Hazel Henderson
She's the reason you can breathe the air in New York City. Why? Well, in 1964 she moved to New York with her husband and her small daughter, Alexandra - and then, everything in the city was DIRTY. But nobody seemed to know or care about it. She'd take her little girl to the park to play in the afternoon, and it took her an hour to scrub the SOOT off the kid afterwards. Hazel said to herself, "Let's see... She'd grown up in Bristol, and could remember the "Killer Fog of 1952" in London. Once you live through something like that, how do you forget it? Four thousand people died from breathing bad air in one week! New Yorkers didn't seem to know what she was talking about. The other mothers at the park saw her point, though, because they had to scrub their kids down afterwards, too. They formed a little group. "Everything starts with person-to-person friendship and trust. I was nervous at first," she says in her 2002 book, "Planetary Citizenship". "I knew that letting the present situation continue was dangerous; so I talked to people one by one and made friends. As we discussed things, we came to the conclusion that it was our civic duty to do something for the many people living in the city." This is how many of us feel about global warming today. We know we have to do something NOW, because the alternative is unthinkable. It's no longer acceptable to keep our focus narrowed onto our immediate family and neighborhood; the whole planet is at stake.
The first letter was to the Mayor of New York, Robert Wagner. She was a new citizen then, so it must have been a little intimidating! "He replied that the pollution I thought I saw was really just mist rolling in from the sea!" she recalls. 
So she investigated further, and found that the city had an Office of Smoke Control. She called them.They said to her, "Well, we measure the soot particles in the air every day." Translation? Go away. Her response was to request that the TV networks broadcast the air pollution data every day. She wrote to the networks. They told her to talk to the FCC - so she did. She wrote to the chairman.
The next thing she did was write to Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York at the time. She included some of her research on smoke-control devices, and quoted legislation that stipulated that the FCC should "broadcast in the public interest, convenience and necessity". His office wrote back that he was very interested to see the networks' response to this, and to keep his office informed. She photocopied the letter and sent it to the heads of the networks... ...and after a few weeks, got a phone call from ABC's vice president. He told her that they liked the idea of putting an air-pollution index on the weather broadcasts, and within a month, there it was! The New York Air Pollution Index, based on soot measurement, was being broadcast on ABC. A few months later the rest of the networks had followed suit, along with most of the radio stations and the local newspapers. That was the first step, and led to many others. Among her many successes since then are the
Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators,
which are exactly what they sound like: it's an index which is used to measure the quality of life enjoyed by the people - in this case, Americans, based on data gathered by our own government, such as the Census Bureau. She's now got a PBS television series, Ethical Markets. If you'd like to read more about Hazel Henderson's work, which centers around economics, environment and social responsibility, you can click here to go to her website.
She's a RELENTLESS lady, as you can see...but really, otherwise, no different than the rest of us. She's just an ordinary, stay-at-home Mama. Just like me; just like you. She didn't have a college education, she was a brand new American citizen (from England), and it was 1964, when housewives were practically invisible; ) What's her advice to the rest of us? Read great books, and be meticulous about your research. And don't give up.
"At the start, ordinary people often think projects are impossible," she says. "They are afraid that the obstacles are too big. But, as we showed, a way can be found when we combine forces. Not all walls are so thick and so strong that we can't find a doorway somewhere and make a breakthrough."
Step back from Hazel Henderson to Mamas Mopping up the World
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