environmental justice

Rural Organizing as a Spiritual Practice

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The difficult work of organizing builds solidarity based not on some received story that reinforces given identities and friend-enemy distinctions but on shared action that, in taking on oppressive power, forces that power to reveal itself beyond the identities and stories that mask it. It is a radical and risky option that won’t work without transforming organizers who leave the coastal urban enclaves as well as the rural people they encounter. It is a transformation of politics by way of spiritual practice.

Cap-and-trade? Not so Great if you are Black or Brown

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Environmental justice advocates have long warned that “cap-and-trade” — a market-based strategy to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions — could hurt low-income communities of color. A preliminary report on California’s cap-and-trade program shows they just might be right.

The Color of Pollution: How Environmental Contamination Targets People of Color

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The way that a person’s race – and to a lesser extent, wealth – determines who gets the benefits or the downsides of drilling and other industrial activity has a term. Depending on who you ask, it’s environmental justice or the more controversial term environmental racism.

How grassroots organizing came to the rescue in West Virginia’s water crisis

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While government and industry have been slow to respond to the needs of the people, some remarkable community organizing has taken place, drawing on West Virginia’s long, proud history of grassroots work for environmental and economic justice — including powerful work against the abuses of the chemical and coal industries responsible for the spill.