EJ News & Events
Engaging the campus with environmental justice's most pressing issues in California’s Central Valley.
Thursday, May 15, 2008 | 11:00 am - Noon
Air Quality Activism, Environmental Justice and Spaces of Exclusion in the Big Bend Region, 1995-2007
Francisco Dóñez
Energy and Resources Group
University of California, Berkeley
The Barn, Conference Room (Where?)
University of California, Davis
This project examines the emergence of regional air quality activism in rural west Texas as a case of intersecting landscape protection and environmental justice imperatives. Environmental activism within the Big Bend region was spurred by the phenomenon of visible haze in Big Bend National Park. Activists first became active in 1996, taking haze pollution--and its impacts on the region’s spectacular landscape and tourist economy--as their founding issue. In subsequent years, local residents organized to around several additional air pollution-related issues, including the siting of a new rock crushing plant and a proposed NAFTA highway corridor passing through the region. To deal with these perceived threats, activists adopted a Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) strategy, directed to excluding air pollution sources and impacts from the scenic Big Bend.
However, there are also hints of an environmental justice argument in these regional efforts. Specifically, some community organizers contend that the Big Bend region is home to a significant and growing population of people--many of them retirees--with preexisting respiratory problems, who relocated to the region precisely because of its relatively pristine air quality. They argue that because of this vulnerable population, the region's air quality should be held to a higher standard. This argument echoes environmental justice arguments on the coping ability of vulnerable populations, though Big Bend activists do not use that term to describe their efforts.
These vulnerability claims are strictly delimited in spatial terms, excluding nearby communities that are less invested in "environmental" protection, but that also have potential EJ constituencies. Nevertheless, these claims point toward possible fruitful engagements on air pollution between local, landscape-oriented environmental activism and broader environmental and social movements.
Francisco Dóñez is a doctoral candidate in the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley. He also works on the Air Division staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, in San Francisco.
Monday, March 3, 2008 | 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Explaining Disease and Marking Race in California's Central Valley, 1850-1990
Presentation and book signing with Linda Nash
MU II, Memorial Union Building
University of California, Davis
On March 3 Linda Nash will speak at UC Davis on "Explaining Disease and Marking Race in California's Central Valley, 1850-1990." Taking us from nineteenth-century fears of miasmas and faith in wilderness cures to the recent era of chemical pollution and cancer clusters, Nash charts how Americans have connected their diseases to race and place as well as dirt and germs. Nash, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Library of Medicine, and she serves on the editorial boards of Isis and Environmental Justice. Her recent book, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge, has been awarded the John Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the Pacific Coast Branch Award of the American Historical Association and the Serra-Keller Prize of the Western Association of Women Historians.
Among the most far-reaching effects of the modern environmental movement was the widespread acknowledgment that human beings were inescapably part of a larger ecosystem. With her new book, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge, Linda Nash gives us a wholly original and much longer history of "ecological" ideas as that history unfolded in California's Central Valley.
This event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the UC Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment; Environmental Justice Project; Department of History; Davis Humanities Institute; Consortium for Women’s Research; and the Center for History, Society and Culture.
