Gema Perez's Story
She fought for her neighborhood park. That was just the beginning.
Community activist Gema Perez experiences air quality challenges in California’s San Joaquin Valley and nearby national parks.
In a modest neighborhood on the outskirts of Bakersfield, California, the driving rhythm of a Zumba class pulses through the air of Stiern Park. Gema Perez fought hard to clean up this park near her home. She loves her community parks and nearby national parks, too. Stiern Park used to host gangs, drugs and trash. Now kids play on the new playground while Gema leads their moms through workouts. They’re all breathing heavily.
Solutions: Holding government responsible and the oil and gas industry accountable for its pollution
On a clear day, Gema can see across the San Joaquin Valley—the Sierra Nevada to the east, the California Coast Ranges to the west. But most days, all she sees is haze. “Two or three times a month there are people who can’t join us for Zumba because of the air,” Gema says.
On a clear day, when Gema and her family visit nearby national parks like Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite, she can see the valley’s vast dairies, like the one where her husband works. She can see thousands of acres of almonds and tangerines, as well as oil fields and refineries, truck-filled distribution hubs and heavy streams of traffic on Interstate 5 and Highway 99.
There aren’t a lot of clear days.
The bowl of the San Joaquin Valley contains some of the worst air pollution in the nation. It blankets Bakersfield and César E. Chávez National Monument. It rises into the deceptively green national parks that overlook the Valley, obscuring scenic views and rolling over the mountains into Joshua Tree National Park a couple hundred miles away. Most visitors to Sequoia and Kings Canyon are missing upward of 90 miles from the views they should be able to enjoy.
Still, Gema’s family loves to escape to national parks several times a year to play, picnic, hike and camp. “The parks,” she says, “are a place to be free, to breathe clean air. We believe the air is clean because there are so many trees there, so far from the cities. I think a lot of us are wrong in that.”
Among cities, Los Angeles has the nation’s worst ozone pollution. At times, ozone pollution is even worse in Sequoia National Park, 200 miles north of Los Angeles. In between lies Bakersfield.
Gema and her family moved to Bakersfield nearly two decades ago. Her community is tightly knit. But it is nonetheless a disadvantaged place where industries push into neighborhoods. Dangers come in many forms. One of Gema’s daughters survived an attempted kidnapping. Her other daughter developed asthma. Agricultural workers like her husband frequently come home from work with red and watering eyes.
“Decision-makers pay less attention to our areas,” Gema notes. “We go to areas that are more affluent and white and we see the differences. The decisionmakers, they are not interested—or are not aware— of the conditions in disadvantaged communities.”
Alongside other mothers, she began organizing to make her community safer and healthier and eventually formed the Greenfield Walking Group. “We needed to be physically active and have a safe place where we could come together,” Gema explains. Today her group is a vital partner in improving community health. According to Gema, that includes the air: “Sometimes the open air hurts our throats. It’s something that we’ve learned to deal with, but we know it’s affecting us.”
Gema has met with her elected representatives and testified before the California Air Resources Board, asking for better regulations. “They were listening,” she says. “But I have not seen any changes, especially in the oil industry.”
So the Greenfield Walking Group continues to partner with like-minded organizations, encouraging people from other communities to speak up, too. Gema says, “That way they can see we are all experiencing problems with air pollution—from our communities to our national parks.”
