BHM: Destiny Watford

Today, we’re highlighting the story of one young woman whose action saved her community from generational hardship.

Destiny Watford lived in a community riddled with the challenges of police brutality, racial discrimination, economic inequality, and environmental injustice. People were often displaced from their homes in order to make room for chemical plants, sewage treatment plants, and other industries that emit pollution. As a result, her neighbors had to live with respiratory problems and 50% of avoidable deaths that have cut many lives short.

In 2010, she discovered there was a plan to build the nation’s largest trash-burning incinerator less than a mile from two public schools, which would have terrible impacts to the community. That’s when she sprung into action, co-founding the Free Your Voice organization, dedicated to community rights and social justice, to take down incinerator developers. She and the organization did just that by getting the Baltimore School District to take away their contract, causing 22 other customers to do the same. The project developers then failed to gain enough capital, and the incinerator was never completed.

She continues to work with Curtis Bay to ensure environmental equality, and in 2016 she won the Goldman Environmental Prize.