Maryland's largest environmental group and one of Baltimore's oldest civil rights organizations have formed an unusual alliance, pledging to work together to improve job opportunities for urban youth, reduce toxic pollution and help revitalize the city.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Baltimore Urban League were to announce their agreement and a five-year joint strategy at a press conference today.
"It is so apparent that to save the bay you've got to save the cities," William C. Baker, president of the Annapolis-based foundation, said yesterday.
"Our missions are similar," said Roger I. Lyons, president of the Baltimore Urban League. "Health and the environment . . . affect everybody."
The two groups plan to cooperate in seeking environmental scholarships and jobs in the Baltimore area, in campaigning to clean up toxic chemicals contaminating Baltimore Harbor and in trying to halt the suburban sprawl that is emptying cities and harming the bay.
The foundation, which conducts environmental classes for students and the public, will take black legislators, ministers and educators on field trips around the bay in the coming year. It also will seek the league's help in hiring more minorities -- there are 10 now on a staff of 120.
The league, meanwhile, wants to develop an urban environmental education center. The 71-year-old group runs job training, AIDS education, literacy and youth programs in the city. Its local chapter, one of 113 affiliates of the national Urban League, has 3,000 members and a staff of 65.
The alliance is only the second in the country between an environmental group and one of the Urban League's branches, said Mr. Lyons. The first such pact was in Florida.
The Maryland agreement grew out of more than two years of informal contacts. Its development was underwritten by $30,000 grants from the Morris Goldseker Foundation and the Chevron Companies.
The alliance comes at a time of soul-searching for the environmental movement. Several prominent national groups, including the Sierra Club, have lost members and seen donations dry up in the past few years.
The groups say their problems stem from lingering effects of the recession and increasing competition among "green" groups, but some critics say the movement has lost strength because it has staked out extreme positions.
The bay foundation -- with more than 83,000 members in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- has been largely spared the hard times of the movement. The region's largest environmental group credits its strength to the popularity of the bay. But it has only about 4,200 members in the city, out of 40,000 in the state.
"For us to do our job, we've got to do more than just talk to ourselves," said Jay Sherman, the foundation's grass-roots coordinator.
He said the agreement dispels a dual myth: that environmentalists don't care about people, and that African Americans don't care about the environment.