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Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 15:14:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Milton Takei <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ecopolitics Discussion List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Environmental justice
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To ecopolitics subscribers:
I decided to send you the following message despite its length. I
thought it might be suitable for the course packets of professors.
--Milton Takei
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Date sent: 06 Jul 1999 11:13:48
Send reply to: Conference "env.justice" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Robert Bullard interview
To: Recipients of conference <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Here is the full text of an interview with Dr. Robert Bullard, one of the
pioneering scholars and activists in the environmental justice movement.
This is completely anti-copyright and may reproduced and distributed at
will.
Interview With Robert Bullard
by errol schweizer
2877 words
1st draft
Robert Bullard is one of the major researchers and organizers in the
environmental justice movement. This interview is anticopyright and may be
reproduced and distributed at will
ES: What is the environmental justice movement?
RB: The environmental justice movement has basically redefined what
environmentalism is all about. It basically says that the environment is
everything: where we live, work, play, go to school, as well as the
physical and natural world. And so we can't separate the physical
environment from the cultural environment. We have to talk about making
sure that justice is integrated throughout all of the stuff that we do.
What the environmental justice movement is about is trying to address all
of the inequities that result from human settlement, industrial facility
siting and industrial development. What we've tried to do over the last
twenty years is educate and assist groups in organizing and mobilizing,
empowering themselves to take charge of their lives, their community and
their surroundings. It's more of a concept of trying to address power
imbalances, lack of political enfranchisement, and to redirect resources
so that we can create some healthy, liveable and sustainable types of
models. ES: How have environmental justice groups organized themselves?
RB: For the most part, a lot of the small grassroots groups operate from a
bottom up model. They don't have boards of directors and large budgets and
large staffs but they do operate with the idea that everyone has a role
and we are all equal in this together. The environmental justice groups are
more egalitarian, most of them are led by women, and its more democratic.
Not to say its perfect but it does bring out the idea that power rests in
all of us and when we operate as a collective, that's when we are most
powerful and we move forward as a unit, as a body and not necessarily with
a hierarchy. But I think a lot of it is when you can have an issue that
can mobilize, organize and create the catalyst that gets thousands of
people at a meeting, saying this is what we want and we're not gonna back
up till we get it. I think that's where the environmental justice movement
is more of a grassroots movement of ordinary people who may not see
themselves as traditional environmentalists, but are just as much
concerned about the environment as someone who may be a member of the
Sierra Club or the Audubon Society. ES: How has the environmental justice
movement come into conflict with these traditional, white environmental
groups? RB: There's been a lot of conflict and misunderstanding about what
the role of some of the green groups are as it relates to environmental
justice and particularly working in communities of color. And what we're
saying is that its just one environment. You're talking about planet
earth, where we live, and if in fact we are going to have a global
movement for environmental justice, we have to understand what environment
is and what the agendas are. A lot of grassroots groups and communities of
color are saying that we have to work in our communities and take care of
educating and empowering our people before we can talk about having other
people do stuff for us. I think to a large extent a lot of grassroots
groups have come head-on with a lot of the larger groups that have not
understood exactly what environmental justice is. We are saying that
environmental justice incorporates the idea that we are just as much
concerned about wetlands, birds and wilderness areas, but we're also
concerned with urban habitats, where people live in cities, about
reservations, about things that are happening along the US-Mexican border,
about children that are being poisoned by lead in housing and kids playing
outside in contaminated playgrounds. So we have had to struggle to get
these issues on the radar on a lot of the large environmental groups.
We've made a lot of progress since 1990 when a letter was written to them
charging them with environmental racism, elitism, looking at their staff,
looking at their boards and saying that we need to talk. And there's been
some talking and sharing and working together along the way. We've made
progress but there's still a lot of progress that needs to be made because
to a large extent the environmental movement, the more
conservation/preservation movement, really reflects the larger society.
