South LA Cafe

Expert Q & A 3 Questions With Alexandra Nagy

Photo and story by Chris Torres

Alexandra Nagy is the California director of Food and Water Watch, an organization that ghts for protection of people and the environment from large corporations. Nagy began working for the organization nine years ago a er the Aliso Canyon Gas storage facility had a gas blowout in 2015. e Sundial sat down with Nagy to discuss the issues we face with sustainability today as corporations continue to o en exhaust our resources.

How do oil drilling, fracking and fossil fuels contribute to climate change and affect people’s daily lives?

Fossil fuel extraction in itself is a very energy-intensive process and the types of gases that are released from just doing extraction contributes to the warming of our overall atmosphere. Whether that’s carbon dioxide or methane, which is a huge climate warming accelerant, those are two issues right there. But then when you talk about transporting, re ning and ultimately burning fuels, the whole lifecycle is very harmful to our climate. It releases a lot of greenhouse gases and emissions that are both harmful for our climate, but also poisonous to our communities. So even at the extraction point, whether you’re fracking for oil or gas, people who live near these types of sites are getting sick and it is poisoning clean water to extract this stu , and then threatens groundwater. It’s an environmental issue with how it harms our natural environment and our water, but it’s also a public health issue because the people who live closest to these types of facilities really bear the burden of the health costs that they have to su er, so that everybody else can turn on their lights, for example. So it really does a ect people’s daily lives if you have to live next to a very noisy and fuming oil drill site. ose people really are the sacri ces in our society and o en are intentionally Black, brown and Asian American and Paci c Islander communities. ese are groups of people who have intentionally been segregated into these fossil fuel corridors or industry intensive areas. It’s very much an issue of environmental racism and especially in California.

How can college students get involved with fighting climate change?

It’s about getting involved with a group on campus or out in the real world that is trying to change policy at a city, local or even state level. I really do think that when we have people engaging and changing the system, that’s where we see the most e ect. It’s very di cult for people to make certain lifestyle choices when the entire system has been set up by the fossil fuel industry to force us into these tiny boxes where our personal options are the most convenient, but also harming the environment. It’s all by design and it’s very di cult to break out of those types of systems unless we’re organizing the people power and the mass movements we need to change those systems of power. Students who want to get involved really need to look around to see how they can shi the status quo around them and kind of gure out what the best pathways are for making that political change.

To many, climate change feels like something that’s far away in the future. What do you say to convince people that climate change is something that needs to be urgently addressed and acted upon?

I would say, if you haven’t already been a ected, you’re next. e reality is everyone has been a ected one way or another. Whether you personally have or you know someone personally, who has been a ected by climate change. ere was a report that came out just last month in the Washington Post that said, one in three Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer. We already are seeing the extremes, the storms, res, hurricanes, coastal storms, oods threatening millions of Americans. We’re seeing dry areas 200% drier, wet areas 200% wetter, and these are having a devastating impact already. If you have not been personally a ected, like someone you know de nitely has. It’s now. So what I would say to these people is be ready. But also know that these moments of disaster are the best moments for change. Just like what we’ve seen with the Huntington Beach oil spill. Never before have I seen so many elected o cials say we need to ban o shore drilling. ere’s really a chorus of people saying that now. I think times have changed so much because climate change elevated and it has already a ected so many people that the appetite for these types of big, system changes in our society are there because we realize what’s at stake now. We have experience with just what can go wrong and it’s scary, but we do need to focus on making political change happen. We all are going to be extra touched by this and we need to ght to make sure that California or wherever we live remains a livable place for the future that we can have access to clean drinking water, have air to breathe, and have good clean food. All of these systems are a threat right now. I just encourage people to look around, get ready, and be ready to organize.

“It’s about getting involved with a group on campus or out in the real world”

Kimberly Rivera, le , checks a persons grocery bag to make sure it contains all the proper items during the weekly food drive at South LA Cafe in South Los Angeles, Calif., on Wednesday, March 31, 2021.

South Los Angeles cafe steps up to help community combat food insecurity

Photos by Chris Torres & Story by Chris Torres, Anais Covarrubias & Nadine Cortez

Imagine you are one of eight people attending a dinner, yet there are only seven seats at the table. Someone is going home without eating. For the one in eight people in the U.S. and one in ve Angelenos who struggle with food insecurity, every day can feel like that. Fast food chains, liquor stores and smoke shops line the streets of South Central Los Angeles, with a lack of grocery markets that one would typically see in suburban areas of the city. A common problem South Central residents experience is the distance they would need to travel in order to have access to fresh produce. is can pose di culties for an area where 113 of 908 total households are without vehicles that are more than one-half mile from a supermarket. e lack of access to healthy food options contributed to the food insecurity in this area of Los Angeles, a trend that has only become worse through the years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated one in four households is food insecure, according to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, an organization that ghts hunger in their community by raising awareness through hunger education and public policies in hunger assistance. “ ere is a stigma that only homeless people access food resources,” according to Roger Castle, the chief development o cer of LARFB. “Seniors, people with disabilities and low-income families are the most visible examples of those who struggle with food insecurity. e ght doesn’t end there; food insecurity a ects all groups of people regardless of employment status or ethnicity.” One of the leading health concerns in Los Angeles is obesity, which can be traced back to the inaccessibility of healthy food. With a variety of fast food chains and convenience stores to choose from, the processed and unnatural foods found there have become the rst choice in many families’ diets. As a result, the rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are spiking in these areas.