Christina Mui is a recent graduate of Clean Water Action’s Youth Action Collaborative at Malden High School. This poem was read aloud by her as part of the 2024 Rally for Asthma Justice. She is being awarded the 2024 Youth Leadership Award at Clean Water Action’s annual Fall Celebration.
My grandpa stares at his plants early in the morning, reusing cardboards and newspapers as containers for his garden. My grandma collects used plastic bags for our trash instead of buying new bags. She tells me to turn off the lights whenever I can.
I stare at them, at their stingy behavior, but then I wonder, would I rather have them run through every single-use item without a second thought? Would I rather have them degrade our earth with unnecessary waste?
I stared out through my car window, enjoying the scenery until I saw the factory smokestacks taking over our industries.
Scarce bits of greenery hold onto the remains of ancient earth, struggling to provide enough oxygen for the entire species of humanity.
Tainted by the acid and smoke, they hold on to their last memories of past folks. Ones who were chopped away and sent to satisfy human needs.
At home, my grandparents argue, I step out to breathe some fresh air.
But there was no fresh air.
Moreover, there was no equality with fresh air. African and Latino Americans who face discrimination in the amount of greenspace areas have a 97% decrease in asthma control, according to Neeta Thakur and others.
I realized that I stepped into a world with tension, where powerful figures prioritize entrepreneurship, scientists who emphasize the consequences, and activists who fight for rights.
Yet existence presents us all with the same road, one where a daunting future lies ahead. One with acid rain, one with iceless environments, one with wastelands plaguing communities of color, one with a surge in wildfires, and extinct species.
We are ruining our homes, allowing companies and people in power to dictate our neighborhoods. What will we say to our kids and the younger generation? That they are living in a polluted world because we have decided to ignore the warning signs?
Yet, many think they do enough through recycling, reusing, and refraining from littering. However, these measures do not stop bills or projects that are detrimental to our environment.
Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, they are all invisible, just like ignorance. However both concepts are inevitably demolishing like the droughts and cyclones that progress as a consequence of global warming.
Like the plastics and cigarette butts that seagulls feed their young.
Like the wastelands companies that dump into disadvantaged communities.
And like the guilt and the voice in the back of your brain that begs to do something, yet dies down from the fear of powerlessness.
Inaction is the fuel for people in power to make decisions and gain control over from the lack of others. We need to start speaking up, protesting, fighting, acknowledging.
A silent world causes discord, imbalances representation, and promotes the unequal home distributions and environmental injustices we see today. However, we can regain that power, redeclare our presence, and ensure clean air entrance.
The journey of one plastic bottle continues over the years, I fear, through the dumpster, to the truck, across the country, and to another community. More and more bottles pile on the frustration as our irresponsibility permits the creation of pollution.
That one girl down the street smiles back at you, yet particles in the air wipe her grin away, sending her into a coughing fit. The hope in her eyes, gone.
You stare up at the sky, its murkiness looming over your existence; plastic bags fly and drift away as the world transforms into a dystopia.
But wait.
We can change the narrative and the turn of events; the future lies in our hands. Let your voice sing, your hands empowered. Your mindset awakened.
Petitions are running, protests are fuming. Action is bound to change the world.
The only question now is: are you willing to rewrite the narrative?
