Environmental justice began in the late 1980's, when citizens such as those led by Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Jr., in Warren County, NC, started defending their communities from the race- and class-based siting of landfills and other hazard-associated facilities. Voices of other civil and environmental rights activists rang out and gradually harmonized into choruses of environmental justice activists that soon came to also incorporate human and land rights, cultural survival, sovreignty, and sustainable development into their agendas. These activists set out to disallow the consistent overburden of environmental pollution within low income and minority communities in the United States.

The movement has branched out since the People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. established the Principles of Environmental Justice in 1991. Increasingly, people are realizing that there is a strong link between our health and the toxics we emit into our air, soil, and water. Members of distinct communities, such as Lois Gibbs of Love Canal, who spurred the creation of Superfund, the residents of Cancer Alley in Louisiana, and the residents of Chester County, Pennsylvania, are realizing how we are all on the same "sinking ship," as Jill Stein has called it. Citizens aware of this 'sinking ship' of simultaneously degrading human and environmental health are empowering others through education, running for political office, and recruiting new contributors. It is in our opinion that for environmental justice to be served, citizens must feel safe in the environment in which they inhabit. Environmental justice is not solely concerned with the qualities of the natural world. Environmental justice may be seen as an issue that concerns quality of life and how comfortable it is for an individual to inhabit a particular environment.

Over the semester, we have interviewed a mere handful of the activists within our state and local communities, and found that they are making a world of difference in the area of environmental justice. They empower people through education, motivate people to get involved in environmental justice by exposing the movement's challenges, and inspire people to take action by the knowledge of a common goal and supportive community, and by sharing success stories. They have inspired us to do the same!

This is a map of the locations of our star environmental justice activists.

 

There is hope; there are individuals and communities educating themselves and making a difference. We offer wise counsel:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone,
either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
-Benjamin Franklin

We invite you to read the content of our publication, so you may see how we have begun to do both.

 

- Co-editors Patricia A. Gallivan and Alison A. Kruger