Word: fabiola
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Thick notebooks of test results, chemical analyses and groundwater-safety studies. Not your typical teenage reading. But Maria Perez and Fabiola Tostado, both 15, and Nevada Dove, 18, pore over this stuff as closely as most kids read music 'zines. Some nights you can find them at Nevada's house, reading the latest report out loud, highlighting anything that sounds weird. Her brother calls them the Toxic Crusaders, and with good reason. As three young members of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles (CCSCLA), Maria, Fabiola and Nevada are activists in the cause of environmental health. They've handed...
That's what alarms Maria, Fabiola and Nevada. They don't go to school at Jefferson, nor do their brothers and sisters, but they are outraged just the same. Says Nevada: "It's terrifying that these kids are going to a school that's contaminated. In a way they are my brothers and sisters, because they are African-American and Hispanic children who one day may be my neighbors...
Maria and Fabiola worked for Clean & Green, a community-beautification program, before joining CCSCLA. Nevada is a seven-year veteran whose mother Melodie Dove is a CCSCLA leader. Formed in 1985 as one of the first African-American environmental groups in the U.S., CCSCLA is a force in the growing "environmental justice" movement, which questions why sources of pollution always seem to be located in poor neighborhoods...
CCSCLA campaigned for months to keep Jefferson New Middle School from opening, and the group's junior members were on the front lines. Maria, Fabiola and Nevada called government agencies, passed out flyers and went door to door to alert parents. But the school district determined that Jefferson was safe and opened its classrooms last July. Says school-district spokesman Erik Nasarenko: "The problem with the groundwater and the soils deep beneath the surface...does not affect people on the surface...
...next month the girls called a community meeting, inviting representatives from the school district and environmental agencies. After Maria, Fabiola and Nevada got through with them, they may have been sorry they went. When a schools official claimed that in an emergency, Jefferson's children would be evacuated to 9200 South Broadway, the girls pulled out photos proving that this was the address of a vacant lot. "We really nailed him down," Fabiola recalls. "We said, 'If you made a mistake like that, what other mistakes have you made...