Working as an office bureaucrat can certainly have its days, but as the leader of an amazingly talented, motivated, and productive team of 28 OSM/VISTA volunteers working in poverty stricken and environmentally devastated Appalachian coal country, I am continually awed by the attitudes and achievements of those I am fortunate to work with.

The following letter is an example of one volunteer's satirical perspective of her work in the anthracite region of north eastern Pennsylvania. It was recently submitted to my office as the cover letter for her quarterly progress report and is reproduced here, with permission, for your entertainment and enlightenment. Enjoy!

Dear Jenny:

Our water is orange, or forebodingly clear; our valley is succumbing to sprawl-induced hypertension; new storm water systems are allowed to infiltrate mine pools. Before long, the Anthracite region will be a scene from my favorite childhood Halloween story where the neighborhood children sneak over the witch's home on snow days, because her snow is always black.

There is hope! In my exploration of the Wyoming Valley, I discovered watershed heroes battling each foot of concrete channelized streams. Grizzly Adams' fourth cousins are in the tributaries willing the return of trout and American shad. Clusters of justice-seeking youth are cleaning and banning illegal dump sites in their neighborhoods. Murmurs are growing louder; defense of the environment for its sake and for the sake of human health is strengthing.

Enclosed you will find several war-zone documents - victories of one battalion on one battle front.

May we send only water we would drink downstream!

In solidarity,

Valerie L. Taylor
OSM/VISTA Watershed Development Coordinator
Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation

Pacoima, Calif., a largely Latino community on the north end of Los Angeles, is laden with freeways, airports, power plants, chemical manufacturers, and landfills. But residents intent on making their neighborhood a cleaner, safer place to live have teamed up through the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful. They're working to prevent lead poisoning, clean up trash, repair heavily polluting cars, and turn an asphalt recycling plant into a park. Marlene Grossman and other community activists lead a walking tour of the neighborhood.

As he's built up his Minnesota nonprofit that installs solar systems for low-income households, Jason Edens, this week's InterActivist, has gone from solar activist to solar expert. And it's a good thing: readers this week barraged him with questions about all things solar. He shines a light on topics ranging from DIY solar-system installation to solar ovens -- and he's got the scoop on web resources and other tools that can help you calculate your solar-power potential as well as costs, savings, emissions reductions, and more.

On this, the final day of our seven-week Poverty & the Environment series, Grist editor at large Kathryn Schulz steps back to take a big-picture look at the challenges we've been covering and the path toward meaningful social change. She also picks her highlights from the series, and invites you to do the same.

This week's New Yorker carries an excellent essay by John Cassidy discussing the history and evolving standards of poverty in the United States, and some of the different ways in which poverty can (and should) be measured.

Most interesting and relevant to some of our discussions is the idea of "relative poverty." If we hold most of what we call poverty in the U.S. up against the 1 billion dispossessed that Mike Davis writes about in his new book Planet of Slums, we find that most Americans are incredibly wealthy. Even if we compare poor Americans today with poor Americans in the 1960s when poverty was first "discovered" in this country, we find today's poor loaded up with stuff (most of America's poor own television sets and dishwashers and have running water and electricity, among other services).

But this kind of measurement may miss the point about poverty, Cassidy suggests:

Although many poor families own appliances once associated with rich households, such as color televisions and dishwashers, they live in a society in which many families also possess DVD players, cell phones, desktop computers, broadband internet connections, powerful game consoles, S.U.V.s, health-club memberships, and vacation homes. Without access to these goods, children from poor families may lack skills -- such as how to search the Web for help-wanted ads -- that could enhance their prospects in the job market. In other words, relative deprivation may limit a person's capacity for social achievement.

When Eric Mann first encountered environmentalists, he saw them as a bunch of "arrogant, racist airheads." When Frances Beinecke first encountered environmentalists, she felt she'd found her cause. Now, both are tireless proponents of environmental sanity, but they work in very different ways. Mann is director of the L.A.-based Labor/Community Strategy Center, where he fights for environmental justice, immigrant and labor rights, and economic equity. Beinecke is president of Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation's biggest green groups. We got the two of them talking about poverty, the environment, and building a stronger movement; find out what they had to say.

Take thousands of squalid, rickety, flammable dwellings, cram them onto unstable hillsides, toxic dumps, flood-prone valleys, or eroding river banks, fill them with desperate poor people, and what do you get? Slums -- a human and environmental nightmare. Mike Davis examines the troubling trend that has impoverished people flocking to dirty, dangerous urban areas around the globe, and the way the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have exacerbated the crisis.

I read this on the Greenpeace blog and it really shocked me. I do admit that I eat fish sometimes, but I had no idea that I was contributing to this. It seems that Chinese workers not only pay a high price for making Western cloth, but now are used as fishermen, spending years on ships that are almost falling apart.

They are being forced to steal from countries with lesser means. Did you now that the countries in West Africa are the only countries where they eat less fish? Not because they want to but because of the illegal fishing fleets taking advantage of their lack of means of patrolling their seas. And now there just aren't plenty of fish anymore.

