Environmental Justice Activists Research Articles

Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.

HEALTH ACTIVISM FROM THE BOTTOM UP: PROGRESSIVE ERA IMMIGRANT CHICAGOANS’ VIEWS ON GERM THEORY, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, AND CLASS INEQUALITY

Drawing on Chicago immigrant communities’ archives, memoirs, and native-language newspapers, this article advances our understanding of Progressive Era environmental politics by delving into cross-class immigrant communities’ views on and activism concerning health. Everyday ethnic Chicagoans—medical and journalistic professionals alongside working-class immigrants—displayed a sophisticated understanding of health. Well versed in medical and scientific germ theories, they embraced a mixture of germ and environmental theories that made them, in effect, “disease ecologists,” revealing a widespread health ecology orientation not limited to the educated white professionals and reformers about whom scholarship has revealed much more. Such perspectives contribute to reinterpretations of earlier scholarly assumptions that germ theory largely displaced environmental analyses. Moreover, ethnic communities’ interpretations of health as ecological underpinned some of their political activism in pursuit of greater environmental parity. Many ethnic activists from across Chicago's class spectrum fought alongside white reformers to rectify environmental health inequities. They sometimes even initiated efforts, displaying an early version of environmental justice activism. At the same time, other cross-class ethnics at least partly blamed individual or ethnic communities’ habits and failures, mirroring to a degree the condescension visible among many Anglo reformers and professionals.

Beyond Protest: The Effects of Grassroots Activism on Maryland and Pennsylvania's Responses to Environmental Justice

Abstract Grassroots environmental justice (EJ) activists have had some success in changing the way their state governments address the racial dimensions of environmental inequality. This article ex...

Understanding the Importance of “Patient’s Choice” in the Early Environmental Justice Activism of the Karen of Klity Creek (Thailand)

Understanding the Importance of “Patient’s Choice” in the Early Environmental Justice Activism of the Karen of Klity Creek (Thailand)

Trajectories of Environmental Justice

Before the last state election, the current Victorian government promised from opposition to develop an Environmental Justice Plan if elected. It acknowledged international best practice as a benchmark for such a plan, though it did not recognise the legacy of environmental justice activism and scholarship locally. With the plan still in progress, this article considers the global histories and future directions of environmental justice and a literature-based framework for curating a Victorian plan. It breaks with the common understanding, including that held by government bureaucrats in Victoria, of environmental justice emerging from the United States in the 1980s. The article situates Victoria within that past, the current and future of the concept of environmental justice. Two notable recent legal events affirm the need for, and suggest the shape of, a Victorian environmental justice approach – the housing estate gas leak in outer suburban Melbourne and the Hazelwood coal mine fire in regional Victoria

“This Port Is Killing People”: Sustainability without Justice in the Neo-Keynesian Green City

This article examines how regional policymakers in Southern California deployed a green growth strategy that cemented racial, environmental, and class precariousness into the region's ecological fabric. It uses participant observation and extant data to show how environmentalist statecraft provided ideological cover for a type of neo-Keynesian logistics growth regime that used infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy without addressing underlying issues of racial, economic, and environmental justice. Urban political ecology and racial capitalism are used as theoretical frameworks to stretch the boundaries of how sustainability is conceptualized and to challenge assumptions behind a green capitalism framework. Finally, the article examines how labor and environmental justice activists used what Sze et al. (2009, 836) called “cultural and ecological discourses” to challenge the green capitalist agenda by incorporating subaltern spatial imaginaries.

Environmental Data Justice and the Trump Administration: Reflections from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

Abstract The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) was formed after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2016 to respond to the threat posed by the Trump administration to environmental data and policy, and to federal environmental agencies. During his campaign, Trump was openly hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to the science of climate change. Since taking office, Trump's administration has taken steps to radically de-fund federal environmental agencies and roll-back environmental regulations, threatening the public accessibility of federal environmental datasets and continued monitoring of environmental harms. The Trump administration has also taken down information from federal environmental websites, such as the EPA's web pages explaining climate change to kids. This situation poses specific challenges for environmental justice (EJ) activism, as many EJ organizations rely on federal datasets and information on environmental risks, industrial emissions, and ...

