The environmental justice/toxics movement: Politics of race and gender

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 8, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 63-87

  Epstein, Barbara ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 10644252982     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455759709358749     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. For a first-person account of Love Canal, see Lois Marie Gibbs, Love Canal: My Story, as told to Murray Levine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).
2. For accounts of these struggles, see Ken Geiser and Gerry Waneck, "PCBs and Warren County;" Cynthia Hamilton, "Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles;" and Gabriel Gutierrez, "Mothers of East Los Angeles Strikes Back," in Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994).
3. For accounts of these struggles, see Ken Geiser and Gerry Waneck, "PCBs and Warren County;" Cynthia Hamilton, "Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles;" and Gabriel Gutierrez, "Mothers of East Los Angeles Strikes Back," in Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994).
4. For accounts of these struggles, see Ken Geiser and Gerry Waneck, "PCBs and Warren County;" Cynthia Hamilton, "Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles;" and Gabriel Gutierrez, "Mothers of East Los Angeles Strikes Back," in Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994).
5. Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (1987).
6. For a slightly earlier use of this concept in the environmental justice movement, see Dana Alston, ed., We Speak for Ourselves: Social Justice, Race and Environment (Washington, D.C.: The Panos Institute, 1990).
7. For the development of the environmental justice movement, see Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Boulder: Westview, 1994). For a series of accounts by local activists, see Bullard, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston: South End Press, 1993).
8. For the development of the environmental justice movement, see Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Boulder: Westview, 1994). For a series of accounts by local activists, see Bullard, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston: South End Press, 1993).
9. For a critique of the mainstream environmental organizations in relation to race as well as other issues, see Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
10. "Women in Leadership," in Robbin Lee Zeff, Marsha Love, and Karen Stults, eds., Empowering Ourselves: Women and Toxics Organizing (Arlington: Citizens' Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, 1989), p. 29.
11. Robert D. Bullard, People of Color Environmental Groups: 1994-5 Directory (Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia 30314). I have not given a percentage for groups reporting concern with non-environmental issues because it is hard to know whether a particular issue should be considered environmental or not; both housing and worker safety, for instance, have environmental components. The survey does not indicate what aspects of these issues particular groups address. In fact, the survey indicates widespread uncertainty around the meaning of the term "environmental." On the one hand, it was striking how many groups described themselves as addressing issues of toxics, pollution, environmental justice, housing and worker's health and safety, suggesting that many activists see this range of issues as something of a package - which perhaps they might place under the heading of environmental justice. On the other hand, a number of groups that described their mission as opposing a particular toxic facility put themselves in the category of not having been started as environmental groups, suggesting that they did not think of such struggles as environmental.
12. There is no directory/survey of white (or mostly white) toxics groups that parallels Bullard's directory (there are lists of groups, but none that include such information as whether a group was formed as an environmental group, and what range of issues it addresses). For a compilation of descriptions of community groups protesting toxics (including groups composed mostly or entirely of whites, and groups composed mostly or entirely of people of color) see Penny Newman, ed., Communities at Risk: Contaminated Communities Speak Out on Superfund (Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, February, 1994).
13. Interview, John O'Connor, September 1, 1994.
14. Telephone interview, Lois Gibbs, October 10, 1995.
15. For example, see Lois Gibbs, op. cit., for an account of her entrance into political activism. The issue of women's introduction to activism (and its impact on their relations with husbands and children) is also dealt with in Empowering Ourselves, op. cit.
16. See Celine Krauss, "Women of Color on the Front Line," in Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994), pp. 256-271.
17. Richard Moore, the head of the Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, estimates that at least two-thirds of the groups in his network are racially mixed. Penny Newman, who heads the Communities at Risk network of groups located near Superfund sites, says that in her experience there are few local groups that are made up entirely of members of one racial or ethnic group.
18. Differences do arise. In the Military Production Network, for instance, a mediation process is underway concerning conflicts over the weight that should be accorded groups of color within the leadership.
19. Empowering Ourselves, op. cit., p. 25.
20. Telephone interviews with Lois Gibbs, Virginia, October 10, 1995, and Monica Jones, October 11, 1995.
21. "The National Toxics Campaign: Some Reflections, Thoughts for the Movement," no date, no publisher.
22. Interview, John O'Connor, Cambridge, Massachusetts September 21, 1994.
23. Telephone interview, Pam Tau Lee, Oakland, California, October 2, 1995.
24. Telephone interview, Penny Newman, Glen Avon, California, March 28, 1994.
25. Lois Gibbs, introduction to Richard Hofrichter, ed., Toxic Struggles: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Justice (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1993), pp. ix-xi.
26. Telephone interview with Lois Gibbs, October 10, 1995.
27. Telephone interview with Dana Alston, Washington, D.C., September 12, 1995.
28. Telephone interview with Robert Bullard, Atlanta, August 29, 1995.
29. Telephone interview with Nicky Bass, San Francisco, September 22, 1995.
30. Telephone interview with Richard Moore, Albuquerque, August 7, 1995.
31. Telephone interview with Joan D'Argo, Chicago, August 24, 1994.
32. Telephone interview with Monica Jones, Atlanta, October 11, 1995.
33. For a review of the literature on environmental justice and a commentary on the political implications of the movement's politics of race, see Andrew Szasz and Michael Meuser, "Environmental Inequalities: Literature Review and Proposals for New Directions in Research and Theory," Current Sociology, 45, 3, July, 1997, pp. 99-120.