Inside the Movement Bringing Environmental Advocacy to the DMV

Jasmine Davenport speaks about Green For All. (Video by Misha Bernard-Lucien)

WASHINGTON—This year in July, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order inaugurating what his administration described as “a golden age” of accelerated data-center construction nationwide. The move positions the expansion as technological progress, but environmental advocates warn that the rapid growth of industrial-scale data centers could deepen environmental inequities in communities already historically burdened by pollution exposure.

Dream.Org’s Green For All program is among the groups responding. The organization focuses on environmental education, equity and access for populations often excluded from policy discussions surrounding economic development and clean-energy investment. Advocates say that as new infrastructure projects unfold, communities with long histories of environmental exposure will need tools to participate in permitting, zoning and environmental oversight processes.

“Black women are predestined to early labor in birth… low birth rates, and premature babies,” said Jasmine Davenport, senior director of Green For All. Among many reasons, one “is because we have been breathing in bad air for years.”

Jasmine Davenport

Senior Director for Dream.Org’s “Green For All”

Photo by Misha Bernard-Lucien

The Generational Impacts of Environmental Disparities

According to Green For All leadership, the environmental disparities facing Black communities are not new. Senior Director Jasmine Davenport said the roots are documented and trace back to federal housing segregation.

“This goes back to redlining,” Davenport said. “They did not want us [Black residents] in neighborhoods where we could breathe easily, so we were destined to be put into neighborhoods where there was bad environmental air quality.”

Davenport referenced federal New Deal-era housing maps that placed Black residents near industrial corridors, manufacturing facilities, transportation hubs and regions with lower air quality. Those zoning patterns resulted in generations of exposure linked to respiratory illness, high asthma rates, and maternal health disparities.

Research has repeatedly shown that Black women experience higher rates of preterm labor, low-birth-weight outcomes, and chronic respiratory complications. Davenport pointed to those statistics as evidence of the lingering effect of environmental policy.

Data-Center Development

Program assistant Naomi Garcia-Hector said that while historical evidence remains well-documented, a new environmental pressure point is emerging: data-center development.

“Data centers are proliferating across the country, and particularly are popping up in Black and brown communities where they are taking up resources, water, energy, and they put strain on the grid,” Garcia-Hector said.

Naomi Garcia-Hector

Dream.Org Program Assistant

Large-scale centers can consume power equivalent to thousands of households, place a strain on municipal grids and require substantial water usage for cooling systems. Advocates warn that the facilities are frequently proposed in locations with lower land costs, often aligning with communities historically affected by zoning and displacement.

Environmental groups say that new corporate development risks replicating past patterns unless residents are informed and able to participate in decision-making.

Educating Residents on Their Role in Policy

Garcia-Hector said Dream.Org is working to close the gap between development approvals and community awareness. Much of that work centers on teaching residents how to intervene before facilities break ground.

“We make sure to cut through the jargon so that people actually understand what is happening and how they can be advocates themselves,” she said.

Dream.Org has been hosting informational sessions, encouraging public testimony at local meetings and preparing residents to submit public comments during environmental review periods. The organization’s Power in the Problem campaign connects residents to tools, sample language and policy updates.

Davenport said that empowering community response is essential to shifting long-term outcomes, especially when dealing with infrastructure that has multigenerational impact.

Policy, Equity and Opportunity

Although accountability work remains ongoing, Davenport said part of the solution also involves expanding access to economic pathways within the environmental workforce. Green For All’s additional programming includes workforce placement strategies for justice-impacted individuals and support for HBCU students interested in green-sector careers.

She said solutions must extend beyond awareness and protest; they must also advance economic participation.

“We have to make sure that we are speaking up for what is going to benefit our communities and making sure that we have a voice in everything that is going on,” Davenport said.

Garcia-Hector emphasized that meaningful advocacy begins with information rooted in resident experience.

 “People deserve information that helps them advocate for their own neighborhoods,” she said.