And society is racist. And so we can't expect a lot of our organizations
not to somehow be affected by that. We're not saying that people are evil
and that these organizations are setting out to do harm, but we're saying
that we have to educate ourselves and learn about each other. We have to
cross those boundaries and go on the other side of the tracks, go to the
meetings downtown and learn from each other. That's what we've been doing
for the last twenty years: trying to get a handle on how we can work
together in a principled way. And in 1991 we had the first national people
of color environmental leadership summit and we developed 17 principles of
environmental justice. Basically, how can we as people of color, working
class people and poor people work on agendas that at the same time may
conflict with the larger agendas of the big groups. And what we're saying
is that we may not agree on 100 percent of the things but we agree on more
things than we disagree on. And I think that we have to agree to work on
the things we are in agreement on and somehow work through those things
where there are disagreements. ES: What kind of role has race played in
the siting of toxic facilities in this country? RB: Race is still the
potent factor for predicting where Locally Unwanted Land Uses (LULU's) go.
A lot of people say its class, but race and class are intertwined. Because
the society is so racist and because racism touches every institution-
employment, housing, education, facility siting, land use decisions, you
can't really extract race out of decisions that are being made by persons
who are in power and the power arrangements are unequal. When we talk
about the institution of racism as it exists in environmental policy,
enforcement, land use, zoning and all those things. All of that is part of
the environment and we have to make sure that our brothers and sisters who
are in environmental groups understand that's what we are saying.
Environmental justice is not a social program, its not affirmative
actions, its about justice. and until we get justice in environmental
protection, justice in terms of enforcement of regulations, we will not
even talk about achieving sustainable development or sustainability issues
until we talk about justice. a lot of the groups that are trying to
address these issues in the absence of dealing with race may be fooling
themselves. When we talk about what's happening along the US-Mexican
boarder and the colonias and the maquilas and the devastation that is
happening along the border, the health conditions of children and workers
and not understand that it's also related to our consumption patterns,
consumption behavior and who has the most money to consume the most. And
those are issues that may be unpopular when we sit in rooms and talk but I
think that's how the environmental justice movement is forcing these
issues on the table and really getting a lot of people to think about how
we can start to address the disparities and the inequities and the
privileged position that some people have only because of the skin color
that they were born in. And that's where the justice issues come into
account. Now all of the issues of environmental racism and environmental
justice don't just deal with people of color. We are just as much
concerned with inequities in Appalachia, for example, where the whites are
basically dumped on because of lack of economic and political clout and
lack of having a voice to say "no" and that's environmental injustice. So
we're trying to work with groups across the political spectrums;
democrats, republicans, independents, on the reservations, in the barrios,
in the ghettos, on the border and internationally to see that we address
these issues in a comprehensive manner. ES: Are you seeing more of a
convergence between the traditional, white environmental groups and the
people of color movements? RB: We haven't seen a total convergence; what
we've seen is a better understanding of the various sides that are there,
the various elements, the various components and priorities that are
there. And for a long time historically, for example, black people in the
south were not even allowed to visit state parks, because of Jim Crow and
segregation. And somehow we were blamed for not having appreciation for
state parks. I mean, it wasn't our faults, we couldn't go to them! So
we're finding as the more urban folks get to visit parks and wilderness
areas and are able to appreciate that these are national treasures and not
just treasures for people that have money to visit them, its everybody's.
We all pay taxes. And so we are seeing more and more young people being
able to take field trips to see the beauty of nature. And more and more
people who are in environmental groups are now beginning to understand
that what happens in cities also impacts their lives. So we can't just let
cities buckle under and fall into this sinkhole. We have to talk about
this convergence of urban, suburban and rural and talk about the quality
of life that exists and talk about the issue of urban sprawl. Basically
everybody is impacted by sprawl. People who live in cities face
disinvestment, in suburbs with the trees being knocked down, chewing up
farmland. So you talk about this convergence, a lot of it is happening
now, but it has to happen with the understanding that we have to include
everybody, that it has to be an inclusive movement or it won't work. ES:
How can you pose these issues to people when organizing in low income and
politically disenfranchised communities, especially communities with very
little open space or access to natural areas? RB: The first line is that
we have to start early. We have to educate young people that it is their
right to have access to open space, green space, parks, outdoors, as
opposed to people thinking that their supposed to be living in an area
where the only park is a basketball court with no net. We have to give
people this idea that it's their right to have access to open space and
green space and we have to provide funds to make sure that we get them
early on and take them on field trips, take them to a wilderness area, a
refuge, a reserve, to a park-a real park and to integrate this information
into our curriculum. In your geography course, in your social studies
course, or science course make sure you integrate this into it, and have
videos that you can show, but ultimately the best example that you can
have is that young people visit these places and see for themselves what
nature is.
