Many will celebrate Earth Day by making a special effort to be a little kinder to our planet. It's chic to tell everyone that on this day you rode a bike instead of driving or picked up some trash on the beach or even, finally, made a commitment to forgo paper and plastic in favor of reusable cloth grocery bags. And, really, each of these efforts helps in the battle to preserve Mother Earth.

But for those on the front lines of the environmental justice movement, fighting against pollution is a life or death endeavor that goes on 24/7. And many of the social justice warriors on the environmental frontier come from the communities most poisoned by fumes and waste spilling from industrial compounds.

Jacqui Patterson, who directs the NAACP Climate Justice Initiative, has spent the past week visiting some of the communities of color most affected by climate change and pollution in the United States and is documenting their stories on the NAACP's video blog.



One of the problems that comes up again and again in the videos is that these industrial operations, located smack in the middle of communities of color, don't even know exactly what health problems their operations are causing. Or, at least that's what they say.



The people in the videos tell of sick children, dying plants and trees, breathing problems, higher incidents of cancer and even the death of loved ones possibly due to pollution. Each of the folks on the video talk of working with the NAACP to get answers to the basic question: Is this industrial plant poisoning me and my loved ones?