Photo credit: Earth Justice

When Yudith Nieto followed sounds of drums and music into the park in her Manchester neighborhood for a gathering, little did she know that in 2013 she would be speaking to standing-room-only audiences about environmental injustice for fence-line communities.

She was disturbed by what Juan Parras, co-founder of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS), had to say at the gathering about the Keystone XL pipeline bringing tar sands to refineries in the Texas Gulf Coast. “I was not ready to deal with it,” Nieto remembers. “I was thinking that we already are dealing with so much in this neighborhood. I thought of older people and how they would be affected.” The fumes and toxic pollutants were already making her family and neighbors sick. How could they handle the added burden of dirty tar sands oil being refined in their neighborhood.

In October, Nieto seemed at ease as she held a packed audience spellbound at the Power Shift conference at the Pittsburgh Conference Center. (Power Shift is a grassroots community working to empower youth in the climate movement.) In her calm, warm, fearless manner, Nieto talked about how her experience living on the fence-line of refineries in the Manchester neighborhood of Houston, TX has led to her new life as an environmental justice activist. She told participants, “We all have our own knowledge, and the frontline communities are experts in this struggle. We need to listen to them; they need to be our leaders,” she said.

Even though she was not familiar with all the language of environmental activism, caring for the environment was a part of Nieto’s life from childhood. She was born in Mexico in a family of farmers and gardeners. “I’ve always had a natural respect for the laws of nature,” Nieto says. “My family lived in a small town and depended on the land to sustain them.”

Her grandmother decided that the family needed to immigrate to the United States when years of drought made it difficult to continue their way of life as farmers. when she was 5, Nieto’s family moved into the Manchester neighborhood. She lives there today with her grandmother and other family members.

Recently, in a brief conversation with her grandmother, Nieto learned more about the family’s move to Manchester. “We were talking about how the efforts of Cesar Chavez enabled people to come to the states -- their struggle was tied to farm workers’ struggles, not being able to continue their way of living,” she says.

After that day in the park, hearing Parras explain how the Keystone XL pipeline would eventually impact her community, Nieto went home and told her family what she had learned and that she planned to go to a hearing on the pipeline in Port Arthur. “I told them I was going because I knew friends there,” Nieto says. “But my family does not speak English, and they were not confident to go and listen to the meeting. They told me to go and report back.”

A rude awakening was in store for Nieto when she entered the hearing room in Port Arthur. She noticed that more than half of the people at the hearing were representing industry. Many wore nice T-shirts with their company name and message printed on them. There was no interpreter there for people who don’t speak English. “This was one of my paradigm shifts, an awakening that racism is very much alive,” Nieto says. “They were looking at us as if we were the enemy, with disgust and booing people speaking. That really woke me up, shook me, upset me.”

Nieto also was surprised to see that even Latino people were speaking in favor of the pipeline and how the community would benefit. “It caught me off-guard, Nieto says. “I live right next to industry and never once have they asked us if we ever need anything. We have damage to our homes from explosions.” Nieto wondered if any of the people speaking about money and jobs lived near refineries where the tar sands would be refined. “All I heard from them was money, money and jobs,” Nieto recalls. “On our side people were talking about health issues, respiratory problems and smells.”

It was hard to listen to the friends she had just met and the opposition. Gathering up all her courage, Nieto decided to speak. “I choked up when it was my turn to speak,” she says. “I tried to hold it in. It was so hard. It was my first time to speak in public. All I could say was that health is being impacted. We are constantly sick from the fumes in Manchester. I don’t know what we will do.”

Nieto describes coming to terms with all she had experienced at the hearing as a “spiritual and mental battle.” It was a life-changing experience. “There was a lot of confusion and sadness in my heart,” she says. “I think it was good to feel that. I needed to feel that hurt to put into perspective where I was in this world.”

Nieto had been pursuing a career in photography. She wanted to work in a photography studio. It all seemed superficial now. “I thought, I know how to do these things, how to communicate through visual images. What am I doing to help other people,” she says.

It was never Nieto’s intention to become a public speaker. She says she failed the public speaking course twice in college. But in 2013 she was invited to speak at the Divestment Convergence in Philadelphia, the Power Shift conference in Pittsburgh and other conferences. “I found it was one of the things people needed -- for this perspective to be given for the environmental justice movement,” Nieto says. “I started to focus on how I can get this information to people.”

Now Nieto is creating and distributing leaflets and “fun zines” that explain the terminology of environmental issues. She is communicating about environmental justice through visual images like comics and pictures. “I’m wanting to find better ways to communicate regardless of the language someone speaks,” Nieto says. “I’ve learned people are still very misinformed. They don’t understand that economic growth doesn’t have to rely on the sacrifice of people with less ability to speak out.”

Nieto’s range of outreach continues to expand. Working with Bryan Parras, co-founder of TEJAS, Nieto is participating in the “Theater of the Oppressed” workshops. Nieto also is working with the Tar Sand Blockade to organize direct actions in Manchester and other fence-line communities. She is learning how to build an intergenerational movement that facilitates elders and youth working together for environmental justice.

Nieto is growing in her boldness as she speaks out about environmental justice, and she encourages other young people to become active and speak out. At the Power Shift conference she told the audience, “Listen to your own conscience. I’m proud to say I have a healthy disrespect for authority. Sometimes we have to, you know. When you know in your heart what is right, you have to fight for it.”

Related Links
Power Shift - wearepowershift.org
Fossil Fuel Divestment Student - studentsdivest.org
T.E.J.A.S. (Texas Environmental Advocacy Services) - www.tejasbarrio.org

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