Joetta Stevenson, the president of the Greater Fifth Ward Super Neighborhood #55, starts her day with her phone blowing up with messages asking to meet with her to discuss a neighborhood issue or informing her about an organizational meeting later in the day.
Stevenson participates in several local organizations, such as the Fifth Ward Neighborhood Civic Club, Fair Housing and Neighborhood Rights group.
Everybody in the Fifth Ward knows Joetta. They call her when something comes up in the community—the good, bad and the ugly.
“My day is never, never boring,” she said.
More recently, she has advocated for Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens residents, whom the Union Pacific Railroad site operations at 4910 Liberty Road have impacted by contaminating the soil and groundwater in these areas. Stevenson is now part of the Community Advisory Group with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to oversee the soil sampling, an organization she says has helped the community.
“We’re now at the table. It was a lot of advocates that fought diligently to get support for this community that we had not had in the past. And people had been dying of cancers…for decades.”
Joetta Stevenson
She added that the Houston City Council, under former Mayor Sylvester Turner, did not adequately educate cancer cluster residents about the $5 million Fifth Ward Voluntary Relocation plan, which would cover the relocation costs for residents directly above or within two to three blocks of the contaminated site.
“You need to break it down in regular grassroots community language so that people will understand what’s going on,” Stevenson said. “You are in for a rude awakening and a shock because we continue to be a middle to low-income community. So money is not flowing in the community.”
Health advocate
Stevenson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. She said her own experience with tackling breast cancer twice helped her understand the importance of advocating for people who are vulnerable.
“I was fighting a battle against an invisible enemy,” Stevenson said. “I had already been through enough with this sickness that knocked me off my feet. It took me a long time before I realized…God doesn’t put anything on you that you cannot truly overcome.”
Coming from a middle-income Black family, Stevenson said she had never encountered true poverty until her cancer diagnosis. She recalled her failed attempts at receiving assistance while grappling with dwindling savings.
“I was falling through every crack. I had friends that helped me navigate how to get food, how to get assistance,” Stevenson recalled. “Sometimes the way those people are treated, the way people who have no other help, are treated, is absolutely appalling.”
Kashmere Gardens childhood
Stevenson grew up in Kashmere Gardens in a middle-class family. Every weekend, her family would visit the Fifth Ward, where the rest of her family lived. She said that in the fifties,” when it was “turbulent,” her family made sure they voted, read the newspapers and discussed the city’s politics.
She recalls a “wonderful time” for the Stevenson children and their cousins to grow up, but now realizes they were shielded from the harsher realities of life—segregation, voter suppression and racial violence.
“I didn’t know that voting for us was so recent. They were unable to vote and were told…it is illegal,” Stevenson said. “I have a church member that came out of Mississippi, and she told me…they had to count jelly beans in a jar in order to vote.”
Stevenson said she grew up in a “village environment” around family, community and church. She reminisced about her mother, who was an active member of her community, helping out at Stevenson’s school and collecting money for families in need—a trait Stevenson attributes to her own advocacy.
Community activist
Stevenson served on the Texas Organizing Project board for three years. She arranged a meeting between the Trustee Board and a nonprofit solar energy expert to provide solar energy access for residents during disasters.
She has also met with the Metro Transit Authority Board, proposing changes within the mass transit system that were approved in 2015. The proposal included frequent routes to more places, ease of use, connectivity to employment hubs, better weekend service, reliable and faster trips and support for future growth.
Pointing out the plan’s flaws, Stevenson stressed how losing out on direct coverage routes to centers like the Lyndon B. Johnson and Ben Taub Hospitals will negatively impact the 19% of seniors in the Fifth Ward communities.
“You cannot single out minority and poor areas for less service,” she said.
The plan was approved by State Representative Borris Miles and other elected officials.
Stevenson also advocated for a volunteer-led “Trash Patrol” committee to record illegal dump sites that clog the ditches, causing diseases, water backups and flooding.
