From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.

• Author: DeLuca, Kevin Michael
• Position: Book Reviews

From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. By Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster. New York: New York University Press, 2001; pp. 248. $45.00; paper $18.95.

This is an important and unusual book for many reasons. It is an academic book on an important issue-the environmental justice movement-that is timely and relevant. It is an intellectual achievement that offers explanation and analysis while also being an intervention in political struggles for social justice. It is a collaboration between an activist and an academic that illuminates both the worlds of theory and practice. It is a book that can function as both textbook for students and primer for activists.

Authors Cole and Foster are interested in exploring how the environmental justice movement "transforms the possibilities for fundamental social and environmental change through redefinition, reinvention, and construction of innovative political and cultural discourses and practices" (p. 14). Three of the biggest transformations involve the redefinition of environment from "wilderness" to "home and community," the reinvention of ordinary citizens as political activists, and construction of conventional industrial practices as environmental racism. The book is organized around four case studies designed to "be translated into, and replicated within, other struggles for justice" (p. 18). Two of the groups, El Pueblo para el Aire y Agua limpio (People for Clean Air and Water) in Kettleman City, CA, and Padres Hacia una Vida Mejor (Parents for Better Living) in Buttonwillow, CA, were predominantly Latino. Chester Residents Concerned about Quality of Life in Chester, PA was comprised of African Americans. Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (CARE) in the town of Dilkon in the Navajo Nation grew into the Indigenous Environmental Network and is, as the name implies, composed of Native Americans. The case studies are presented in a clear and engaging manner that quite forthrightly discuss the successes, innovations, and errors made by the groups in each struggle. Besides illustrating the multi-racial nature of the environmental justice movement (EJM), the case studies provide the raw material through which the authors theorize the EJM. Notably, Cole, the Director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, was involved in both Latino cases.

In the theoretical discussions that move...