December 14, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s done. This is what I wrote on my personal facebook page which kind of blurs into my eco-avatar self. “We did it. Successful rally at the Port of San Diego representing health care voices as to why a cement plant with 10k diesel trucks trips per month in and out of barrio Logan is a bad idea for the children of Barrio Logan and neighboring National City. Spoke at the port commissioner meeting. It was an inspiring coalition of health care workers, environmental organizations, school board, faith groups especially the Catholic Church. It was honestly a few weeks of effort and winding down and exhausted emotionally. Made KUSI, ABC and Fox News. Our premed intern who is fluent in Spanish made Telemundo. Lots of new climate friends. Mitsubishi will be back and hopefully with a better plan than the polluting one they have now. Felt like I did my part today for the earth and for kids health.”

It was an invigorating day. It was a joyous day. It was a day filled with meeting new and old climate friends. It was kind of surreal because on one side of the Port of San Diego conference room were the black suits. They were the corporate Mitsubishi people. And I was on the other side with my white coat, on the side of the people and the rabble-rousers. Little did I know that – that is the side I prefer. I made my comments at the rally and at the Port of San Diego and they were reasonable health care voice comments. I made good eye contact with the commissioners and spoke my truth, to remind them that we are actually reasonable community members who are San Diegans. I also got to tell them I went to Harvard and grew up in Chula Vista, and said “Go Barrons!” I told them I spoke about this proposed plant at MGH/Harvard, and made a non sequitur about Dr. Ron Kleinman asking me to return to Harvard, and I replied “No, I’ll stay in San Diego.” It’s somewhat true (yes he did say that!) but somewhat contrived, because I wanted to balance out the anger. I wanted to make them understand that I am a different group and am supporting the mission of the Environmental Health Coalition and to underscore how big the community support and alliance is for Barrio Logan.

I’m still processing everything that happened, but I realize that I’m allowed to rest. We have only a few weeks until Christmas and two days until our kids finish school for break. So I finished having a nice breakfast with our daughter and I’ll sign off and send some Christmas cards. So many of the climate friends I know , I actually know just in the virtual space. Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t think I actually know 75 people’s addresses?