When Jesse Marquez walked into the Los Angeles Port Commission meeting room in 2013, he didn't bring a consultant or a slide show with him. He brought death certificates.
On each piece of paper, he told commissioners, is the name of a Wilmington resident who died of a respiratory illness. Situated between two of the country's busiest ports, the area is dotted with oil refineries, chemical plants, train stations and highways. It is one of several port communities known to some as the “diesel death zone” where residents more likely die of cancer than anywhere else in the Los Angeles basin. For decades, Márquez never let anyone forget this.
He knocked on doors, installed air monitors, counted oil wells, built coalitions, staged demonstrations, fought legal battles and influenced politics. He dove deep into incomprehensible documents regarding environmental impact.
“There was no play before Jesse.” Earthjustice attorney Adrian Martinez said in an interview. “What was remarkable from the beginning was that Jesse was not afraid to write things down, demand things, or spend a lot of time looking for evidence.”
Marquez, founder of the Coalition for a Safe Environment (CFASE), died surrounded by family at his home in Orange County on November 3. His death was the result of complications after he was hit by a car in a crosswalk in January. He was 74.
“He was one of a kind,” Martinez said. “He was fiercely independent and truly believed in standing up for himself and his community. He was instrumental in focusing Wilmington on the fight for environmental justice.”
In 2001, as the port planned to increase its operations and expand the main terminal, operated by Trapac Inc., further north to Wilmington, Marquez and local organizers pulled back, winning a $200 million buffer of green space between housing and port operations.
When oil refineries evaded emissions limits through what organizers called a “gaping loophole” in EPA policy, Marquez and others sued reversal of this policy and successful reduction of pollution emissions from California plants.
And as cargo ships idled in California ports, burning diesel fuel, Marquez and his allies pressed the state to adopt the nation's first rule requiring ships to turn off their engines and plug in while docked.
Marquez was born on October 22, 1951. He grew up in Wilmington and lived there most of his life. As a child, his yard overlooked the tall smokestacks of the Fletcher Oil Co.
Years later, black pearls of oil rained down on Wilmington on the day the oil refinery exploded.
Then 17-year-old Marquez fell to the floor when he heard an explosion. In desperation, he helped his parents drag his six younger siblings over a backyard fence as fireballs of burning oil rained down on their home, just across the road. His grandmother was the last to arrive and suffered third-degree burns across the entire left side of her body.
“From that moment on, he always thought about Wilmington,” his 44-year-old son, Alex Marquez, said in an interview.
The memories shaped the battles he fought in decades later. In college at UCLA, he crossed paths with young members of the Brown Berets, the Estudio Chicanx de Aztlán and the Black Panther Party, and later participated in demonstrations led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
“He started with this movement,” Alex Marquez said. “That was his reason for involving many different communities in his work.”
After a career in the aerospace industry, he began organizing in earnest in the 1990s, teaming up with groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Air Coalition to oppose port expansion projects.
As his sons grew older, he took them with him to photograph and count oil wells, and later used them in his other projects.
He described his father as a man of contrasts.
“When it came time to work, he was the most serious, stern, without patience,” said Alex Marquez. “But the minute the job was done, he was completely transformed. He was your best friend who brought the roast turkey and a six-pack of beer. He had more fun and relaxed than anyone I've ever met.”
Marquez's house was always full of dogs—he jokingly called his lawyers “legal beagles,” Martinez recalled. He loved reggae music, dancing and was an amateur archaeologist. He kept a collection of colonial maps documenting the Aztec migration, part of what his son called “his love of Native American and Aztec culture.”
He founded CFASE with a group of Wilmington residents. Having learned about plans to expand the port, he held a special meeting at his home. There, residents shared their experiences with industrial pollution in Wilmington.
They talked about explosions at oil refineries in 1969, 1984, 1986, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996 And 2001.
“Then someone says, ‘Well, I have two kids and they have asthma,’” Jesse Marquez recalled to the media. interview in January. “And then someone else says, 'All three of my kids have asthma, my mom has asthma, I have asthma.'
The group will play a central role in developing the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach's landmark Clean Air Action Plan and Clean Truck Program, which will replace more than 16,000 diesel rigs with cleaner models.
He pushed for zero-emission truck demonstrations, solar energy installations and won millions of dollars for communities for public health and air quality projects.
The coalition helped negotiate a $60 million settlement in the controversial China Shipping Terminal case (providing local health care grants, truck retrofit funds, and the first U.S. Port Community Advisory Committee) and later helped create the Harbor Community Relief Fund, which funds air filtration, land use, and job training initiatives in Wilmington and San Pedro.
Marquez's group has also fought off proposals to build liquefied natural gas terminals, tank farms and hydrogen power plants.
Since 2005, diesel emissions at the Port of Los Angeles have decreased. fell by 90%.
Now Alex Marquez suddenly finds himself at the helm of the non-profit organization his father built.
He learns to manage the group's finances, repair its surveillance equipment, and reconnect with its network of allies.
“It was literally a crash course in running a nonprofit,” he said. “But we're keeping it alive.”
In Wilmington, residents point to visible symbols of Marquez's work: a waterfront park, electrified port terminals and health surveys that document decades of illness.
“He left us too soon, but the movement that was just in its infancy when he started decades ago has now grown into national and even international networks,” Martinez wrote, paying tribute to Marquez.
Marquez is survived by his sons Alex Marquez, Danilo Marquez, Radu Iliescu and, as many who knew him say, the environmental justice movement as a whole.