Global Electronic Waste, Third Party Certification Standards, and Resisting the Undoing of Environmental Justice Politics

This article provides a critical assessment of a shift in discourse and political actions taken by the Basel Action Network (BAN), the primary non-governmental organization involved in overseeing and regulating the international trade in hazardous wastes in general and electronic waste (e-waste) in particular. First, we review recent scholarship focused on changes in social movement tactics that more directly target corporate practices, specifically the rise of voluntary third party certification standards. In particular, we attend to early efforts of the global environmental justice movement to address the trade in hazardous wastes, including e-waste. Next, we discuss our research findings on the changes in discourse, strategy, and political demands of environmental justice activists engaged in e-waste recycling. These findings support other recent case studies that suggest that the development of voluntary third party certifications adopt neoliberal market logics and corporate governance practices. In a...

Using citizen science in environmental justice: participation and decision-making in a Southern California waste facility siting conflict

ABSTRACTUses of science by environmental justice (EJ) activists reflect struggles to challenge professional scientific expertise, achieve fair outcomes, and effectively participate in decision-making processes. This qualitative research analyses the relationship between citizen science and EJ in a new waste facility siting conflict in urban Los Angeles, namely connections between citizen science and four dimensions of EJ: fair distribution, respect and recognition, participation in decision-making, and community capabilities. Citizen science is one tactic in EJ, yet little research investigates its role in a new facility siting conflict, particularly in relation to multi-faceted EJ goals. The research reveals opportunities for individual empowerment and community capacity building using citizen science, and a small measure of improved respect and recognition for participants who brought their own knowledge, research, and voices to the table. At the same time, the work identifies limitations on citizen science to improve local participatory procedures and decision-making, which also constricted the achievement of outcomes most desired by the EJ group: to prevent approval and construction of the new waste facility. This paper argues that uses of citizen science contributed to partial achievement of EJ goals, while hindered by governance processes that call for public participation yet shield decision-makers from substantive engagement with the volume or content of that participation.

Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States

The environmental justice movement in the United States began in the 1980s, but the inequities identified by those activists were many years in the making. In Clean and White Carl A. Zimring locates the origin of inequitable exposures to environmental risks and hazards experienced by nonwhite Americans to the intertwined histories of racist ideologies, public health and hygiene, and urban sanitation. Zimring centers his history of environmental racism on solid waste disposal sites in and near American cities, one of the earliest and most central concerns of environmental justice activists. Zimring argues that these discriminatory landscapes, identified and well documented by scholars and activists in recent years, have nineteenth-century roots. The book begins with a discussion of Thomas Jefferson's racism, his love of all things rural, and his disdain for the filth of cities. It then moves quickly through the Civil War years to the postbellum urban boom. Histories of racism in the United States and of waste management in this first part of the book are told as parallel but largely separate stories.

Exposing infrastructure: how activists and experts connect ambient air monitoring and environmental health

Ambient air monitoring is one way that community groups, environmental justice (EJ) activists, and environmental agencies assess the health effects of exposures to toxic chemicals. However, monitoring does not measure human exposure directly, leading to the question, how are air quality measurements connected to claims about exposure and health? Since activists and regulatory experts often clash over assessments of environmental health effects, how might the approaches taken by the two differ? Comparing reports on ambient air monitoring from social movement groups and government experts, we show that both make connections between monitoring data and health using a well-developed infrastructure for health assessment. EJ activists rely on the infrastructure to a greater extent than previously acknowledged, although they do challenge fundamental categories, especially distinctions between short- and long-term exposures. Experts working within the infrastructure exercise considerable discretion in how they interpret and implement the standards and categories of health assessment, including by transgressing the short- and long-term distinction in some cases. Our findings call attention to similarities in lay and expert ways of knowing that enable the sharing of information infrastructures and show that information infrastructures are not determinative but potentially malleable, even in the context of expert practices.

