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Article Credit: Bella Fowler
Vanessa Thomas is an Environmental Justice Organizer at the community based organization Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC). After transferring from University of Maryland Baltimore, Vanessa pursued her degree in Environmental Policy, Institutions, and Behavior at Rutgers University, graduating in May of 2023. Vanessa first encountered ICC as part of the class Careers in EPIB. She was inspired by their mission and reached out to them in search of an internship. Even though the organization did not have any internships available at the time, they created the position of Executive Assistant for Vanessa to gain experience. After Vanessa graduated, she completed a 3 month fellowship with the Department of Energy and then started full time at ICC in fall of 2023.
The Ironbound Community Corporation is based in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark. It is 4-square miles,densely populated, and is one of the most polluted cities in the country. The Ironbound has the state’s largest garbage incinerator, the state’s largest sewage waste treatment facility in the northeast, the second largest port in the US, a 17-mile superfund site, and many more environmental burdens. Additionally the community is made up of predominantly Black,Brown and low-income working class families. ICC works with community members in the
Ironbound to advocate for a healthy and sustainable city. They work towards this goal through empowering community members and addressing issues of environmental justice through organizing and advocacy.
Vanessa currently works on three projects with ICC. The first is protesting against the installment of a fourth fossil fuel power plant to act as backup power for the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC). After an incident in 2012 where the facility lost power and the untreated sewage was released into the streets, the Commission has been working towards a fourth power plant to prevent an incident from occurring again. Vanessa and her team have worked to protest the power plants installation. She helps organize the campaign against the powerplant, ranging from going door to door to inform businesses and community members about the situation to attending the PVSC’s boards monthly meetings and providing public comment. They recently had over 100 community members attend and give public comments. Additionally, her and her team created and circulated a flyer with a qr code that sends a letter directly to the PVSC Board of Commissioners, urging them to ‘Vote No’ to the fourth power plant. If you’d like to help out, the flyer will be shown at the end of this article.
The second of Vanessa’s current projects is being a Steering Committee member and Community Advisory Council Lead on the Resilient New Jersey Program, focusing on making the Northeast more resilient to climate change. She deals with promoting education initiatives letting people know what resilience to climate change means for Environmental Justice communities and what ICC is doing to create a more resilient community. They additionally work to implement green infrastructure and “build up our communities to be more resilient to climate change.” The third, although certainly not the last, project Vanessa is working on is centered around the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site, “a 17-mile superfund resulting from dioxin, a byproduct of the production of Agent Orange, leaching into the soil and Passaic River.” Vanessa serves on the Passaic River Community Advisory Group who meet with the EPA to ensure the timely cleanup of the superfund site. The group has been working since the site was declared in 1984 and they’ve recently finalized their plan to begin dredging one unit of the site.
Vanessa works on a variety of projects in addition to these three, working alongside the community to make the Ironbound a better place. “None of [the projects] are cool per say or flashy or fun but they’re necessary and that’s what matters.”
While at Rutgers, Vanessa completed her George H Cook project with Dr. Rachael Shwom focusing on energy insecurity among undergraduate students who rent off campus. “It was my favorite project just because the flexibility that it allowed was not something that I had experienced before, I had never really done research where you as a student can pretty much design everything.” During her research, Vanessa conducted interviews with students on campus, learned about the IRB process, and how to analyze interview data. It was a difficult project but is one Vanessa looks back on fondly.
Interviewing, taking on an internship, maybe feeling like you don’t have all the necessary skills or qualifications for a job can feel really scary but in that period of feeling scared and uncomfortable is where growth happens. You have to get a little bit uncomfortable to grow, you have to take up new opportunities to grow your skill set, to understand where your strengths lie, and to understand where your weaknesses are.”
Vanessa Thomas’s advice to student
Another one of Vanessa’s favorite memories at Rutgers was her two spring breaks spent studying abroad. As a transfer student, Vanessa was originally worried she wouldn’t be able to participate in all the experiences Rutgers had to offer. But during her second year at Rutgers she was able to join a ‘Sustainable Environments and Society’ study abroad program in Costa Rica. “I was having the time of my life being in Costa Rica and learning so much.” Vanessa loved her study abroad experience so much that she went again her senior year to study sustainable food systems in Ireland. Both trips taught Vanessa a variety of skills that she was able to apply to her classwork and even her career today. She’s grateful for the opportunity that Rutgers provided with their study abroad program. “If there’s one thing I could recommend to undergrads during their time I would say to study abroad, whether it’s a semester [or] whether it’s a week-long program. You learn so much and you get such a different perspective being in a different country.”
The advice that Vanessa would like to give EPIB majors is to be open to opportunities that might not align directly with what you want to do. “Interviewing, taking on an internship, maybe feeling like you don’t have all the necessary skills or qualifications for a job can feel really scary but in that period of feeling scared and uncomfortable is where growth happens. You have to get a little bit uncomfortable to grow, you have to take up new opportunities to grow your skill set, to understand where your strengths lie, and to understand where your weaknesses are.”
