Only in Pilsen: Dia de los Muertos and Environmental Rights

How many times have you pledged to explore in your home town? How many times have you?

Dia de los Muertos participants

Right. So on Nov 2nd, I found temperate weather and my bicycle pointed towards Pilsen's Dia de los Muertos procession. As you'd imagine, the event didn't disappoint. Mexico, its people (home based or diaspora) and culture have a penchant of turning the mundane into the sublime.

I was also reminded of an issue that looms in this dynamic neighborhood. That is the drive for clean air, and the right to have unfettered access to clean air. Enter the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (P.E.R.R.O). Clean air- and access to it- are precious and precarious. In Pilsen the air quality has generated citations from the EPA.

The issue hasn't gone uncovered by the media- periodically generating local coverage of the Clean Power Ordinance and PERRO's advocacy (along with Chicago Clean Power Coalition) to pressure Midwest Generation to close or significantly reduce emissions from the Fisk and Crawford coal plants. Midwest Generation owns and operates the old coal fired power plants that were sold by ComEd (Exelon). Coal is nasty, and it has severe affects on communities- from its extraction to its burning. Sulfur dioxide is perhaps the best known by product, and it leads to respiratory ailments, acid rain etc. Yet, like me, you probably expect the lights to work in your home, and for it to stay heated during the winter months. Consider me guilty of those expectations.

The Clean Power Ordinance (see above) haltingly working it's way through the local legislative grinder. However, elections/politics/vested interests have a tendency to delay, obfuscate, and/or alter the final law.

Ofreda at Dvork Park Field House

You might say that for the residents of Pilsen, there is no delay. Most of us need to breathe regularly. And we seem to have little trouble funding wars, business tax breaks, TIFF's etc- and fully recognizing each of these as disparate issues, but air pollution is entirely rectifiable.

Ultimately this will be resolved- the right thing will be done once all other options are exhausted. So explore your city. I for one love finding something else when I'm busy looking for something.