Nonprofits and Inequality

Nonprofit donations actually end up going to wealthier counties and rural communities are left in the dark

If you watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, you’ll notice that on his episode on Environmental Racism from May 1 he talked about many of the points that we’ve discussed here on inequality in pollution, cancer, and superfund sites! In fact, he referenced over 15 different sources that we had used here in the articles we published a few months ago, and even used the same personal stories from the West Calumet Public Housing Complex in East Chicago and the stories of people in the communities in Louisiana and Texas that were struggling the most.

In 2017, 34% of residents of Lowndes County, Alabama tested positive for hookworm, an intestinal parasite that causes iron deficiency, weight loss, fatigue and impaired mental function. When Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited Lowndes, he saw raw sewage bubbling up in people’s backyards, and remarked that “I haven’t seen this” in the First World.

Nonprofits were supposed to have saved Lowndes …