If you talk about people of color, African Americans for example,
we are land-based people. Africans are land-based people. Native Americans
are land-based peoples. We have been pushed off land and we now find
ourselves in cities but that doesn't mean that the institutional memory of
what the land was to us and how we are tied to the land and how our whole
existence was based on community and being tied to the land. And so I
think we've gotten away from that but the reintroduction of those concepts
can be achieved if we make a concerted effort at trying to do that. And
some of that is being done if you look at the environmental education
curriculum that is integrating environmental justice into it. We're trying
to do that but there is a whole lot of resistance. Traditional
environmental education is to basically do it by the numbers the way its
been done for the last 50 years and thats not working. Its not working for
our communities. ES: What is the EJ perspective on the population/border
debate within the Sierra Club? RB: (Heheheheh) Well, you know... My
position- and I can only speak for myself, is that immigration is not the
problem in terms of environmental degradation. If we talk about having no
borders and addressing issues of economic justice- we can address lots of
the environmental injustices around the world. If we talk about respecting
life and respecting people and respecting communities, if we do that we
can end a lot of the international friction that results from
transboundary waste trades, and imbalances created as a result of NAFTA-
people call it "ShAFTA". We can do a lot of things and I think this whole
anti-immigrant wave is just another wedge that is driven between folks
that are organizing and mobilizing. I don't think it will work. This
country is changing demographically and it is scaring a lot of people. The
year 2050 is supposed to be the magic year when people of color will be in
the majority in this country. But at one point in time this country was
people of color, it was indigenous people. So when we talk about these
issues, we have to put them in the context of the long term. We need to
address things within US borders but at the same time we cannot export
problems abroad and create problems in areas that we know do not have the
capacity to handle garbage and environmental waste and the risky
technologies that are being exported and the unsustainable development
policies that are being exported abroad, most of it by our government. So
I think that environmental justice folks are saying that we are going to
have to work across borders and those ties are already there and it is
just a matter of making sure that we strengthen those and we expand and
keep reaching out. ES: How has the environmental justice movement attacked
the mode of production, the way that things are made, as well as the fact
that things are being dumped on people. RB: Well, as a matter of fact,
there was a meeting in Detroit [recently] on clean production. And what
we're saying is that clean production can be a major component in the
environmental justice movement because if we are talking about clean
production, changing the way things are made and what goes into the
manufacturing of products, we can save a lot of headaches for communities
that are surrounded by polluting industries. So if we clean up the
production and a lot of communities that are living on the fencelines with
these facilities, a lot of their problems can be solved immediately. So EJ
and clean production go hand in hand. What we are saying is that we have
to make sure that as these new movements come along we integrate EJ into
it. We've done that with the clean production movement. ES: EF! considers
itself to be the radical end of the environmental movement. What can
EF!ers do to further the vision of the environmental justice movement? RB:
Well, you know, the EJ movement is an inclusive movement. What we are
saying is that everything on the spectrum as it relates to siting,
pollution, industrial contamination in communities, non-sustainable
development, non-sustainable patterns of production, I think everybody has
a role in that. The EJ movement is an anti-racist movement and I don't
think you can get any more radical than fighting racism. Because when you
talk about fighting racism, you make a lot of enemies because racism
permeates everything. I think Earth First! can really embrace a lot of the
environmental justice principles that we have and see that there are a lot
of things that environmental justice groups are advocating and trying to
implement that cut cross some of the issues that you're addressing. And
I'm not saying that you are gonna get a lot people of color inundating
your organization [sic] with membership but we can work together without
being members and that's where I think the collaboration, coalitions and
signing onto supporting specific campaigns has really made a difference in
some of the more recent campaign victories that we've had on EJ.
The fact is that the environmental justice movement over the last
ten years has really matured onto developing policies and issue statements
and working on issues ranging from housing, transportation, health to
economic development, community revitalization, you name it. I think that
the mere fact that we have a number of environmental justice centers
around the country now that are working with communities- not organizing
communities- but working with, in support of and providing technical
assistance and training, we've been able to do some things that no thought
we could do 10-15 years ago and thats really making a difference when we
talk about working across disciplines and geographic, racial and economic
spectrums, we're the most powerful and thats when we are the strongest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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