 Media Center > News Releases
News Release
CHEJ Announces Two New Board Members
Falls Church, VA (October 2007) - The Center for Health, Environment and Justice announces the appointment of two new members to our Board of Directors. Peter Sessa, Esq with the law firm of Sessa, Glick & Quiroga, in Boston, MA and Suzie Canales, Director of Citizens for Environmental Justice, in Corpus Christi, TX.
Our new board members bring a wealth of experience and skills to the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Through their participation and combined knowledge, skills, and passion for protecting the public’s health from unnecessary environmental chemicals, they will be of great assistance in guiding the organization into the future.
“I am so excited to have both Mr. Sessa and Ms. Canales on the board. Ms. Canales is a courageous and determined grassroots leader who has demonstrated the power of people and truth over huge corporate influences. Mr. Sessa brings real world experience to the table around using legal tools to win justice in communities,” said Lois Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.
Peter Sessa, Esq.
Attorney Peter Sessa was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1951. After graduating from St. John’s Law School, he opened a Legal Services office in Appalachian Ohio where he worked for two years. He then worked at Cape Cod Legal Services for three more years before opening his private practice in Boston, MA.
In his five years of legal services work and twenty five years of private practice, Mr. Sessa represented many clients, community groups and agencies in a wide variety of cases. He began numerous innovative programs and initiatives focusing on the tactical and strategic approach to delivering quality representation to poor people and their community organizations. He also trained lawyers and community leaders in the effective use of law, litigation, organizing strategies and negotiation to protect and empower the organization and achieve their collective goals.
He brings thirty years of a broad range of experience with him to the Board of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Mr. Sessa, in fact, worked with Lois Gibbs and the Center for Health and Environmental Justice (CHEJ), since its inception in 1981. He provided organizing, training and strategic advice to the Director and staff over the past 25 years. Mr. Sessa is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Community Law Center in Jamaica Plain.
Mr. Sessa has been in the private practice of law as a partner in three firms. He has been a guest lecturer at numerous conferences in Massachusetts and around the country, as well as at the University of Massachusetts, Northeastern, Suffolk and Harvard Law Schools.
Suzie Canales
Ms. Canales is Co-founder and Director of Citizens for Environmental Justice, a grassroots group located in Corpus Christi, TX along the petrochemical plantations. Ms. Canales was a navy wife for twenty years. She returned to her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas after learning that her sister was dying of breast cancer. During the funeral services, several people started talking about the high number of people dying of cancer that went to school with her sister or lived in that Westside community. The family decided to investigate, found serious health problems within the community, and Citizens for Environmental Justice was formed.
Founded in 2000, the group’s mission is to assist families who are impacted by pollution and poverty to obtain environmental, social and economic justice. The majority of the group’s members are people of color and low-income families. Ms Canales, through her research found that due to historical race-zoning restrictions, Hispanics and African Americans were “zoned” to live in substandard subdivisions, by old hazardous waste sites and activities. Her community was historically used for oil and gas exploration and production activities. Consequently the community contains abandoned oil waste sites and hazardous dumpsites as well as pipelines carrying crude oil and gasoline. Currently, the organization is challenging the proposed expansion of the CITGO refinery, which represents the largest expansion proposal in two decades.
Ms. Canales’ Awards and Recognition:
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Award Recipient for Outstanding Achievements in Environmental Justice; Featured in Latina Magazine; Featured in Rolling Stone on-line Magazine and MTV/Rolling Stone Reality Show coverage of worst polluters/environmental justice community impact; President of the National Bucket Brigade Coalition; Grassroots spokesperson at the release of Toxic Waste and Race 20 Years Later, at the National Press Club.
About CHEJ
The Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) is the only national environmental organization that was founded and is led by a grassroots leader. Lois Gibbs founded CHEJ after winning the nation’s first community relocation of 900 families due to a leaking toxic waste dump at, Love Canal, New York. Through this effort she also woke up the nation to recognize the link between people’s exposures to dangerous chemicals in the community setting and serious public health impacts.
CHEJ is different from other environmental organizations. It was created out of a commitment and passion to work with communities at risk, to empower local families to take steps to protect their neighborhoods and families from unnecessary chemical threats. Through skill training, strategic analysis and scientific research, CHEJ has worked with over ten thousand groups since our founding.
CHEJ’s overarching goal has consistently been to prevent harm—particularly among vulnerable populations such as children. If a safer process, material or product exists it should be used. CHEJ believes that everyone, regardless of income, race, religion, or occupation, has a right to live, work, learn, play and pray in a healthy community.
|
