Jesse Marquez, tireless defender of L.A. port communities, dies at 74

When Jesse Marquez walked into the Los Angeles harbor committee proceeding country successful 2013, helium didn’t bring a advisor oregon a slideshow. He brought decease certificates.

Each expanse of paper, helium told the commissioners, bore the sanction of a Wilmington nonmigratory killed by respiratory illness. Wedged betwixt 2 of the country’s busiest ports, the vicinity is dotted with lipid refineries, chemic plants, railyards and freeways. It’s 1 of respective portside communities known by immoderate arsenic a “diesel decease zone,” wherever residents are much apt to dice from crab than conscionable astir anyplace other successful the L.A. Basin. For decades, Marquez refused to fto anyone hide it.

He knocked connected doors, installed aerial monitors, counted lipid wells, built coalitions, staged demonstrations, fought ineligible battles and affected policy. He dove heavy into impenetrable biology interaction documents.

“Before Jesse, determination was nary playbook.” Earthjustice lawyer Adrian Martinez said successful an interview. “What was singular from the opening is that Jesse wasn’t acrophobic to constitute worldly down, to request things, to walk tons of clip scouring for evidence.”

Marquez, laminitis of the Coalition for a Safe Environment, oregon CFASE, died surrounded by household successful his Orange County location Nov. 3. His decease was owed to complications aft helium was struck by a conveyance portion successful a crosswalk successful January. He was 74.

“He was 1 of a kind,” Martinez said. “He had a fierce independency and truly believed successful speaking up for himself and his community. He played an instrumental relation successful centering Wilmington successful the combat for biology justice.”

In 2001, erstwhile the larboard planned to ramp up operations and grow a large terminal operated by Trapac Inc. further northbound into Wilmington, Marquez and vicinity organizers pushed back, winning a $200-million green-space buffer betwixt residences and larboard operations.

When lipid refineries evaded contamination caps done what organizers called a “gaping loophole” successful Environmental Protection Agency policy, Marquez and others sued, overturning the argumentation and successfully curtailing contamination spikes astatine California plants.

And erstwhile cargo ships idled astatine California ports burning diesel fuel, Marquez and his allies pressed the authorities to follow the nation’s archetypal regularisation requiring vessels to crook disconnected their engines and plug into the electrical grid portion docked.

Born Oct. 22, 1951, Marquez was raised successful Wilmington, and lived astir of his beingness there. As a child, helium had a presumption of Fletcher Oil Co.’s towering smokestacks from his frontyard.

Years later, achromatic pearls of petroleum rained down connected Wilmington the time the lipid refinery exploded.

Then 17, Marquez deed the level erstwhile helium heard the blast. Frantic, helium helped his parents hoist his six younger siblings implicit a backyard obstruction arsenic fireballs of ignited crude descended astir their home, conscionable crossed the street. His grandma was the past over, suffering third-degree burns on the full near broadside of her body.

“From that infinitesimal on, he’s ever had Wilmington successful his mind,” his 44-year-old son, Alex Marquez, said successful an interview.

The representation shaped the battles helium fought decades later. In assemblage astatine UCLA, helium crossed paths with young members of the Brown Berets, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán, and the Black Panther Party, aboriginal volunteering successful demonstrations led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

“He started disconnected wrong that movement,” Alex Marquez said. “It was his crushed to bring a batch of antithetic communities into his work.”

After a vocation successful aerospace, helium began organizing successful earnest successful the 1990s, aligning with groups specified arsenic the Natural Resources Defense Council and Coalition for Clean Air to reason larboard enlargement projects.

When his sons were aged enough, helium brought them on to photograph and number lipid wells, aboriginal folding them into his different projects.

He described his begetter arsenic a antheral of contrasts.

“When it was clip to work, helium was the astir serious, stern, nary patience,” Alex Marquez said. “But the infinitesimal the occupation was done, helium wholly transformed. He was your champion person who brought a roast turkey and a six-pack of beers. He partied and relaxed amended than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Marquez’s location was ever filled with dogs — helium jokingly called his lawyers his “legal beagles,” Martinez recalled. He loved reggae music, dancing and was an amateur archaeologist. He kept a postulation of assemblage maps tracing the migration of the Aztec people, portion of what his lad called “his emotion for Native American and Aztec culture.”

He founded CFASE with a radical of Wilmington residents. After learning astir the port’s enlargement plans, helium hosted an advertisement hoc gathering astatine his home. There, residents shared their experiences with concern contamination successful Wilmington.

They talked astir the refinery explosions successful 1969, 1984, 1986, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996 and 2001.

“Then idiosyncratic says, ‘Well, I person 2 kids and they person asthma,’” Jesse Marquez recalled successful a media interrogation successful January. “And past idiosyncratic other says, ‘All 3 of my kids person asthma — My ma has asthma — I person asthma.’”

The radical would play a cardinal relation successful processing the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach’s landmark Clean Air Action Plan and Clean Truck Program, which replaced much than 16,000 diesel rigs with cleaner models.

It pushed for zero-emission motortruck demonstrations, star powerfulness installations, and won millions of dollars for communities for nationalist wellness and air-quality projects.

The conjugation helped negociate a $60-million colony successful the seminal China Shipping terminal lawsuit — securing section wellness grants, motortruck retrofit funds and the archetypal Port Community Advisory Committee successful the U.S. — and aboriginal helped found the Harbor Community Benefit Foundation, which funds aerial filtration, onshore use, and job-training initiatives crossed Wilmington and San Pedro.

Marquez’s radical besides fought disconnected proposals for liquefied earthy state terminals, lipid vessel farms and hydrogen powerfulness plants.

Since 2005, diesel emissions astatine the Port of Los Angeles person plummeted by 90%.

Now Alex Marquez finds himself abruptly successful complaint of the nonprofit his begetter built.

He’s been learning to negociate the group’s finances, hole its monitoring instrumentality and reconnect with its web of allies.

“It’s virtually been a clang people successful however to tally a nonprofit,” helium said. “But we’re keeping it alive.”

In Wilmington, residents constituent to disposable symbols of Marquez’s work: the waterfront park, the electrified larboard terminals and the wellness surveys that documented decades of illness.

“He near america excessively early, but a question that was conscionable budding erstwhile helium started decades agone has present blossomed into nationalist and adjacent planetary networks,” Martinez wrote successful a tribute to Marquez.

Marquez is survived by his sons Alex Marquez, Danilo Marquez, Radu Iliescu and, the galore who knew him say, the biology justness question writ large.