After 14 years of pushing for safer air quality for her Pascagoula neighborhood, 78-year-old Barbara Weckesser is tired of waiting for government officials tasked with such responsibilities to take action.

In the last seven years alone, she said, over 30 people in her Cherokee Forest neighborhood of just 120 homes have died from heart disease, lung disease or cancer. In 2013, Weckesser started her activist group, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, which has long blamed releases from surrounding industrial operations – including a Chevron oil refinery, a Bollinger shipyard and a Rolls-Royce Naval center – for poor health outcomes in their community.

“Industry has grown, and chosen to put out more and more and more pollution,” Weckesser said. “And guess what? Our bodies can’t absorb it.”

Then i

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