We got to feature the new SEAC chapter at the University of Michigan in the awesome school newspaper The Independent. Check out the article below! We also got more than 40 contacts from students interested in the group today at the student organizational fair.

What exactly is this environment that we hear about so much these days? Is it the atmosphere? The rain forest (which one)? Yellowstone? The Fish Bowl? Our pocketbooks? What if it were all these things? What if the environment were the totality of the social, political, economic and cultural conditions in which we all live? That is Environment with a capital E. How would you relate to it?

The Student Environmental Action Coalition (www.seac.org) is a national youth and student led organization that acts in accordance with this holistic definition of the Environment. From SEAC's vantage, the environment is not a distant entity in need of rescue – it is all-surrounding. For the communities that bear the greatest Environmental burdens -- including poverty, racism, police brutality, domestic violence, lead poisoning, and high asthma and cancer rates -- it is in need of immediate improvement. SEAC works to bridge campus and community organizations to take collective action on the urgent Environmental issues that affect their regions.

The Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit has recently been approved to build a one billion dollar expansion. This refinery spews toxic black dust, which settles on surfaces in the surrounding neighborhood. To address this issue, Marathon Oil proposed to pay for a street sweeper to sweep up the detritus of their dirty business. Thanks... and what is that street sweeper's Environment like? Anyways, how ridiculous! This is what's breathed by Detroiters. That's not all. Detroit is already polluted by the nation's largest trash incinerator, numerous factories, defunct lead smelters, and over 130 superfund sites. Obviously Marathon Oil does not really consider the health of local residents, and neither do so many other industries that assert that just one more smokestack won't be so bad in a place that already has so many.

Many residents accept and even welcome industrial expansion because it means the possibility of a few more jobs for Detroiters. Assuredly, unemployment is a crippling problem. We in SEAC believe that there are sustainable solutions to current unemployment: Green Jobs need to be made available, jobs that will create pathways out of poverty and will function to create a more healthy society. Detroit will need hundreds of thousands of these jobs in order to clean up the remaining toxins, change to renewable energy, and transform into a city that can thrive for the long haul.

There are many individuals and groups working on issues of Environmental Justice in Detroit so it would be pure arrogance to view ourselves as incoming maize and blue clad saviors in these struggles. The problems have deep roots and deep solutions that ought to come from affected communities. Rhonda Anderson, Environmental Justice Organizer for Sierra Club Detroit, is an amazing woman who has been fighting for justice for a long time. She has invited students to help her this fall by flyering with health information in Detroit neighborhoods. She is trying to collect health surveys to pressure the government to pay for an official health survey. Our role as university students is to work with local community members and organizations to assist them in whatever they ask us to do. We can also be allies, understanding systems of inequity and addressing the root causes. We must be bold. We must recognize our privilege and be willing to take risks, make mistakes, and reform our behavior in order to accomplish our goal of creating an Environment for all people that is sustainable, just, clean, and liberating. Many campus groups are working towards a similar vision, and we look forward to working with them through the Progressive Alliance. With this collaboration, SEAC, as a new group on campus, will continue to expand its definition of Environment and grapple with the most pressing issues of our time.

SEAC's Mass Meeting will be Tuesday, September 9, at 6:30 p.m., in 3448 Mason Hall. Look for SEAC at the Progressive Festifall. To get on the email list, send your info to anromu@umich.edu.