ray levy uyeda

ray levy uyeda

ray levy uyeda is a staff reporter at Prism, focusing on environmental and climate justice.

145 posts
color photograph of a woman wearing a hijab with a young girl at a farmer's market weighing three tomatoes on a digital scale
Climate & Environment

Q&A: The Farm Bill ignores ‘desperate cries’ for equitable land access and better climate programming

Food production systems that put quality over quantity are considered a revolutionary act by organizers. Decades of federal policy have pushed out young farmers and farmers of color in favor of propping up a few names in the agricultural industry. Corporate control of the food supply chain breeds fallout for

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7 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of a Black woman in a long bright skirt standing by the side of a road as a coal truck speeds past
Climate & Environment

Federal agency approves Tennessee pipeline through communities  of color, raising costs and environmental concerns

Yolonda Spinks knows Memphis, Tennessee, like the back of her hand. She was born and raised in the Riverside neighborhood of South Memphis and attended the historically Black college LeMoyne-Owen, which was just 3 miles from her childhood home. Spinks is committed to being what she calls “a good ancestor.

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10 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of a bulldozer atop a coal mound as low-hanging smoke or fog lingers and blocks the tops of trees in the bac
Climate & Environment

No one thought they could shut this prison down. Can an interracial, interregional coalition do it again?

In 2018, a small coalition of residents, organizers, lawyers, and professors who organized to halt an eastern Kentucky prison construction rejoiced. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reversed course on its 2018 budget plan, rescinding $444 million earmarked for the construction of a federal prison in Roxana, Kentucky. The reason? The

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9 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of a woman wearing a head covering standing in an olive tree grove with the sun backlighting her
Climate & Environment

For Palestinian cooks in the U.S., highlighting the importance of olives is a matter of cultural survival

When Marcelle Afram was growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, his mom would buy bushels of raw olives for preservation. Sitting in the family’s garage, they would clean and pit the olives before packing them in a salty brine. His mom distributed the olives to extended family and friends.

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9 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of three power plant smoke stacks belching smoke into the air. smog hangs low to the ground in the foregroun
Climate & Environment

Upcoming EPA case ruling ‘casts a shadow’ over how SCOTUS views future environmental regulations

Cleophus Sharp grew up in Houston in the Black neighborhood of Pleasantville in the 1950s. Neighbors knew one another, and Sharp remembers a closely knit community. But his childhood was marked by something most children won’t relate to: suffocating, toxic air that was inescapable. On some days, you could

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10 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of a young Black woman in a dark room of a family house, staring at a photograph of young Black boys hanging
Climate & Environment

Beauty and heartbreak in eastern North Carolina

“Everything I do is for my community,” said Resita Cox, an independent film documentarian born and raised in Kinston, a town of less than 20,000 people in eastern North Carolina. Cox’s forthcoming film, “Freedom Hill,” will air on PBS on April 22 at 8 p.m. ET and

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9 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of an Enbridge oil refinery
Climate & Environment

DOJ acknowledges illegal trespass on tribal land but stops short of demanding pipeline shutdown

A legal brief by the Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed that a Canadian pipeline company is trespassing on a tribal reservation but stopped short of asserting that the government can take meaningful action to shut down the fossil fuel infrastructure. The amicus brief, filed April 10 in the 7th Circuit

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3 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of a Black man standing on a pack of water bottles in front of a church
Climate & Environment

Jackson, Mississippi, residents now get a voice in negotiations over city’s water crisis

Jackson, Mississippi, residents will now have a formal seat in negotiations that could determine the future of clean water access.  The change comes from a “motion to intervene” in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) case against the city of Jackson. Filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Forward Justice,

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3 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of an oil spill clean-up crew on the shore of a river
Climate & Environment

Who will stop the ‘ticking time bomb’ across Native lands?

It started with a flood. A great turtle rose out of the untamable waters. Thus, in Ojibwe tradition, the world was born. The Great Lakes of Michigan are the most sacred of places for Ojibwe peoples; five bodies of interconnected freshwater lakes are the origin of all life and the

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8 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of an outdoor protest in favor of climate justice. people hold up white posters with red text reading "bank
Climate & Environment

How the media facilitates climate criminality

A climate protester named Mama Julz spent February 1 locked to a grounded helicopter, the kind usually used to transport construction workers to remote portions of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the rushed and ecologically destructive pet project of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. After a few hours, police arrested Mama

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15 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color photograph of an outdoor protest. indigenous people beat drums outside the Minnesota state capitol building
Climate & Environment

‘Bad River’ documents tribal band’s fight against Enbridge pipeline

In any other business arrangement, Enbridge would be long gone from the Bad River Reservation. The contract between the oil company and the tribal band says the easements permitting the Line 5 pipeline to operate on the reservation ended in 2013. A federal judge agreed in 2022, meaning the oil

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5 Min
By: ray levy uyeda
color outdoor photograph of an oil refinery in an arid environment
Climate & Environment

‘The amount of burden they place on people is just shocking’

Oil and natural gas that have been turned into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, clothing, and pesticides are known as petrochemicals, and they are the subject of increased scrutiny across the media because of the devastating harm they wreak in communities across the U.S.   Take for example two new landmark reports

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7 Min
By: ray levy uyeda

Showing 12 of 145 total posts

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