Thursday, October 25, 2007 | 3:10 - 5:00 pm
In conjunction with the campus/community book project on The Devil's Highway:
Immigrant and Refugee Leadership and Environmental Justice
MU II, Memorial Union Building
University of California, Davis
Moderator
Julie Sze, Director, Environmental Justice Project (EJP), John Muir Institute of the Environment
Panelists
Environmental Justice Movement Building in the Central Valley
Raoul Liévanos, Sociology, EJP/Center for the Study of Regional Change, UC Davis
Immigrant Communities Mobilizing for Water Rights
Susana de Anda, Lead organizer, Community Water Center
Asian and Pacific Islander Immigrants and Refugees Speak Out on Environmental Justice
Torm Nompraseurt, Laotian Organizing Project, Asian Pacific Environmental Network
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Co-sponsored by the Environmental Justice Project of the John Muir Institute of the Environment and the Center for the Study of Regional Change
Video of the event (1 hr, 35 minutes):
Play in QuickTime, Play in Windows Media Player
Tuesday, May 8, 2007 | 4 - 6 pm
Partnerships for Environmental Justice: Fish Contamination in the Delta
242 Asmundson Hall
University of California, Davis
A workshop featuring:
LaDonna Williams, People for Children’s Health and Environmental Justice
Laura Leonelli, Southeast Asian Assistance Center
Fraser Shilling, UC Davis, Environmental Science and Policy and lead author of the California Watershed Assessment Manual
Facilitator:
Jonathan London, UC Davis, Human and Community Development
Summary: LaDonna Williams—a community activist and mother of six living near a Pacific, Gas and Electric Company superfund site—thought contaminated soil was the biggest problem her community faced. Then she found out about the fish. Since her family regularly ate large amounts of fish from the waters near her Richmond home, she wonders if it was fish contamination that caused her father’s death. She will never know for sure. Fraser Shilling, a researcher at UC Davis, approached Laura Leonelli to find translators for an important message to Southeast Asians providing Delta fish to their pregnant wives and children. Most of them had never heard of “mercury,” nor did they know or even believe it was harmful. While CALFED—a government led group of 30 water organizations—studied the issues, communities who depend on local fish for food were unaware and uninvolved in the activities that presumed to act in their best interest. This panel discussion describes how community members, government agencies and universities engaged with policymakers in Delta communities in an attempt to bring all the stakeholders to the table to reduce the risks of eating local fish.
Video of the event (1 hr, 32 minutes):
Play in QuickTime (MOV), Play in QuickTime (MPEG-4), Play in Windows Media Player, Play in Real Player
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 | 4 - 6 pm
“Noxious New York,” Book Discussion and Signing with Author Julie Sze
East Conference Room
Memorial Union (MU)
University of California, Davis
Author Julie Sze will discuss her new book that touches on how racial minority and low-income communities often suffer disproportionate effects of urban environmental problems. Environmental justice advocates argue that these communities are on the front lines of environmental and health risks.
In Noxious New York, Julie Sze analyses the culture, politics and history of environmental justice activism in New York City within the larger context of privatization, deregulation and globalization. She tracks urban planning and environmental health activism in four gritty New York neighborhoods; Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and Williamsburg sections, West Harlem and the South Bronx.
In these communities, activism flourished in the 1980s and 1990s in response to economic decay and a concentration of noxious incinerators, solid waste transfer stations and power plants. Sze describes the emergence of local campaigns organized around the issues of asthma, garbage and energy systems, and how, in each neighborhood, activists framed their arguments in the vocabulary of environmental justice.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 | 3 - 6 pm
New Directions for Environmental Justice Policy and Advocacy in the Central Valley
242 Asmundson Hall
University of California, Davis
An interactive panel featuring:
The Honorable Dean Florez, California State Senate,
District 16
Enrique Manzanilla, Director, US EPA Region 9,
Communities and Ecosystems Division
Debbie Davis, Legislative Analyst,
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
Rey Leon, Senior Policy Analyst,
Latino Issues Forum
Summary: Communities depend on clean water for drinking, bathing and fishing. Debbie Davis is part of a coalition trying to help low-income communities and those of color protect and restore their water. “Thirsty for justice,” the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water is creating a better model for equitable policymaking on state and local water boards. State Senator Florez represents the interests of this constituency as he haggles with his Latino colleague, Los Angeles Mayor Tony Villaraigosa and author of the Green LA Climate Action Plan. LA legally dumps truckloads of human waste in Kern County each day, creating unknown impacts on local groundwater. His struggle pits urban interests against rural, with urban interest capturing “per capita” funding for environmental management at the expenses of rural communities that become polluted with exported urban wastes. This panel discusses environmental inequities in water, soil and air, and the policies at California’s Environmental Protection Agency that makes science a higher priority than people. The three pillars of environmental justice, the precautionary principle, public participation, and community health impacts have engaged environmental justice activism in Kettleman City, Avenal, Arvin, Delano, Lamont, Orange Cove and other Latino communities in the Central Valley.
