The first ever Rick Bonney Award for Leadership recognizes the Co-Chairs and Advisors of the Environmental Justice Practitioners Working Group (individuals named on next pages) for their tireless work to inform and improve how this Association operationally attends to issues of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and funding parity, in order to advance these principles across this field as a whole. Since the founding of this group in 2020, as an outgrowth of activities at the 2019 conference in Raleigh, the co-chairs and advisors of this group have met every other week with staff and Board members, and have also collaborated with related programmatic teams. Their work has led directly to new policies, enhanced conference programming, defined principles, and grant-writing for new projects to sustain and grow these efforts.
The recipients of the Rick Bonney Award for Leadership – the Advisors and Co-Chairs of the Environmental Justice Practitioners Working Group – are listed in alphabetical order on this page and the next few pages following. Additional volunteer leadership for this group has been provided by Antonio Garcia.
VERONICA BITTING
Multiple grassroots non-profit organizations
Veronica Bitting works with several grassroots / frontline organizations, individuals and student / civic organizations in North Carolina counties (Forsyth, Columbus, Brunswick, Wake and New Hanover). She focuses on understanding the needs of grassroots, domestic community residents on the frontlines, and on the correlation of health outcomes and the environment. She served in the delegation to the United Nations COP27 Conference, Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt; as part of the Justice40 Initiative; and as a U.S. EPA Region IV Environmental Justice Fellow (Class of 2017).
MS. MARGARET GORDON
West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP)
Founder and Co-Director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, Ms. Margaret Gordon is a third-generation resident of West Oakland, California, and is a lifetime community activist. She works with neighborhood organizations, physicians, researchers, and public officials to ensure West Oakland residents have a clean environment, safe neighborhoods, and access to economic opportunity. Her work has been recognized by organizations ranging from the Oakland City Council, the Port of Oakland Board of Commission, the US EPA, and The White House, among others.
JANICE HUNTER
Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice; WOEIP
Janice Hunter was introduced in 2016 to the fight for Health and Environmental Justice while volunteering at West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. Since that time she has both volunteered and worked directly to support numerous EJ and action organizations and campaigns, most recently managing the administrative work for Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice. She worked for over 31 years as a professional training manager in the Telecommunications industry supporting Business & Consumer customers within the US and Internationally, and has both founded and served on the board of several community and social justice non-profit organizations.
VINCENT MARTIN
Trustee OUCSWD ccommunity Organization
Vincent Martin has worked tirelessly for over 20 years on the local and national level to allow people the right to BREATHE, by volunteering his time to collect and provide data needed to push efforts to improve air quality for local residents. As a community activist, Vncent leads the charge for policy reforms for how Michigan manages Toxic waste in overburdened communities. He was asked to assist the City of Flint on Lead water negotiations, and works with the State Congress of Communities, Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit and the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC). He has represented his childhood neighborhood, Southwest Detroit, during national-level meetings with the US EPA and US State Department among others. His own EJ consulting company works with local communities and organizations to give a voice to the underserved.
LINDA SHOSIE ROBLES
Mothers for Safe Air & Safe Water
Beginning in 2015, Linda conducted a series of health surveys and community-driven investigations of toxins around the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site, revealing extensive environmental and human health impacts from long term exposure to multiple carcinogens in community water systems. She established the non-profit Mothers for Safe Air & Safe Water, through which she has educated more than 1000 local citizens about thetoxins in their water and adverse human health effects. She co-founded the 2019 UA Toxic Detective Summer Youth Camp, serves as a chair of the community organization, Nopales Group with Sierra Club in the Tucson area, and continues to organize with other national groups (including Earthjustice, and Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley) with projects subject to numerous petitions to EPA requesting regulatory actions on PFAS underenvironmental laws.
AYO WILSON
West End Revitalization Association
Over the course of his life, Ayo has lived and worked in impacted frontline communities in North Carolina and Ohio, and used his skills in nonprofit management, organizational management and development, and community organizing to support and empower impacted people through the arts, climate/environmental justice, and health/group fitness. In 2013, he traveled to Liberia, where he analyzed and provided recommendations for a national land records digitization project managed by Liberia’s Center for National Land Documents and Records Agency funded by the World Bank. He is Director of Clean Energy and Climate Justice at West End Revitalization Association, an organization founded in 1994 by his parents and concerned neighbors in the community where he was raised.
OMEGA AND BRENDA WILSON
West End Revitalization Association
Omega and Brenda Wilson are Co-founders of the West End Revitalization Association (WERA) in 1994 of Mebane, NC. WERA incorporated as a 501-(c)(3) non-profit in 1995. Mission: Support access to “basic public health amenities” (safe drinking water, sewer lines, housing, streets, sidewalks, and storm-water management) for primarily African American and Native American heritage communities. The AARP Bulletin-April 2019, featured both as “senior citizen – citizen scientists” for collaborative problem-solving that “addresses human being in their environment.” Omega R Wilson: BA in Radio-TV-Film 1973, Shaw University, Raleigh, NC; MA in Mass Communications 1974, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Brenda A Wilson: BA in Education 1974, Shaw University, Raleigh, NC; MAED in Special Education 1980, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi. USEPA Environmental Justice Achievement Award-2008, Alamance County-NAACP “Environmental & Social Justice Award”- 2016, American Public Health Association’s Environmental Section “Damu Smith Award” – 2021.