Environmental justice in the age of big data: challenging toxic blind spots of voice, speed, and expertise

In recent years, grassroots environmental justice activists have increasingly used big data techniques for monitoring, recording, and reporting toxic environmental exposures. Despite the promise of big data for environmental justice, there is a need to address structural barriers to making toxic environmental exposures visible, and to avoid over-relying on new digital methods and techniques as a panacea for problems of voice. The emphasis of real-time analysis in crowdsourced and participatory big data is good at tracking the immediate aftermath of environmental disasters, but it misses slower-burning environmental problems that emerge over time. While big data more generally may have implications for understanding toxic exposure landscapes across different temporal and spatial scales, it is complex, difficult to analyze, and faces significant problems of reliability. There are three key blind spots of the ethos and practice of big data in relation to environmental justice: voice, speed, and expertise. In the context of increasing pressure to embrace new tools and technologies, it is also important to slow down and to reflect on the wider implications of the age of big data.

Contesting and Resisting Environmental Gentrification: Responses to New Paradoxes and Challenges for Urban Environmental Justice

This paper analyzes environmental gentrification (EG), or the exclusion, marginalization, and displacement of long-term residents associated with sustainability planning or green developments and amenities, such as smart growth, public park renovations, and healthy food stores. We consider how activists, communities, and urban planners address these unjust processes and outcomes associated with EG and how these strategies compare to those used by environmental justice (EJ) activists. Our evaluation of relevant literature indicates several similarities with EJ resistance tactics, including collective neighborhood action, community organizing, and direct tactics. We also identify several different strategies enabled by certain urban environmental conditions, such as leveraging environmental policies and taking an active role in neighborhood redevelopment planning processes, collaborating with ‘gentrifiers,’ and creating complementary policies to manage displacement and exclusion. Our analysis indicates a need for more research on how activists can better assert the social and political dimensions of sustainability and their right to the city, and how green and sustainable cities can achieve justice and equity.

State Regulation and Environmental Justice: The Need for Strategy Reassessment

In this paper, we explore how environmental justice activists’ reliance on state regulation has inhibited their ability to achieve their goals – an important topic whose oversight we do not believe...

Creating Public Scholars: A Collaborative Project on Environmental and Economic Justice Activism and Scholarship

Creating Public Scholars: A Collaborative Project on Environmental and Economic Justice Activism and Scholarship

Ethnographic movement methods: anthropology takes on the pesticide industry

In this article, I describe how the methods of anthropology proved productive and fruitful for research and environmental justice (EJ) activism against methyl iodide, a highly toxic soil fumigant pesticide used to sterilize soil before food crops like strawberries are transplanted. I continue a thread of discussion around what roles anthropology, and especially, public and applied anthropology, should play in addressing the serious problems traditionally encountered, documented, analyzed, and theorized through ethnographic research. Anthropological engagement and action on methyl iodide and other soil fumigants produced unique research opportunities and networks up and down the agricultural hierarchy, as well as spaces to contribute ethnographic labor and critical analysis and reflection to the EJ movement. While this activist approach— what I refer to as 'ethnographic movement methods'—presented some challenges, the victorious end-result of having methyl iodide's manufacturer pull their product from the U.S. market in 2012 also demonstrated how anthropologists, in cooperation with communities confronted by environmental suffering, can work cooperatively towards alternative agricultural and ecological futures.Keywords: activism; applied anthropology; environmental justice; farmworkers; ethnographic movement methods; pesticides

Environmental justice in Appalachia Ohio? An expanded consideration of privilege and the role it plays in defending the contaminated status quo in a white, working-class community

