Toward a World Where We Can Breathe: Abolitionist Environmental Justice Praxis

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing literature bringing together environmental justice (EJ) and abolition, offering the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project in San Antonio, Texas, as a case of abolitionist EJ praxis. I argue that the Bloom Project disrupts capitalist and colonial relations, even if only provisionally, through radical space- and place-making that allow alternative worlds to emerge. “I can’t breathe” has been an embodiment and structure of feeling that reflects the historical patterns of policing and pollution across racialized geographies in the United States and connects historical patterns of racial capitalism and colonialism. I suggest that the Bloom Project is a model of how we can move from “I can’t breathe” to imagining and growing worlds where we can breathe. By foregrounding the work of the Bloom Project, this article moves away from analyses primarily focused on highlighting the ways that low-income communities of color are toxic and toward the ways that communities are imagining and practicing alternative ways of being, embodying the worlds they desire. I demonstrate how abolitionist EJ praxis contributes to the liberation of carceral geographies and toxic ways of relating to ourselves, each other, and the more-than-human world by providing alternative relationalities based on affirming and sustaining lifeways.