by Mariana McDonald
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| Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.” |
for Catherine Flowers
A low wind shifts and yet the smell
persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,
freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,
drowned out by the blaring stench
of waste, raw and moving, straight-
piped, pumped into the yards of poor
folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,
where Jim Crow and ramshackle join
to spread a putrid presence onto lawns
where children play, E. coli and danger
in the dirt. No rains can clean it,
clear it, make the grass a sea of
fresh green bending in the wind,
seed of childhood memories, scent of
freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.
A memory Lowndes County children may not have.
One brave fighter worked for years to change it,
got a president to sign his name to fairness,
agree to let the lilies and magnolias
one day reign there, redolent of justice,
until one stinking voice called it illegal,
overturned it, cancelling the clean-up,
leaving stench
to flourish
Author’s note:
“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.
Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta.
