Arieann Harrison, CEO of the Marie Harrison Foundation, is a prominent environmental justice advocate in Bayview-Hunters Point. She frequently attends neighborhood meetings involving tenants groups, air protection efforts, and the Hunters Point Shipyard’s citizens advisory committee. Her activism is rooted in personal loss: her mother died in 2019 after a long battle with lung disease, despite never smoking. Harrison attributes the illness to exposure connected to the Hunters Point Shipyard, a toxic Superfund site where her mother worked when she was younger. In the 1990s, her mother pushed for transparent cleanup and broader environmental protections, contributing to the closure of the Hunters Point Power Plant, which had polluted the neighborhood before 2006.
""I guess you could say it's in my DNA," said Harrison, when asked why she decided to turn to activism herself. But it wasn't an automatic calling. "I'll be the first person to tell you," Harrison said, sitting in Bayview's Southeast Community Center, "I didn't want to be nothing like my mother and father.""
#environmental-justice #bayview-hunters-point #hunters-point-shipyard #public-health #superfund-cleanup
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