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cynicism.

“These are people whose voices have gone unheard for years,” Whitnye Long Jones, director of community engagement for Ohio City Inc., told Scene. “It was completely legal and okay to put that industry next to low income housing to begin with,” unlike, Long Jones said, what wouldn’t happen in the suburbs.

“But here you have individuals who are focused on surviving,” she added, “and therefore may feel they don’t have the power to stop something like that.”

Although Lakeview’s air quality had been an area of concern at Ohio City since at least 2010, Long Jones took the issue on as a high priority in 2017, when she started an initiative now called Let’s Clear The Air. (“It’s a double entendre,” she said.) Needing specific air quality data to prove harm to policymakers, Long Jones pursued federal grants to fund research and about ten air quality monitors.