Difference between revisions of "Category:Environmental Justice"

Environmental justice asserts that everyone should be able to live in a clean environment and be healthy, not just those who can afford it. See also Native Americans, Chemicals and Air, as well as labor and Solid Waste.

Global Warming and climate change may be the ultimate EJ topic. Early Warning Signs from all over the world from Slate and NPR Living on Earth. See also Bangladesh article. Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provides a view from Bangladesh, a nation already reeling from the impact of climate change.12/09 UPDATE: Oxfam report 9/12

Extensive EJ Bibliography by Sarah Frohardt-Lane

Katrina five year anniversary shows EJ still a factor in the Big Easy, but Brad Pitt's green houses are a bright spot (audio)

Articles and Reports

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has released a report that documents the disproportionate health impacts of coal-fired power plants on low-income communities of color. 11/12

Kettleman City CA has toxic waste and now a new power plant. UPDATE, EPA sues 11/12 (text and audio).

Rosie Spinks, ENVS major, worked at UCSC's City on a Hill Press and co-founder of UCSC's first environmental magazine, Gaia. This work helped win her a coveted editorial internship at Sierra magazine, the national publication of the Sierra Club. A story she wrote for Sierra (about the teenage daughter of a Watsonville farm worker family fighting the use of the pesticide methyl iodide) was published on the magazine's website.

Green progress in California could help the poor 11/12

Tulare County water contaminated by farms. 11/12.

Climate change will be ‘devastating’ to world’s poor, World Bank says 11/12

Coal ash dumped on poor people. 6.12 They are also most affected by mountaintop removal. See Fossil Fuels.

Working Women's Bodies Besieged by Environmental Injustice 6.12

Manual Pastor, former Slug, works with the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) . many documents on air quality etc.

Van Jones on importance of solar and climate 5/12

A run-down urban neighborhood finds life in a dead stream.

South LA chemicals: In industry’s shadow: After years of illnesses, family looks for answers. Blood test results.

Pesticide use in Central Valley (photo-essay) 2/12.

America's Food Sweatshops and the Workers of Color Who Feed Us. 2/12

Poisoned Places four part NPR report and interactive map of air pollution. 11/11

Bottled Water and Environmental Justice (6/11) We've known for a long time that bottled water costs far more than safe, reliable, municipal tap water systems, with those costs falling on individuals, communities, and the environment. But there is new and growing evidence that the failure to provide safe drinking water, or the fear (or reality) of contamination in tap water that forces people to buy bottled water, imposes special financial burdens on poor and minority communities. More.

Harrison, J. (UCSC alum) “Abandoned Bodies and Spaces of Sacrifice: Pesticide Drift Activism and the Contestation of Neoliberal Environmental Politics in California.” Geoforum 39, no. 3 (2008): 1197-214. 133 (pdf download).

Justice in the Air: Tracking Toxic Pollution from America's Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods. PERI at UMass. Top 100 air polluters.

Citizen science collects data for maps by Brian Beveridge of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. Air is more dangerous than Superfund site.

Food deserts in CA Central Valley. 3/11

Growing vast monocrops of cotton, it turns out, is a dirty business. Globally, cotton occupies 2.4 percent of cropland -- and burns through 16 percent of the insecticides used every year, the Environmental Justice Foundation reports. Indeed, conventional cotton production in the United States has long required a veritable monsoon of poisons. Cotton can even give even industrial corn a run for its money in terms of environmental impact. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, pesticide applications for cotton run "3 to 5 times greater per hectare than applications of pesticides to corn." To try and stem the chemical cascade, farmers in cotton country have largely switched to seeds genetically modified to contain a pesticide and to withstand Roundup, Monsanto's broad-based herbicide. Today, upwards of 60 percent of cotton grown in the U.S. contains those traits. Trouble is, that "solution" to cotton's chemical dependence is already failing More 5/12/10.

Uranium mining and Native people. (See also native activism on XL pipeline).

People

See Majora Carter, Van Jones, Winnona LaDuke and others on the Eco-Heroes page, as well as the links below.

