"South Baltimore is on a peninsula surrounded by water, highways and train tracks. It's mostly made up of residential row houses, small yards, schools, rec centers and parks.
It's also often thought of as a place to avoid — folks are taught to be careful of or even avoid South Baltimore. There was a mass shooting this past July in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Baltimore, and another in early September.
"People think Curtis Bay is a dangerous place. It's not. It's just we're surrounded by dangerous things," says Taysia Thompson, 17.
Taysia is a part of a group of student activists fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change. Lots of 18-wheeler trucks with their diesel exhaust and noise pass through the neighborhood. Curtis Bay is also home to a junkyard where they crush cars, an old landfill, chemical manufacturing plants, and mountains of coal. These are not the kinds of neighbors anyone wants, and that's why — all over the country — polluters like these often end up in neighborhoods like South Baltimore, with mostly working class, poor people and people of color."
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