Pollution-Burdened LB Youth Fighting for a "New Normal"

Photo Credit: halbergman

For many Californians, “earthquakes” aren’t out of the norm. But the rotten egg-like odor may be. It's how 16-year-old Dennise Lievanos knew the shaking her community experiences isn’t actually an earthquake. It’s just another of the disruptions to daily life that has been forced upon residents living near refineries.

“When one of those first happened, the houses shook from side to side, but everyone really took it as like, ‘Oh, it's an earthquake. It's nothing too serious,’” Lievanos said. “But then, this egg smell started coming and we were kind of confused.”

Lievanos has lived in this area of West Long Beach her whole life, and she said the exposure to pollution caused members of her family to develop asthma.

West Long Beach is known for facing higher exposure to pollution than other areas of the city, especially more affluent areas. Residents of the area live next to multiple refineries and the 710 freeway, which is heavily used by truck drivers moving goods to and from the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. Both ports describe themselves as among the busiest ports in the nation.

Youth members of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice during a 2019 protest against freeway expansions. Photo Credit: Ceferino Martirez

Business as Usual

The three most recent versions of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s CalEnviroscreen, which collects emissions and environmental data for census tracts, show that most of both North and West Long Beach rank between 80% to 100% in pollution burden.

Emergency department visits for asthma and cardiovascular diseases in these areas also rank between 80% and 100%. Rates in these regions only dip into the 70s in the 2014 CalEnviroscreen.

Ruthie Heis, a freshman at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, who also lives in West Long Beach, has experienced seeing the impact these emissions have on residents’ health as well.

“Growing up in Webster [Elementary], we were assigned buddies to help carry classmates when they could no longer walk to the nurse's office because they had asthma attacks,” Heis said.

Heis explained that on days when emissions from refineries were high, students would have to stay indoors.

“We were running around once and there's a kid who was running around and suddenly he just dropped and the bell rang. We all had to rush back inside,” Heis said, recalling a day during a physical education class.

Heis felt lucky to not experience the respiratory illnesses many others exposed to these conditions live with, which some of her friends do. Rohan Reddy, who Heis works with as a part of the Long Beach Green Schools Campaign, had to use his inhaler in between parts of a speech at a rally, where he was speaking about the environment and his asthma, according to Heis.

Reddy, who lives in the Los Cerritos neighborhood near two freeways, said he has been dealing with asthma since he was six months old.

“Every morning, when I wake up I do two things,” Reddy said. “I check the weather and I check the air quality.”

He does this to know two things, if he needs to prepare to use his inhaler and if he needs to stay indoors as much as possible. Though the start of the pandemic led to him seeing better air quality than is normal, the pandemic itself made going outside something he couldn’t do anyways.

The prevalence of these emissions has had long term impacts on the areas’ residents. Per the Long Beach Health Departments’ community health assessment, areas like North and West Long Beach have lower life expectancy than parts of the city closer to the coast and farther from freeways or refineries.

Members of the Long Beach Green Schools Campaign march during a rally in support of transitioning the school district away from fossil fuels. Photo Credit: Briana Mendez-Padilla

Envisioning a new normal

While the environmental burden these youth experience has largely remained the same, they’ve recently found themselves getting involved in campaigns aiming to change their day-to-day conditions.

“I'm a child and I'm out here, spending my free time advocating,” Heis said. “So I want to see older generations putting in the effort to make a difference and kind of allow us to do the things that we're proposing.”

As members of the Green Schools Campaign, Reddy and Heis have been advocating the Long Beach Unified School District to transition away from relying on fossil fuels for the school district’s energy needs. But their hopes lay beyond the school district.

“I know that a major contributor to the pollution is obviously burning fossil fuels, cars, power plants, oil refineries, things like that. So if we could start to transition off of fossil fuels to clean, renewable resources that would help to improve life for everyone,” Reddy said.

Meanwhile, Lievanos has become involved with the local organization East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, which has given her a place to connect with other local youth experiencing similar issues — and learn how to advocate for better conditions. She recently joined the organization in advocating against a railyard proposed to be built in her community, which has currently been delayed.

“The more you start speaking the more you start valuing your own words and your own perspective,” Lievanos said. “And, you know, our mentalities change to like no, we're gonna make them hear us. Like if they don't want to hear us, they're gonna hear us,” referencing organizations like the ports.

Lievanos hopes her efforts can help play a part in changing the environment her community lives with, diminishing the headaches and heat they experience.

“I just hope, one day I don't have to ride the bus to school and see all this smoke from refineries and instead see more green [space], more blue skies,” Lievanos said. “Stars up in the night, like that's literally what we all hope for.”

