“Do you know what it’s like to bury a child?”

Every time I hear a child’s voice it strikes a fierce nerve – the need to protect. Being a father myself to a 9 year old, I know how much effort goes into raising a child and making sure he or she has the support and confidence needed to stand strong, be aware, and be well in this world.

Recently, over in Dallas, a 14-year old boy was shot in the neck and killed during an argument that got out of hand. It’s not an uncommon story. His mother, surrounded by the grieving family, told a reporter, “Do you know what it’s like to bury a child?”

I’ve been thinking about the intense bond between most parents and their children. For some, their children represent the high point of their lives. Knowing that there is no love like that between a good parent and a child, I’ve been thinking of all the children and young adults whose lives, both American and Iraqi, were mindlessly smeared out of existence by this Oil War in Iraq, or by all the environmental injustices by heedless industry that have ruined so many communities throughout the years. I’ve watched the wracking grief of parents who’ve lost their children, nearly indescribable in its pain. Trying to comprehend all this death and grief repeating itself over and over and over again, the mind short-circuits.

I don’t understand the behavior of some people in power, when they have kids and breathe air and drink water like the rest of us. How can they view other children as disposable?

Check out Tammy Cromer-Campbell’s new photographic essay book, Fruit of the Orchard: Environmental Justice in East Texas, chronicling the compromised lives and ruined bodies of a local, predominantly black community of Winona, TX by a company – called “American Ecology” (!) – who viewed people as disposable. All to make a buck.

In her book, Ms. Cromer-Campbell writes: “Winona children suffer numerous health problems: birth defects, rare tumors and cancers, stunted growth, brain and liver damage, kidney malfunction and failure, skin discolorations, immune deficiencies, and chromosomal abnormalities (genetic mutations). Most residents attribute many unexplained illnesses and some deaths to the American Ecology facility.”

We need to build a new society based on personal power and protection of the health and natural world for everybody. How much longer are we going to just stand by?