{"id":1400,"date":"2023-05-03T09:55:31","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T13:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2023-05-03T09:55:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T13:55:31","slug":"how-a-louisiana-cafe-became-home-base-for-environmental-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/education\/how-a-louisiana-cafe-became-home-base-for-environmental-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Louisiana caf\u00e9 became home base for environmental justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2019, twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner opened Fee-Fo-Lay Caf\u00e9<\/a> in the tiny town of Wallace, Louisiana, population 775. Using her grandmother\u2019s recipe, Jo wanted to make and sell Louisiana cookies called t-cakes. After a stint working in local tourism, she thought a caf\u00e9 that catered to tourists passing through would be the perfect way to build the local economy while selling tasty treats.<\/p>\n

It turns out, however, that the caf\u00e9\u2019s location in St. John the Baptist Parish comes with unique challenges. At the same time, it offers opportunities to further environmental justice.<\/p>\n

Fee-Fo-Lay\u2019s quaint, covered porch faces a long grassy hill that is actually the back of a levee marking the bank of the mighty Mississippi River. The mound of earth hides the smokestacks, flares, and hulking industrial structures that loom over the river in every direction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Just across the river from the caf\u00e9 is the Atlantic Alumina factory, where buildings across the entire complex are tinted red due to bauxite ore, a potentially toxic material<\/a> used in aluminum production.<\/p>\n

The Marathon Petroleum refinery is right up the river. Shell Norco\u2019s petrochemical plant is around the next bend.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a region northwest of New Orleans that many years ago was given the nickname \u201cCancer Alley<\/a>.\u201d For decades, residents have been pointing to the concentration of pollution from hundreds of oil refineries, chemical plants and other factories to explain how often they and their families have received cancer diagnoses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Recently, researchers in Tulane\u2019s Environmental Law Clinic provided new science to back up their claims. Their\u00a0study confirmed<\/a>\u00a0that toxic air pollution in the region is in fact linked to higher rates of cancer in its residents, who are disproportionately Black.<\/p>\n

Before industry moved in, the same stretch of river was dotted with sugarcane plantations. Now, the descendants of the enslaved people who were forced to work the fields populate towns like Wallace. Jo and Joy Banner\u2019s ancestors worked on at least two nearby plantations.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the sisters created the Descendants Project<\/a> to protect the health, land, and lives of the Black river parish communities they were born into. Now, they\u2019ve thrown themselves into defending Wallace from an industrial development that stands to completely transform the town. In the wide-open field next to Fee-Fo-Lay, construction pilings mark the beginning of a planned grain shipping terminal<\/a> that would receive barges<\/a> packed with corn and other grains from Midwest farms, store the grain, and then transfer it to ocean vessels for export.<\/p>\n

Read more from <\/em>LISA HELD at NOLA.com<\/em>:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.nola.com\/louisiana_inspired\/louisiana-caf-becomes-home-base-for-environmental-justice\/article_11a4ed26-ded1-11ed-9147-5b86dcaa9d25.html<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2019, twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner opened Fee-Fo-Lay Caf\u00e9 in the tiny town of Wallace, Louisiana, population 775. Using her grandmother\u2019s recipe, Jo wanted to make and sell Louisiana cookies called t-cakes. After a stint working in local tourism, she thought a caf\u00e9 that catered to tourists passing through would be the perfect…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1401,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/1401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}