The Heroic Resistance of a Latino Community Besieged by Fracking

*I thought you’d find this interesting. Kern County, California is 51.5% Latino and it generates more than 95% of the fracking oil output in the state. It has one of the highest asthma rates in the country. Two million Californians live within a mile of oil or gas development, of these, 92% are persons of color. VL

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By Javier Sierra, Huffington Post Green

If I were a presidential candidate (fat chance!) and someone asked me whom I admire the most, I would answer any of the hundreds of heroes who defend their communities against a daily toxic bombardment.

This siege takes place in hundreds of Latino communities across the country, and one of these heroes is Juan Flores, an organizer with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, in Kern County, California. Flores’s fight is nothing short of heroic.

Kern County generates over 75 percent of California’s oil output, including 95 percent of the fracking that occurs in the state, more than any other county in the nation. And the price the overwhelmingly Latino population pay for this is heartbreaking.

Click HERE to read the full story.

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[Photo courtesy of NRDC]

Suggested reading

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