Cathy Miorelli

Cathy Miorelli is a school nurse at Tamaqua High School, which is located in Tamaqua, Pennsylvia. Tamaqua is located in the midst of a hotbed of coal and has a population of 7,174 as of the 2000 U.S. Census and is 100 miles west of Philadelphia. Miorelli also sits on the City Council of Tamaqua.

=Struggle to End Sludge Dumping in Tamaqua=

Coal mining was formerly the life-bed of economic activity in Tamaqua, but has declined in recent years. What used to be coal mines are now massive pits and the pit owners have struck gold by permitting companies outside the state to use the sites as dumping grounds for industrial and wastewater sludge, reminiscent of Toxic Sludge is Good for You This sludge, called biosolids by the public relations industry, contains toxins that eventually reach aquifers, rivers, and peoples' drinking water, while the Department of Environmental Protection of Pennsylvania was complicit with it.

Miorelli noticed something was dearly wrong when many of her students were acquiring cancer, thyroid problems, and multiple sclerosis. It was at this moment of awakening that she decided enough was enough and it was time to run for local office. In the book Be the Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community, she is quoted as saying, "I have always been concerned about those that don't have a voice.  I got involved for fear of my own children and their safety, wanting the air and water to be safe for them and all the children in school.  I ran for office because I wasn't happy with what was being done, or not being done, and too many officials just wanted to take care of their friends." After running for office and winning, Miorelli was not a community leader and a voice for the voiceless, as well as a threat to power.

Through fellow community members, Miorelli found out that the toxic sludge being dumped into the former mines included arsenic, lead, cadmium, zinc, chromium, manganese, tricholorethylene, mercury, PCBs, and vinyl chloride--in short, nothing edible, to be certain. She quickly realized that the DEP was worthless though, and the solution had to come from outside of the mainstream. The answer: Democracy School.

=Democracy School=

Miorelli took a huge lesson out of the School, which was that under the United States' Constitution, nature is property, much as slaves were in the era of the past. Thomas Linzy explains, "Until slavery was abolished, a slave master could not be punished for whipping a slave, because that slave was his property, and he had the right to damage it. Until 1920, rape was 'property damage'...Under our constitution, you're either a person or you're property.  What movements do is move and transform that.  We won't have a real environmental movement in this country until we realize that nature, too, has rights." This was the big takeaway from the School for Miorelli and she chose to organize the community around this sentiment. She then proceeded to introduce an Ordinance giving nature the same rights as people in Tamaqua. A battle ensued, but eventually, it cleared and Tamaqua became the first ever community in the United States to provide rights to nature. The Ordinance read, in part, "It shall be unlawful for any corporation or its directors, officers, owners, or managers to interfere with the existence and flourishing of natural communities or ecosystems, or to cause damage to those natural communies and ecosystems."

Miorelli is the perfect example of someone empowering herself and participating in the democratic process at a local level to enact visible change in her community. “In Tamaqua we’ve opened the door for other communities,” said Miorelli. “I think we’ve shown that we, the people, can stand up to these big corporations and do the right thing and not be afraid.”