Robert Bullard, sociologist widely regarded as the first to articulate the concept of environmental justice. One of the leaders of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991. Most recently has been writing about Hurricane Katrina as the latest environmental sacrifice zone. Professor Bullard was featured in the July 2007 CNN People You Should Know, Bullard: Green Issue is Black and White - CNN.com

In this interview Bullard explains why the environmental justice movement is different than mainstream environmental organizations.

How have hurricane responses also created Superfund sites in poor neighborhoods? Bullard discusses this in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

Majora Carter video ***** Environmental Justice

Van Jones (Oakland CA Environmental Justice). Jones, civil rights leader and founding and executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Jones has made a name for himself linking prisons and environmental injustice, working in a pro-active way to ensure that marginalized inner city youth will not miss out on the next wave of “green capitalism.”In this short one page article Van Jones argues against the environmental limits idea, but showing that the damage from Hurricane Katrina was not just the force of nature, but the negligence of the U.S. government. Good simple article for considering how environmental justice gets defined. Interview 2008 book on greening the economy. Book Excerpt. Here is an Oct 2008 interview (audio).

Winona LaDuke Native American activist. article on native rice and GMO's.

Human Rights in Cancer Alley by Ike Sriskandarakah The residents of Mossville Louisiana live in the shadow of 14 petrochemical refineries. Community members allege that their high rates of cancer stem directly from these plants. After years of making this argument in American courts they sought a higher judicial body. Now, for the first time ever, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear an environmental human rights case against the United States. Audio 4/10(7:30)

Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza are fighting for justice after what has been called one of the most catastrophic environmental disasters in history. They leading an unprecedented community-driven legal battle against a global oil giant. According to the plaintiffs, beginning in 1964 and through 1990, Texaco dumped nearly 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling wastewater directly into the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Books

In his new book, Tomatoland, food writer Barry Estabrook details the life of the mass-produced tomato — and the environmental and human costs of the tomato industry, including slavery. audio interview and excerpt 5/11

Lopez, Anna A , who obtained her PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz, wrote The Farmworkers' Journey brings together for the first time the many facets of this issue into a comprehensive and accessible narrative: how corporate agribusiness operates, how binational institutions and laws promote the subjugation of Mexican farmworkers, how migration affects family life, how genetically modified corn strains pouring into Mexico from the United States are affecting farmers, how migrants face exploitation from employers, and more. (also Google book)

Organizations

EJ Resource Center

Greenaction: To learn more about Bradley Angel's Environmental Justice work with Greenaction and what you can do to help the people of Kettleman City link

Environment Justice for All Recently did a national tour, and has posted videos (including Oakland, Silicon Valley, Hunter's Point, Delano)

(S)heroes of EJ, by EJ Resource Center.

Directory of EJ organizations, including Pesticide Action Network.

Airhugger features important grass roots monitoring by Global Community Monitor, their citizen science Bucket Brigades have gathered data on the East Bay(their community partners), including diesel exhaust as well as Chevron Richmond refinery fire. Also metal recyclers and Fracking. You can help.

Communities for a Better Environment had Bucket Brigade to do citizen science. See above

Bay Area EJ orgs

Video

(See also Environmental Films)

Majora Carter video ***** Environmental Justice.

Bangladesh: Tanneries Harm Workers, Poison Communities October 10, 2012.

2011 Goldman Prize for North America: Hilton Kelley, Port Arthur Texas, USA, now featured in a documentary Shelter in Place.

Quileute 'Twilight' Tribe Deals With Rising Sea Levels That Threaten Way of Life Nov. 26, 2012 PBS Newshour.

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action.

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making US Sick? PBS study of food and other factors.

Van Jones "A New Green Deal" (see Eco-heroes). 2009

Unnatural Causes is a seven hour documentary on environmental justice shown on PBS. Extensive coverage of Native Americans, food, diabetes and asthma. More information and segments ***

Maquilapolis: City of Factories

Toxic Tour (Deborah Woo's East Bay tour) / produced by Community Television of Santa Cruz County 1998 Media Center VT6652.

Toxic Imperial Valley.

