Lois Gibbs

"When Love Canal came, it was a new segment of the movement. It really was about people and peoples' health. It wasn't that we don't care about the forest, but it was the people-focus that set us aside from other elements that had come before us. If the fish are dying and the birds are dying, we're gonna die!"

John Adams

Carl Pope

"We went to pass a new Clean Air Act, and the original proposal was that all factories would be cleaned up as the technology became available. Industrial lobbyists said, 'Look. These old factories, we're going to shut them down in a few years. Make the new stuff be clean and let us just retire the old stuff.' The environmental community didn't really want them to take that deal - but we took it. And what happened was, they didn't build new factories and they didn't clean up the old ones either. They just kept operating the old ones dirty."

Bob Bullard

"West Virginia -- a lot of people don’t even know there are black people in West Virginia. And this company, Union Carbide, found them!  The only place in the country that manufactured methylisocyanate, MIC -- the same chemical that killed all those people in Bhopal India -- was in Institute, West Virginia. And Institute has always been 95% black. The largest hazardous waste landfill in the country is in Emelle, Alabama. At the time that landfill was sited, you got a county that’s 75% black, but there are no black people on the county commission. You say, 'How can that be?' It’s called apartheid, American style!"