Where will the fish end up? Often on dinner plates in Europe...

Unfortunately, "social justice" is too often used as a code word for pouring tax dollars down a rathole; "curing" poverty.

Replacing or refurbishing the boarded-up and dilapidated buildings of a long-blighted neighborhood costs major money; so does creating greenspace from rust-belt industrial land. When you do so, the value of that neighborhood or that land increases manyfold: people who have jobs and pay taxes to support the improvements want to benefit from them. They buy homes in the restored neighborhoods, and the valuation of housing increases, which in turn raises taxes and rents. Housing near the new parks will escalate in value, because they are now more desirable, and again taxes and rents will go up.

Atlanta is embarking on a massive redevelopment project to transform a mostly unused railroad into a 22-mile, in-town loop of walking trails, bike paths, public transit, and more than 1,200 acres of parks. Sounds great. But Atlanta activist Na'Taki Osborne worries that for the city's poor and moderate-income residents, there might be a catch.

Grist's own editor-at-large, Kathryn Schulz, appeared on EcoTalk to chat about our Poverty & the Environment series. Listen to the 12-minute interview.

Low-income households are often the most gravely affected by energy crises, says Jason Edens of the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance, yet they are the least able to afford renewable-energy alternatives. As InterActivist this week, Edens chats about installing solar-heating systems in rural areas of Minnesota and empowering families to warm themselves (but not the earth!). Send Edens a question of your own by noon PST on Wednesday; we'll publish his answers to selected questions on Friday.

Remember books? Those pages of printed word bound together and read by ancient mankind way back when there wasn't a world wide interweb? Apparently they're still around! Which brings me to the purpose of this semi-regular column: I'll be showing you what's under the covers of various eco-themed books on shelves everywhere (or soon to be).

These are not reviews, mind you -- I haven't actually read these books. Heavens, no! But I have held them in my hands and read the inside covers and looked at the pretty pictures. Which clearly makes me an expert, people. An expert enough, anyhow, to summarize the contents so that you, dear reader, can choose to read further. In this edition, I'll focus on a handful of books that crossed our desks here at Grist HQ during our Poverty & the Environment series.

How will you be marking Farmworker Awareness Week next week? What? No plans yet? Good thing Tirso Moreno is here to point to some ideas. An organizer with the Farmworker Association of Florida and this week's InterActivist, Moreno also answers questions from readers (including a whole third-grade class!) about immigration reform, organic produce, pesticide regulations, and more.

Three years ago, the Sokaogon Chippewa tribe of Northern Wisconsin bought the nearby site of a proposed mine, winning a 30-year battle to preserve their land and community. But this April, the mortgage comes due, and the tribe is still struggling to raise money to pay it off. Tribe member Tina Van Zile leads a virtual walking tour of her community, reflecting on the past fight for justice, her present frustrations, and her hopes for future generations.

Hollywood tends to like its women in diamonds and sparkly dresses, but some moviemakers can't take their eyes off poor, female eco-activists. Charlize Theron's Oscar nomination for North Country this year proves that the allure of such tales hasn't worn off in the years since Silkwood, but has the take-home message changed? Ken Eisen compares eco-chick movies past with eco-chick movies present.

Evon Peter of Native Movement (and InterActivist) fame appeared (was heard?) yesterday on Flashpoints radio. During the 17-minute interview, Peter chats about the Senate vote to allow drilling in his native lands (also known as the Arctic Refuge) and an upcoming March for Human Rights and Sacred Sites on Saturday in Flagstaff, Ariz.

You can download the entire hour-long Flashpoints show here or just download Peter's portion here.

It's been more than 50 years since the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal, yet we still live in a country that's chock-full of racially split neighborhoods (see: New Orleans). Why is integration failing, how does it affect land use, and what do high-tech mapping gadgets have to do with it all? Jon Christensen interviews Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin to find out.

Farmworkers suffer from chemical-related illnesses at a higher rate than any other occupational group, says Tirso Moreno of the Farmworker Association of Florida, which fights for safety and equal rights for farmworkers. As InterActivist this week, Moreno chats about the tribulations of immigrants, the need for stiffer penalties for agri-biz pollutocrats, and why some farmwork is modern-day indentured servitude. Send Moreno a question of your own by noon PST on Wednesday; we'll publish selected answers on Friday.

Turns out, we're not the only game in town paying attention to the intersection of economic and environmental issues (thankfully). So are the folks over at the Sierra Club Chronicles, a monthly TV series featuring community efforts to protect environmental health.

This month, the series focuses on the fate of DeLisle, Mississippi, home to a Dupont chemical plant. When the plant was first built, it was welcomed by DeLisle's residents, who were hungry for steady work. Twenty-five years later, more than 2,000 current and former residents and employees are suing the company, blaming dioxin and other heavy metals from the plant for the cancer clusters and high illness rates in the area.

The 30-minute film, "Dioxin, Duplicity, and Dupont," will air this Thursday (March 23) at 8:30 PM Eastern and Pacific on Link TV (DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410). You can also download the film to Video iPod.