Long Beach Students Feel Intimidated by SSO Presence

Students on their way to Cabrillo High School pass by the Long Beach Police Department's West Division Station, which is next to the school.

Photo Credit: Ceferino Martirez

To some, a school may represent a safe space to learn, make friends and gain the knowledge and skills for life.

For 17-year-old Jesse Guardado, who attends Cabrillo High School, located a block away from the Long Beach Police Department’s West Division station, the school was not a safe space.

The police station was a representation of the violence that surrounded them and created a tense and intimidating environment even within the school walls, Guardado said.

Violence in and around schools was not exclusive to Cabrillo. In September 2021, an 18-year-old named Mona Rodriguez was fatally shot by a school safety officer (SSO) near Millikan High School. The Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) fired the SSO, but these events have refueled conversations about what it actually looks like to feel safe in schools.

Lucas Higbee, a chemistry teacher at Millikan Senior High School, said school safety is difficult to assess. He added that feeling safe is different for every student. While some may perceive random backpack checks and the presence of SSOs a safety measure, others may not.
“[For some students] it makes it so that they come to school and the first message they are told is these members of authority don’t trust you,” Higbee said. 

According to the School Safety and Emergency Preparedness Division Manual, LBUSD employed 13 SSOs stationed on campus and three district security officers who patrolled the property at night. These officers had the power to use pepper spray, physical force, firearms and impact weapons, such as batons.

The SSOs can cite, but not arrest, and are not employed by the Long Beach Police Department, yet Guardado often found it hard to tell the difference. Despite having limited contact with SSOs, Guardado viewed them as an aggressive presence on campus.

“That power dynamic makes it more than enough to paint them as an aggressive authority figure,” Guardado said. “Are they cops? Or are they supposed to be school resource officers? Because I can't tell.”

Milikan junior Emma Huynh perception of campus officers mirrored Guardado’s.

“They make people feel a little bit uneasy because they kind of just standing around and don't really interact with anybody,” Huynh said. “They're very present without having to present themselves.”

Huynh described herself and her friends as feeling intimidated by SSO presence on campus, especially knowing that they have guns.

“We’re just kind of unsure of what they would do, but we all subconsciously know that they're there to protect us,” said Huynh.

Guardado described them as “hawks.”

“As a person of color, it feels extra terrifying because it feels like they have the authority to do whatever they want with you and not face the consequences for those actions,” Guardado said.

And although they are supposed to ensure student safety, Guardado pointed out that these officers, and school faculty in general, are often not adequately prepared to curtail situations. Instead, they resort to merely separating fights and taking students to the office.

Higbee believed that to achieve de-escalation, it is necessary to dismantle the SSO program and instead hire trauma-informed individuals appropriately trained in how to deal with these conflicts.

Long Beach Police on the scene in the 6200 block of E. Spring Street where a shooting occurred between a School Safety Officer and a possible student from Millikan High School in Long Beach on September 27, 2021. Multiple students aboard an LB Transit bus and walking by witnessed the shooting and were detained to be interviewed by officers. Photo Credit: Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

In response to the pandemic, Cabrillo HS has emphasized the importance of mental health and provided students with resources such as the Wellness Center, with similar centers at LBUSD schools like Millikan and Long Beach Polytechnic High School But Guardado felt it was also important to focus on other aspects of mental health, such as the impact of systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and other forms of oppression. 

Hiring full-time therapists and psychologists was a crucial part of ensuring adequate mental health assistance. Cabrillo’s current psychologists are not full-time employees and are only on campus a few times a week Guardado said.

As someone who is graduating soon, Guardado would like to see schools provide more access to tangible resources. Guardado mentioned Cabrillo Closet, a campus resource that provided students with donated clothes, school supplies, and basic hygiene products. Anyone can walk in and take what they need, for free. Poly has The Rabbit Hole, which functions in the same way. Guardado suggested all schools across the district have something like this available, and that running it could even translate into internship opportunities for other students. 

Guardado said it was important schools have these conversations with students and directly ask them about what resources and changes they would most like to see, rather than the usual rare to no acknowledgment.

“A clear-cut way to directly help students is asking them what they want, what they need,” Guardado said. 

The Return of In-Person Learning

Year two of COVID saw the majority of Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) students return to in-person learning, but there wasn’t talk about what that experience had been like for them. We've heard of teachers who were more lenient and compassionate while other students struggled to keep up or felt unsafe in an environment where they are exposed to bullying, disease and police violence. In a changing world, what's changed in our schools? What hasn't changed in our schools? Via student interviews, we explored this in a podcast that will provide a picture of how schools were functioning and how that impacted students’ academic performance and their overall well-being. VoiceWaves’ Briana Mendez-Padilla reports on how LBUSD attempted to adjust.