Growth of the environmental justice movement: organizing the grassroots

• Author: Barry E. Hill
• Pages: 67-124

Chapter 2

GROWTH OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

MOVEMENT: ORGANIZING THE GRASSROOTS

2.1 Overview

This chapter examines the growth of the multiracial, community-based environmental justice

movement, how it has begun to challenge the approach of mainstream environmental organiza-

tions, and how its strategies and tactics are markedly different from the traditional environmen-

tal movement.

Instances of environmental injustice are many and varied. They may be disputes over the siting of

pollution-generating facilities or over the methods of cleanup at contaminated sites. They may also

involve a community’s lack of access to environmental lawyers and technical expertise, or its exclu-

sion from the decisionmaking processes of federal and state government regulators. These instances

may involve arguments regarding addressing single versus multiple sources of contamination as a re-

sult of short-term or long-term exposure. They may be disputes over which populations are most af-

fected by pollution—the resident population, for example, or seasonal agricultural workers, or tran-

sients (individuals visiting shopping centers, or minority youth having to play soccer on fields at a

former municipal landfill that regulators know is contaminated). They may involve the notion of

proximity,that is, the effects of pollution on nearby populations, or the adverse health effects on pop-

ulations living downstream from industrial plants, or populations affected by off-site operations. And

they may involve allegations that government regulators are not enforcing environmental laws, regu-

lations, and policies equally.

Whatever the situation, the premise of the environmental justice movement is that minority and/or

low-income individuals, communities, and populations are disproportionately exposed to environ-

mental harms and risks. The question, then, is: Who in the community has addressed or has attempted

to address instances of environmental injustice, and what tactics have they employed, thus far, to

be successful?

2.2 The Grassroots Environmental Justice Movement

To a largeextent, the mainstream environmental movement has been supported primarily by mid-

dle-to-upper class whites.3Moreover, the staffs of the major national environmental organizations

are disproportionately white and middle class, as are their members.4Historically, these organiza-

tions, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club,

and the National Wildlife Federation, have focused on wilderness and wildlife preservation, wise

resource use and management, pollution abatement, and population control—not on goals of envi-

ronmental justice.5As Professor Bullard has written: “For the most part, they have failed to ade-

67

3. Robert D. Bullard, Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,in Confronting

Environmental Racism,supra note 1, at 15-39, 22.

4. John H. Adams, The Mainstream Environmental Movement,EPA J.,Mar./Apr. 1992, at 25.

5. Robert D. Bullard, Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,in Confronting

Environmental Racism,supra note 1, at 22.

quately address environmental problems that disproportionately impact people of color.”6Prof. Da-

vid Hall of Northeastern University School of Law has stated:

The same passion, leadership and insights that are needed to conquer the nagging and some-

times frustrating problems of environmental protection, are needed to overcome this soci-

ety’sunfortunate history of exclusion, and its present reality of passive indifference. If we do

not take this approach then we will end up in the unfortunate position of having clean air, but

a violent and segregated society.We will have saved the rainforest but lost a generation of ur-

ban youth. We will have enforced our environmental laws, but disrespected the very people

those laws were passed to protect.7

In sum, the traditional environmental organizations have not made a strong connection between

social justice issues and environmental issues. Professor Bullard has explained that “[t]he crux of the

problem is that the mainstream environmental movement has not sufficiently addressed the fact that

social inequality and imbalances of social power are at the heart of environmental degradation, re-

source depletion, pollution, and even overpopulation.”8

Critics of the mainstream organizations contend that despite all their good work, these groups are

not well suited for the efforts by people of color to address instances of environmental injustice. The

grassroots groups pursuing environmental justice have been compelled to take action independent of

the established environmental organizations on environmental issues that are to them a matter of sur-

vival. One of the foundations of the environmental justice movement is the dedication of its commu-

nity-based activists.

2.2.1 Grassroots Activism

The struggle for environmental justice has produced many unique leaders willing to make per-

sonal sacrifices. Because African American churches have long been a focal point of political ac-

tivity in their communities, some community leaders have come out of neighborhood churches.

Professor Bullard has said: “In many instances, grassroots leaders emerged from groups of con-

cerned citizens (many of them women) who [saw] their families, homes and communities threat-

ened by some type of polluting industry or governmental policy.”9Seeing such threats, many peo-

ple of color began confronting corporate and governmental authorities and demanding change. Mi-

nority women have been especially visible in the environmental justice movement. Hazel Johnson

of Chicago’s infamous Altgeld Gardens, for example, has been fighting environmental injustice

for many years.

Altgeld Gardens is a 10,000-person housing project on Chicago’s Southside, built directly on top

of a landfill that began operating in the 19th century. It is alleged that for more than 50 years the

Pullman Palace Car Company dumped human and industrial waste in the area. Since then, many

other companies, and the city of Chicago itself, have continued to locate landfills nearby, giving

Altgeld Gardens and its environs the dubious distinction of being the location of the country’slarg-

est concentration of hazardous wastes. Residents of the complex have allegedly experienced a high

rate of children born with brain tumors; a high rate of fetuses that had to be aborted because their

brains were developing outside their skulls; a higher-than-normal rate of children and adults with

upper respiratory problems; and higher-than-normal rates of cancer, puzzling birth defects,

68 ENVIRONMENTALJUSTICE: LEGAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

6. Id. at 30.

7. The Environmental Imperatives of Leadership and Diversity, Speech at the U.S. EPA Senior Executive Service

Annual Conference (May 24, 2006).

8. Robert D. Bullard, Anatomy of Environmental Racism, and the Environmental Justice Movement,in Confronting

Environmental Racism,supra note 1, at 23.

9. Id. at 8.

asthma, ringworm, and other ailments.10 A 1984 study by Illinois officialsconcluded that the area

had an excessive rate of prostate, bladder, and lung cancer.11

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has described Altgeld Gardens as being in the

middle of a “toxic donut” because it is surrounded by at least 12 pollution-generating facilities. The

residents live in the midst of dozens of landfills, contaminated lagoons, steel slag beds, a huge chemi-

cal waste incinerator, buried metal drums, and piles of loose trash.12 Metal-plating shops, paint com-

panies, and a sewage treatment plant are also nearby.13 There are 50 abandoned dumps of toxic fac-

tory waste in an area of six square miles.14 One observer has written: “So potent are the discarded

mixtures that stunned Illinois inspectors aborted one expedition in a dumping lagoon when their boat

began to disintegrate.”15

Mrs. Johnson has been called the “grandmother of toxics resistance in America and a voice of con-

science from the grassroots.”16 Frustrated by the condition of her environment at Altgeld Gardens

and concerned with the high rates of death by cancer and other serious illnesses within her own family

and other families in the community, in 1979 she founded People for Community Recovery (PCR),

GROWTH OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 69

10. Marianne Lavelle, Community Profile: Chicago, An Industrial Legacy,Nat’l L.J.,Sept. 21, 1992, at S3.

11. Josh Getlin, Bucking the System,L.A. Times,Feb 18, 1993, at E2.

12. Id.

13. Id.

14. Lavelle, supra note 10, at S3.

15. Id.

16. Getlin, supra note 11, at E2.