The USC Environmental Health Centers offers its congratulations to mark! Lopez for winning the 2017 Goldman Prize for North America. mark! is Executive Director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, a community organization based in Commerce and Long Beach which is a long-term community partner of USC Environmental Health Centers. The Goldman Prize honored mark! for his years of activism, and especially for his role in shutting down and trying to clean up contamination from the Exide battery plant – an issue in which Center faculty members Jill Johnston and Andrea Hricko have been deeply involved over the past several years. Hricko commented: “Through my work on environmental health issues at USC, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with several generations of mark!’s family on issues from traffic pollution and asthma, to the ports, and more recently lead poisoning. We congratulate mark! and applaud the leadership and inspiration that he brings to the young and old, from East L.A. to the rest of California and the world.”
