Media Request

Retracing the steps of the first civil rights and whistleblower act of the 21st century, this chronicle follows young, black, MIT-educated social scientist Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, shortly after she landed her dream job at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The account illustrates how the author attempted to convince the government to investigate allegations surrounding a multinational corporation, suspecting that they were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of South Africans who were mining vanadium—a vital strategic mineral. Documenting Coleman-Adebayo’s shocking discovery that the EPA itself was the first line of defense for the corporation in question, this record depicts how the agency stonewalled, prompting the author to expose them. The agency’s brutal retaliation is captured in detail, revealing their use of every racist and sexist trick in their playbook, costing the protagonist her career, endangering her family, and sacrificing more lives in the vanadium mines of South Africa. Finishing on a hopeful note, the recollection concludes with the upwelling of support the author received from others in the federal bureaucracy, detailing how her subsequent grassroots struggle to protect future whistleblowers ended in victory.