If you’re feeling blue about our side’s chances of getting its act together, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and several other environmental justice organizations from around the country just released a report you should check out: Environmental Justice and the Green Economy. The report lays out three principles for building a just, sustainable economy:
1. Strives for full democratic participation.2. Builds capacity for a truly sustainable infrastructure and green economy.
3. Creates and share “green” wealth.
The rest of the report shows how groups around the country are fighting for this vision.
Take Harlan County, Kentucky. You probably know about the environmental devastation caused by strip top mining. At the same time, most folks in Harlan County are in a no-win situation.
There are few employment alternatives to coal-related jobs, even as coal employment in Kentucky is a third of what it was 30 years ago, largely due to the increased mechanization of the industry. Large absentee landlords and local land-owners are unaccountable to new forms of economic development. The local elite maintain tight control over politics, commerce, and public life in this region.
But folks are fighting back, in part through a statewide organization called Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC).
In Benham, a coalition made up of KFTC and the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) is exploring a range of “green,” renewable energy sources. In addition to wind power, potential exists for micro-hydro power, utilizing the creeks that run through the towns, and small-scale solar energy. The coalition’s efforts are informed by two reports from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: one on models for developing locally owned wind power and a second on viable strategies for local renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements. As the mines “write people off,” with job elimination that trigger growing desperation and anxiety, Harlan County KFTC leader, Carl Shoupe, a retired, disabled third generation miner, realizes that this moment is a “critical time” to take action.
In San Diego, the Environmental Health Coalition is also fighting to create a just, green economy for all. Last year, it
successfully blocked the expansion of a fossil fuel power plant in Chula Vista, California, where over 80% of residents are people of color and 16% of all residents fall below the poverty line. This proposed plant expansion would have more than doubled the size of the existing plant…. It would have been sited 1,300 feet from a local elementary school and only 350 feet from the nearest home in that community.
In fighting against the plant expansion, which blatantly violated the town’s general plan that EHC spent two years working to pass, EHC didn’t just argue against the plant. They won in part because they proposed an alternative vision of the future.
They drafted a detailed energy plan that described the rationale and benefits for alternatives such as solar arrays on rooftops and parking lots, repair of transmission lines, and improvement of residential energy efficiency. EHC also provided expert testimony and analysis showing that these options were not only feasible and cost effective, but could provide three to four times the energy that the proposed plant would provide.
Similarly, in New York City, WE ACT has been fighting for years to take on pollution in their neighborhood.
Five out of six public transit bus depots on Manhattan are located in the brown and black, low-income communities of Northern Manhattan. For the most part, these bus depots are situated close to apartments, schools, playgrounds, and senior centers. Inundated by toxic diesel pollution, residents suffer some of the highest rates of childhood asthma hospitalizations in the nation, and disproportionately high levels of other respiratory illnesses and heart disease. Northern Manhattan’s cancer and child-asthma rates exceed area, state, and national averages….Years of advocacy by WE ACT for Environmental Justice (WE ACT)2 and other partners have certainly helped lessen the toxic burden of these transit depots. Their coalition work has resulted, for example, in the conversions of 400 diesel buses into compressed natural gas buses, and another 900 into hybrid electric buses. But WE ACT’s environmental justice efforts go well beyond these near term mitigations.
For example, after many years of community pressure, NYC’s MTA decided they would rebuild a Lower Manhattan bus depot that handles 120 buses a day. WE ACT trained folks in the community “in the principles of green building and the science of sustainability,” and now they are working with the MTA to create a truly green depot, including features such as “a green roof, air pollution controls, energy efficiency, and gray water reclamation.”
The report also highlights how some groups who began by fighting for economic justice have broadened their vision to for a just, sustainable economy. In Miami, in 2001 “the Miami Workers Center (MWC) sought to prevent the demolition of low-income housing developments in Liberty City,” eventually forcing developers to build units that were affordable for everyone who lived in the development. As part of their experience in that fight, now one of their main goals is “to deepen community involvement in the redevelopment and green design process.”
In early 2008, MWC collaborated with US Green Builders to host a community design competition, called a charette, of the Scott-Carver site. These charettes have served as a popular education piece for residents, and MWC members and have helped the wider community understand the connection between environmental and racial justice….Poinciana Industrial Park, a mostly vacant industrial site that for three decades was supposed to have brought economic development and opportunities to the black community. MWC is helping policy makers and developers understand the value of turning that Park into a “green enterprise zone” that will host small to medium scale green businesses. In its attempt to reframe conventional “green” discourse, MWC uses the term “Community Driven Green Industry” to describe the public, non-profit, and private sector ventures that create environmentally friendly products and services that also generate long-term living-wage jobs at all skill levels. As Benford explained, MWC “really need[s] to drive consciousness of what kind of development we need to be focused on,” given Miami’s track record of pursuing “shallow” development versus wealth-generating development.
And in LA, home of the highway car chase, last year the Labor/Community Strategy Center helped create Transit Riders for Public Transportation, a network of 11 groups across the country fighting to “bring environmental justice and civil rights priorities to the upcoming federal surface ransportation act—whose budget is estimated to be at least $500 billion.” Eric Mann, the Labor/Community Strategy Center’s Director, argues that
a strong investment in public transportation can create real green jobs (defined as jobs that reduce fuel emissions, and provide sustainable, long term employment with promotions potential for minority populations).The Labor/Community Strategy Center estimates, for instance, that 7,000 green jobs could be created for every 1,000 buses built. For every 100 buses, they estimate that 300 drivers could be hired to enable buses to run round the clock. Jobs in clerical work, cleaning and maintenance, bus mechanics, and bus construction would also be created…
“a mass transit system that prioritizes the needs of the most transit-dependent communities can serve the needs of all. The process of getting people out of their cars can begin now, not after manufacturing 200 million electric cars or after constructing a multi-billion or trillion dollar new rail project, or after transitioning to a clean electricity grid 20 years from now.”
You can read more about these organization’s struggles and their vision of a better future for all in the Environmental Justice and the Green Economy report. If you or your organization wants to endorse their Vision Statement, check out http://ejstimulus.wordpress.com/selected-list-of-endorsers/