ABSTRACTEnvironmental justice addresses inequitable distributions of health risks from exposure to pollution and other hazards. Appalachian residents of southeastern Ohio who live along the Ohio River are disproportionately subject to industrial pollution. Of particular concern is the DuPont Washington Works plant where perfluorooctanoic acid, or C8, was used to make consumer products. Although company officials became aware in 1984 that the water supply of Little Hocking, Ohio, was tainted with C8 coming from its plant, residents were not notified until 2002. Subsequent studies determined a number of health problems, including cancer, are linked to residents’ exposure. This qualitative study asked Little Hocking residents and environmental regulators if they consider C8 contamination in Little Hocking an injustice. Results indicate a lack of consensus – even among affected residents – concerning DuPont's® actions as constituting an injustice. This finding, among others, is used to argue that many residents in Little Hocking, through their association with DuPont®, benefit from class-based forms of privilege and seek to maintain them in the context of immobility and economic uncertainty. This explains why some communities may be considered an environmental justice community from an academic standpoint, but not self-identify as such. However, maintaining privilege at the local scale in the context of weak regulation enhances exploitation in Little Hocking while contributing to power at extra-local scales. Thus, environmental justice activists in white, working-class communities must overcome the challenge posed by privilege that defends the contaminated status quo.

Healthy Food Stores, Greenlining and Food Gentrification: Contesting New Forms of Privilege, Displacement and Locally Unwanted Land Uses in Racially Mixed Neighborhoods

AbstractLocal activists engaged in contemporary environmental justice struggles not only fight against traditional forms of hazardous locally unwanted land uses (LULUs), they also organize to make their neighborhoods livable and green. However, urban environmental justice activism is at a crossroads: as marginalized neighborhoods become revitalized, outside investors start to value them again and they themselves invest in green amenities. Yet vulnerable residents are now raising concerns about the risk of displacement from their neighborhoods in consequence of environmental gentrification processes. Their fear is linked to environmental amenities such as new parks or remodeled waterfronts, as well as (most recently) healthy food stores. Using the case of a conflict around a new Whole Foods supermarket in Boston, MA, I examine how food venues and stores labeled as healthy and natural can create socio‐spatial inequality together with privilege, exclusion and displacement in racially diverse neighborhoods. I analyze how high‐end supermarket chains target inner‐city neighborhoods for their growth and profit potential, and demonstrate that their arrival contributes to what I call ‘supermarket greenlining'. This greenlining illustrates the process of food gentrification, and the manipulation of health and sustainability discourses about food by healthy and natural food investors and their supporters. The opening of high‐end supermarkets thus converts such stores into new LULUs for historically marginalized groups.

From Toxic Sites to Parks as (Green) LULUs? New Challenges of Inequity, Privilege, Gentrification, and Exclusion for Urban Environmental Justice

As marginalized neighborhoods benefit from cleanup and environmental amenities often brought by municipal sustainability planning, recent trends of land revaluation, investments, and gentrification are posing a conundrum and paradox for environmental justice (EJ) activists. In this article, I examine the progression of the urban EJ agenda—from fighting contamination to mobilizing for environmental goods and resisting environmental gentrification—and analyze how the EJ scholarship has reflected upon the complexification of this agenda. I argue that locally unwanted land uses can be reconceptualized from contamination sources to new green amenities because of the displacement they seem to trigger or accelerate.

Interview with Bill Gallegos

As we veteran activists of the 1960s and early '70s enter our <em>años del retiro</em>, it is time for reflection, summation, and most importantly sharing what we have learned with those reaching to grab the baton. Many of us, now grandparents, are getting questions from our grandkids and kids about our lives in the "golden age" of U.S. social movements. … Bill Gallegos has been an activist since the 1960s, when he became involved in Crusade for Justice, a revolutionary Chicano nationalist organization. He has since emerged as a leading socialist environmental justice activist, and is the former executive director of Communities for a Better Environment.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-5" title="Vol. 67, No. 5: October 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>