Video of the event (2 hrs, 17 minutes):
Play in QuickTime, Play in Windows Media Player, Play in Real Player
Monday, December 11, 2006 | 4 - 6 pm
The Riskscape and the Colorline: Engaging California Communities in Science-based Advocacy
Raquel Morello-Frosch
Center for Environmental Studies & Department of Community Health
School of Medicine
Brown University
And
Manuel Pastor
Latin American & Latino Studies
Co-Director, Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community
University of California at Santa Cruz
242 Asmundson Hall
University of California, Davis
Summary: Manuel Pastor and Rachel Morello-Frosch produce data that activists and justice organizations can use as evidence to resist environmental risks. Pastor and Morello-Frosch presented data showing that the distribution of cancer risk from airborne toxins, primarily diesel particulates, is significantly lower for white communities at most income levels. Communities of predominately low income Asians, African Americans and Latinos have a 25 percent higher cancer risk than white populations at equivalent income levels. As annual income increases beyond $100,000, the gap narrows but is still five to ten percent higher for these groups than in white communities. Race was indicated in their studies, not as a genetic marker, but as an indicator of social and political power. Racial data provides activists with a basis for resistance because discrimination on the basis of race is illegal while discrimination based on class or poverty is not. Pastor and Morello’s analysis discovered that race had important effects on the placement and concentration of waste facilities and other aspects of land use related to toxic exposures.
Monday, November 13, 2006 | 4 - 6 pm
Cal/EPA's Vision and Plans to Achieve Environmental Justice
Shankar Prasad
Deputy Secretary for Science & Environmental Justice
California Environmental Protection Agency
242 Asmundson Hall
University of California, Davis
Summary: Dr. Shankar Prasad reviewed his progress as head of a group of 17 individuals charged with improving environmental justice policies and funding state projects. Prasad estimated that about 50 percent of environment injustice is the result of poor decision making in land use. A prime example is the proximity of low income housing to railways and freeways, exposing communities to high levels of diesel-fuel particulates. Prasad facilitated an agency debate of the “precautionary principle,” a prescription for action when “reasonable” health risks are presented that cannot be proven by undisputable scientific evidence. Discomfort with the meaning of the word reasonable is a primary point of contention for this policy, which is more accepted in European nations. The trend toward precaution is partly due to widespread increases in the incidence of cancer, now estimated at one in four within developed nations. These risks are seldom attributed to single sources of toxins. Prasad acknowledged that estimating “cumulative risks” from exposure to multiple sources, rather than a single source, is not well understood. While the US EPA and other government agencies are beginning to fund research in cumulative risks, chemical regulation is still mainly based on isolating single levels of specific carcinogens. Another political disadvantage of precautionary programs is that they pose considerable challenges for estimating the value of environmental justice research. It is difficult to estimate the value of protection until the risks are well documented. These challenges keep the budget small for environmental justice projects.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006 | 4 - 6 pm
Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice
David Pellow
Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies Department
Director, California Cultures in Comparative Perspective
University of California, San Diego
242 Asmundson Hall
University of California, Davis
Summary: David Pellow began his overview of environmental justice with the observation that becoming “modern” meant being able to manipulate natural and social worlds. Pellow’s research shows how nation building and economic development has been possible in part by tolerating toxic byproducts. Politics create differentials in environmental pollution, allowing some of society to become wealthy at the expense of putting others at risk. Pellow observed that the communities unable to mount organized resistance face the greatest risks. Ultimately, these risks cycle back like a boomerang to be shared by all members of society, in the form of higher incidence of cancer, respiratory diseases, and specific diseases of exposure. Pellow coauthored “The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers and the High-Tech Global Economy,” which described resistance to exposure from hazardous chemicals in the computer industries. He also documented mismanagement of computer waste exported to landfills in India and China by manufacturer-sponsored computer recycling.