Activist Peggy Salazar summed up to me what it felt like to be a Southeast Side resident enduring decades of polluters moving into her neighborhood and threatening her health.
“It didn’t matter what was put here, as long as it meant the city would gain something from it,” Salazar told me at a forum I helped organize in 2021. “It didn’t matter the impacts on the community, on our health or the vitality of the community. That was not important. It was only important that we accommodate what the city needed. And we were, basically then, the sacrifice zone.”
