Jerome Ringo - Career

Career

After college, Ringo worked in the petrochemical industry for 22 years, over half of that time as a union leader. Many of his relatives lived just beyond the fence from these industries, so he saw the impacts of pollution from refineries first hand. He noted that employees at the refinery wore masks and protective clothing, but that the neighbors across the fence, who were predominantly poor and black, received no such protection, and suffered disproportionately high levels of cancers and respiratory diseases.

Eventually, Ringo decided to help educate the people in communities affected by petrochemical pollution, teaching them how to effectively stop the discharge of chemicals into neighborhoods around refineries, leading to the beginning of his environmental activism. Ringo began his environmental activism in 1991, by becoming member of the Calcasieu League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), an affiliate of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation. Among the 20,000 members of the statewide group, he was the first black ever to join.

Rather than trying to shut refineries and chemical plants down, he advocated the lobbying of state legislators on environmental laws, and encouraged citizens to show up at public hearings, where, as a community, they could express their fears and concerns and speak truth to power.

Ringo was transferred to Malaysia, and during one of his return trips to the United States in 1994, he was offered early retirement. After accepting the offer, he committed his life to full-time work on behalf of people beyond the refinery fences lines.

In 1998, he was the sole African-American delegate at the Global Warming Treaty negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, where he delivered an address. He also has spoken at the Central American conference on sustainable development in Belize City, Belize. He has addressed many historically-Black colleges and other universities, including the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment and at the University of Oregon's Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.