Moms Clean Air Force: Our December Nonprofit of the Month {2024}
Isabel moved to Memphis from New York where she was a magazine editor (InStyle, Billboard), and now she fights every day for a cleaner, healthier world for our families in her role as associate vice president of Moms Clean Air Force. This is a non-profit community of over 1.5 million moms, dads, and caregivers united to protect children from air pollution and extreme weather. Isabel also serves as director of EcoMadres, a Moms Clean Air Force program dedicated to safeguarding Latino communities, which are disproportionately impacted by extreme weather and dangerous air.
Moms and EcoMadres provide families with a range of tools for civic engagement as well as fact-based, bilingual resources about air pollution, the health harms of plastics, extreme weather, and environmental justice. They help caregivers to share their stories with decision-makers in order to build support for policies that prioritize healthy kids. Moms and EcoMadres consider their work “mom-partisan,” since protecting children’s health is not a partisan issue!
- How did you come to this work at Moms and EcoMadres?
My mother, Sara J. Gonzalez, immigrated to the United States from Cuba and then dedicated her time to becoming an immigrant and Latino rights advocate, all the while raising my siblings and me. Her actions showed me that one can use their voice for change. I did some of that as a journalist in New York, but in moving to Memphis I pivoted to nonprofits to drive organized impact. My love of the natural world and wanting to protect it goes back to me teen years when I first participated in community efforts in Atlanta fighting against the use of polystyrene foam as a throwaway single-use plastic. I now have the privilege of continuing this fight on a larger scale in my work with Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres.
- What do these organizations do?
Both Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres are committed to educating communities and lawmakers about the dangers of plastics, pollution, and extreme weather, and giving members the tools they need to take action for cleaner air in their communities. That could be by making sure a toxic factory is operating at a safe distance from homes and schools or making sure that non-diesel battery powered school buses are in your communities and therefore reducing exposure to asthma and cancer causing chemicals. Actions our Moms take can be anything from organizing a press event, writing an Op Ed, signing a petition, making a donation to support our outreach, providing testimony about a pollution issue that impacts them (our Moms testified more than 260 times in 2023!), or meeting with their lawmakers from city council to Congress, we help do all that!
As a former journalist, one of my favorite parts of this job is that I get to help people tell their stories. We know that Latino children in the US are 40% more likely to die from asthma compared to non-Latino white children. But that statistic becomes more real—more personal—when you listen to a Latina mom talk about the terror of rushing her child with asthma to the emergency room. My son has respiratory sensitivities that are highly triggered by air quality. Sharing our stories puts a human face to the air pollution crisis, to the climate crisis, to environmental injustice, and has the power to move people in power to act.
- How does the work of these organizations touch Memphis?
Extreme weather, toxic chemical exposure like from plastics, and air pollution threaten the health of kids everywhere. Through the lens of our motto “Justice in Every Breath,” we are committed to advocating for cleaner air policies at the city, state, and national level – including here in Memphis.
Last year, I wrote an article to educate people on the dangers of the highly carcinogenic ethylene oxide located in South Memphis. The facility has since shut down, which is a huge win for public health, but now a new threat to clean air is looming—the xAI facility that currently runs on polluting methane gas generators that, according to Southern Environmental Law Center, can provide enough electricity to power about 50,000 homes and have the potential to emit 130 tons of nitrogen oxides per year. With this supercomputer emerging as a threat to our children’s health, Moms will activate. We are also engaged in helping school districts across the country get electric, battery-operated school buses, because of the dangers of tailpipe emission which can trigger asthma attacks among other scary health outcomes for children and bus drivers. Anyone who has been stuck behind an idling diesel powered school bus knows how bad those fumes are. I also wrote about them here.
We’ve worked to bring hundreds of these health-safe buses to 13 states, and I’m happy to report that Memphis will debut 17 next year!
- How can Memphis Moms get involved?
Memphis moms should join our Tennessee chapter and sign up on our website to receive updates on opportunities to take action in their communities.
We encourage Memphis Moms to continue to advocate for their children at all levels. This could mean talking to school officials about the benefits of electric school buses or contacting their elected government officials and demanding policies that support clean air and a stable climate. Signing petitions is an easy way to do that, but you can reach out to our state coordinator if you’re interested in doing more.
And encourage your partners, friends, and families to join in too—you don’t have to be a mom! We welcome any and all people who want to help create a healthier present and future for all children.
Visit momscleanairforce.org to learn more about how to get involved with Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres or to support their work with a donation.
Memphis Moms features a nonprofit organization every month. If you know of a nonprofit that is making a difference here in Memphis, we want to know about it! Let us know by nominating them here.
