Waste One Womans Fight Against Americas Dirty Secret

The MacArthur grant–winning “Erin Brockovich of Sewage” tells the riveting story of the environmental justice movement that is firing up rural America, with a foreword by the renowned author of Just Mercy
 
MacArthur “genius” Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers’s life’s work. It’s a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth.

Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this powerful book she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions, not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West.

Flowers’s book is the inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. It shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards, and not only those of poor minorities.

“Catherine Flowers is a trailblazer in the environmental and climate justice movement, and her life story serves as an inspiration for activists, educators, and anyone who wants to use their voice to make a difference.” Former Vice-President Al Gore

“Catherine Coleman Flowers’s important new book shows us how ordinary people can stand up, fight back, and build a government and an economy that works for all of us. Together, we can and we must guarantee clean water and sanitation as a right for all.” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

“This is a book about justice long overdue, and it’ s also a book for our pregnant moment, as movements combatting racism, inequality, and climate change converge to win a radically transformed future.” Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for the Green New Deal

“I never imagined that a book about raw sewage would be a real page-turner but Catherine Flowers’s Waste is just that. When the United Nations considers access to sanitation a basic human right, it is shocking that in this wealthiest of nations the most challenged and forgotten people continue to be flushed and forgotten. This book is a stunning eye-opener.” Jane Fonda, actor, activist, and author

“When you combine the ecological expertise of Rachel Carson, the dogged determination of Erin Brockovich, and the lifelong passion for equality of John Lewis, you get Catherine Flowers. Catherine’s story and her work in Lowndes County should motivate all of us to ensure that environmental injustice will no longer be America’s dirty secret.” John Kerry, 68th U.S. Secretary of State

“From the southern states, there have always been strong women who stood and fought for justice. To names like Fannie, Rosa, and Amelia, we must now add Catherine Flowers. Waste is the story of her work to organize communities against environmental racism. The fight is in her soul and because it is the truth, it will be exposed.” Rev. Dr. William Barber II

“Combining careful research, a powerful personal story, and bringing to life the rich legacy and civil rights history of Lowndes County, Alabama, Waste is a gift and a must-read for any activist, educator, or individual on the path to transforming our country towards justice and equity for all. ” Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement

“Catherine Flowers drops us headlong into areas in our country where descendants of slaves continue to be held captive by racial, environmental, and climate injustices. She uses her personal journey and her gift of storytelling to force us to open our eyes and see how Black people in our country have been systemically and purposefully left behind to literally wallow in their own waste.” Gina McCarthy, former U.S. EPA administrator under President Obama and current president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council

Catherine Coleman Flowers is the former founder and director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and since 2008 has been the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative. The author of Waste: Uncovering the Dirty Truth About Sewage and Inequality in Rural America (The New Press), she lives in Montgomery, Alabama.