Climate Refugees

The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa

Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia

The Garden

Audio

Planet Harmony is FUBU green stories, including eco-heroes.

EPA Head and Cancer Alley 8/11.

The Promised Land is a public radio show about leaders and visionaries who are transforming lives and communities for/by people of color. Includes Majora Carter and Winona LaDuke.

Toxic sites in California and how we are dealing with them (includes brownfields and Hunter's Point).

Urban Forests contains stories about revitalization of the Bronx, as well well as a link to Tales of Urban Forests and

Brownfields are abandoned industrial hazardous waste sites, the most infamous is Love Canal, another site, which helped spark the third wave of the American eco-movement. CA railroads are offering land for development. Now, these are an important aspect of environmental justice.

Dr. Beverly Wright is a sociology professor at Dillard University and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New Orleans. Dr. Wright says she's seeing a significant change in EPA's attitude toward environmental justice issues, starting with the new administrator Lisa Jackson.

Agricultural pesticides. Much of inland California is rural and poor, a sharp contrast with hip, upscale coastal life. Residents in the rural regions sometimes live with a high degree of pollution. LOE.org roducer Devin Robins visited three women who became activists over concerns for their communities’ health. 3/10

In collaboration with the online magazine theRoot.com, Tell Me More speaks with a panel of writers and advocates. Environmental justice activist Majora Carter, along with Dayo Olopade and Kai Wright from theRoot.com tell us what they think about being both black and green. April 22, 2009. Link

NPR's Tavis Smiley takes a closer look at how the so-called "environmental justice" movement has evolved with Barry Hill, director of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice, and Vernice Miller-Travis, co-founder and board member of West Harlem Environmental Action. 2004.

Interview w/ Hilton Kelley, Environmental activist in Port Arthur, Texas, and 2011 Goldman Environmental Recipient for North America. 4/11 Link

RISE: Part I Sounding the Waters Series: RISE: Climate Change and Coastal Communities. Sea level rise, includes Bay Area. San Francisco Bay is the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of the Americas. Part 3: Chuey Cazares has lived all of his 21 years in Alviso, a tiny hamlet jutting into the salt ponds at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay. Part of a close, extended Chicano family, with hundreds of relatives living in town, Chuey works as a deck hand on a shrimp boat off Alviso's shores. His town's history — and its future — are defined by water. In the 1800's, farmers drained the aquifer, and the land sank thirteen feet below sea level. Then, the conversion of wetlands to salt ponds made the rivers back up during heavy rains and flooded Alviso. Now sea level rise from the Bay and more rain swelling the rivers threaten more frequent flooding. Chuey's family was traumatized by the last big flood in 1983, and although they fear the next one, they don't want to move anywhere else. Meanwhile, Mendel Stuart of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working to save Alviso by restoring wetlands. But who is Alviso being saved for? As the flood risk lessens, property values are increasing, making housing in Alviso unaffordable for Chuey and his relatives. And the wetlands conversion has driven his boss's lucrative shrimping business out of the salt ponds.

Books

In Sacrifice Zones, Steve Lerner tells the stories of twelve communities, from Brooklyn to Pensacola, that rose up to fight the industries and military bases causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. Lerner is the author of Eco-Pioneers: Practical Visionaries Solving Today's Environmental Problems 1998) and Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor (2005), both published by the MIT Press. video

Faber, Daniel, Capitalizing on environmental injustice : the polluter-industrial complex in the age of globalization / Daniel Faber. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2008. Google Book

Environmental justice and environmentalism : the social justice challenge to the environmental movement/ edited by Ronald Sandler and Phaedra C. Pezzullo Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2007 S&E Stacks - GE220 .E578 2007

Images

Twenty-Five Stories from the Central Valley, an online exhibit, uses photos, theater, stories and sound to paint a vivid picture of the environmental toxins that “the other Cali­for­nia” lives with every day. Women leaders give us a window into the little-known lives of people who are making this region safer for everyone. Their stories are shocking, sad, and inspiring.

Photovoice from South LA.

Petrochemical America explores Louisiana's Cancer Alley, among other places; includes maps and infographics. samples Kate Orff