Audrea Lim - The World We Need: Stories and Lessons from Americas Unsung Environmental Movement

Ana Isabel Baptista

Audrea Lim

Part I:
DEFEND OUR HOMES

1. Tar Sands in Africatown:
Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition

Nick Tabor

2. Californias Flint:
Exide Technologies vs. Resurrection Church and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

Alejandra Molina

3. Hookworm in the Water:
An Interview with the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprises Catherine Flowers

Katherine Webb-Hehn

4. The Largest Toxic Waste Dump in the West:
An Interview with People for Clean Air and Water of Kettleman Citys Maricela Mares-Alatorre

5. We Are the Storm:
An Exhibit of Prints from JustSeeds and CultureStrike

6. Toxic Chemicals in Americas Biggest Retailers:
Interviews with Lideres Campesinas, T.E.J.A.S., People Concerned About Chemical Safety, and the Los Jardines Institute on the Dollar Store Campaign

7. Drilling the Arctic:
An Interview with the Gwichin Steering Committees Bernadette Demientieff

Part II:
STRENGTHEN THE COMMUNITY

Part III:
BUILD A NEW ECONOMY

Nick Mullins

13. Dont Call Us Coal Country:
An Interview with Members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

15. Steel Mills and Wind Farms:
Turner Station Conservation Teams and Baltimores Ironworkers Local

Dharna Noor

16. CERO Cooperative:
How an Immigrant Worker Center Got into the Business of Recycling

17. White Earth Land Recovery Project:
Interviews with Winona LaDuke, Maggie Rousu, the Pesticide Action Networks Willa Childress and White Earth Nation Food Sovereignty Coordinator Zachary Paige

18. You Dont Want to End Up in the Fields Like Me:
Community to Community and Familias Unidas por la Justicia

Elizabeth Alvarado

Part IV:
BUILD A NEW CULTURE

Ashley Dawson, Creative Action Network and 350Arts

20. Youth and Culture vs. Environmental Racism:
Interviews with the East Michigan Environmental Action Councils Darryl Jordan, Will Copeland, and Piper Carter

21. Mining the Houston Museum of Natural Science:
An Exhibit from T.E.J.A.S. and Not An Alternative

Part V:
RESTORE THE LAND

Lori Rotenberk

24. Food, Farming, and Healing After the U.S. Navy Bombings:
Finca Conciencia and Organizatin Boricu in Vieques, PR

Melissa Alvarado Sierra

25. Casa Pueblo:
Decentralizing Electricity, Decolonizing Puerto Rico

26. Development for the People:
UPROSE and the Just Transition for Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Audrea Lim

27. Growing Change:
Transforming a Prison into a Farm

Lewis Wallace

28. Taro, Tourism, and Industry on the Waianae Coast:
An Interview with Kaala Farms Eric Enos & Waianae Environmental Justice Working Groups Lucy Gay

29. Sogorea Te Land Trust:
Reclaiming the Dead Mall and the Bay Area

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Part VI:
STRENGTHEN DEMOCRACY

30. Citizen Science:
An Interview with Public Labs Shannon Dosemagan and a Guide to DIY Environmental Science for Grassroots Movements

Anna V. Smith

Simon Davis-Cohen

33. Frack Free in Oil and Gas Country:
An Interview with Frack Free Dentons Adam Briggle

34. Incinerator Free Oneida:
An Interview with Oneida Activist Leah Sue Dodge

35. Minnesota Youth vs. the Line 3 Pipeline:
Interviews with Youth Climate Intervenors Akilah Sanders-Reed and Margaret Breen

36. Building a Mass Movement:
An Interview with the Sunrise Movements William Lawrence

Alexandra Tempus

INTRODUCTION

Radical Resistance and Future Imaginaries for Environmental Justice

Ana Isabel Baptista

THE ORIGIN STORIES OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (EJ) movement are as diverse as the movement itself. Environmental justice scholars Luke Cole and Sheila Foster describe the movement as a river fed by many tributaries, each representing the myriad social justice movementscivil rights, farmworker rights, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-toxics, occupational healththat have shaped, enriched, and expanded it. Within these tributaries, communities of color, Indigenous, and low-wealth people have long waged campaigns to improve their environments and began gaining visibility in the United States after the 1980s, when they mounted fierce local opposition to dumping and destruction in their backyards. Localized conflicts remain the common thread in the contemporary EJ movement, but they are also linked to networks of activists tackling environmental injustices globally.

The rich stories and images collected in The World We Need take us on a journey to seemingly disparate corners of the countryfrom Alaska to Puerto Rico to New York City. Yet they are woven together in the movement for environmental and climate justice, or EJ. In addition to these place-based, EJ movement narratives are also new efforts by environmental organizations like 350.org and emerging national groups like Sunrise to engage with the demands for environmental and climate justice. While these larger national environmental organizations fall outside the radical, locally rooted traditions of the EJ movement, their stories illuminate the possibilities for greater alignment across movements grounded in solidarity and mutuality. Together, these stories remind us that environmental justice is intersectionalmeaning that it can only be achieved by dismantling multiple, intersecting forms of systemic oppressionand that efforts to build a new world can bring profound hope and joy. Its a movement that seeks to transform the world, not just to clean it up. It both challenges the root causes of injustice and manifests radical, alternative futures.

Around the world, EJ communities are often situated at the fence lines and on the front lines of sites of pollution, extraction, and harmful industries. EJ organizations are typically small, underfunded, grassroots groups that are bound together by what scholar Giovanni DiChiro calls trans-local grassroots environmentalismnetworks of local activists fighting similar systems of oppression and exploitation throughout the world.

The term radical originates from the Latin term for roots, and the EJ movements radical turn casts its critical eye on the root causes of climate and environmental injusticethe social, economic, and political systems that drive many forms of oppression and exploitation locally and globally. Neoliberalism, settler colonialism, racism, and capitalism are global forces driving the destruction and exploitation of human and ecological systems. The central premise of environmental justice is that contemporary ecological and social crises are interconnected. Activists around the globe not only share this critical perspective, but also identity politics of racial, social, economic, and political marginalization.