No Fear: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA is a new book by environmental whistleblower Marsha Coleman-Adebayo (pictured, with EPA whistleblowers David Lewis and Bill Sanjour). In 1996, Dr. Coleman-Adebayo was a senior policy analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She was assigned to an international team to assist the new democratic government of South Africa. She raised concerns that an American company was poisoning a South African community with its vanadium mining. She soon discovered that her superiors EPA did not want any American companies to be fingered for polluting South Africa. Her ordeal became the subject of a jury trial. The jury ruled in her favor. However, the EPA paid nothing. The Department of Justice paid the award from the government’s general liability fund. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo led a campaign for the NO-FEAR Act. Under this law, federal agencies must now pay for their unlawful discrimination out of their own budget.
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo’s new book recounts in detail how government officials reacted to whistleblowing. It is particularly telling about the added ferocity African-American women face when they speak truth to power. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo is on a speaking tour now. Today she will be a guest on the Michael Eric Dyson show. For more information about her current campaign to remove one EPA retaliator, follow this link. You can also visit Dr. Coleman-Adebayo’s own web page. You can order her new book from Powell’s here.