One of the most highly regarded environmentalists of the modern movement; Van Jones, did not forge his commitment while chained to a redwood. His eco-activism sprouted from a need for social justice, and the faces of at-risk inner-city youth for whom he wanted to provide a sustainable future.
“I was working on issues of juvenile justice, really trying to get kids out of jail and into jobs,” says Jones, the co-founder of the Oakland, California-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. “I wanted to make sure the jobs we were focused on were healthy for the community.“
Jones was keenly aware of the $970 billion green tech boom spurred on by national efforts to curb global warming and oil dependence. He recognized an opportunity to wed economic mobility with environmental sustainability, thus arriving at the goal of “green jobs not jails” for urban youth.
By training low-income and low-skilled workers in green industries, such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and green building, Jones saw a way to provide “pathways out of poverty.” Towards that end, he kicked off the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign four years ago. In addition, following the overwhelming response to the initiative in January 2008, he launched Green For All, a national organization advocating eco-equity via green jobs.
“We call it our eco-populist movement in that we are trying to use ecological solutions to also answer economic and social issues,” says Jones. “If you put up millions of solar panels to reduce pollution, it can also produce millions of jobs that can reduce poverty.“
This eco-populism is arguably the evolution of a long-fought, often-ignored segment of the green movement – environmental justice. A confluence of social and environmental activism, it addresses the disproportionate impact of pollution on low-income communities of color, frequently placing the cause within the African-American purview.
"Since in many cases our communities are on the frontline of environmental assault, African-Americans are deeply concerned and involved in environmental issues,” says Dr. Robert Bullard, an environmental sociology professor at Clark Atlanta University and the director of the school's Environmental Justice Resource Center. He co-authored a recent study, “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007,” examining “environmental racism.“
The study found that more than half of the nine million people residing within 1.8 miles of the country's hazardous waste facilities are minorities. Some 20 years after the first report, people of color continue to deal with the most noxious waste in the country.
Bullard was one of the first to identify the relationship between race, class, and environmental degradation in the late seventies. He began analyzing the location of garbage dumps in black neighborhoods, and identified a pattern of inequity. For a while, African-Americans comprised only 25 percent of the city's population, all of the municipal landfills were located in their communities.
Throughout the 1980s, Bullard traversed the South documenting similar occurrences, which he went on to write about in his seminal work, Dumping in Dixie. Published in 1990, the book shed light on a disturbing trend.
However, it was an event eight years before that Bullard says galvanized the grassroots movement. In the predominantly poor, black community of Warren County, N.C., state officials created a toxic waste landfill to dispose of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) illegally dumped along the roadway. Residents rallied around the issue, initiating a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience.
“It brought religious and civil rights leaders, environmentalists, academics and even little old grandmothers together to say ‘we're not going to take other people's toxins because our health matters,'” says Bullard. “From 1982 up until today we have seen a steady growth of environmentalism among African-Americans, from dealing with issues of toxins, lead poisoning, childhood asthma, and access to green space.“
In the wake of this work, a nationwide movement has emerged. From the Bronx to the Bayside, and Chi-town to H-town, there is a wealth of environmental justice groups pushing for eco-equity. As an example, the National Black Environmental Justice Network counts well over 100 groups in 33 states and the District of Columbia under its umbrella organization.
Nevertheless, even with this groundswell of interest and action, many mainstream environmentalist organizations have ignored the work of their comrades. Likewise, the media has been slow to recognize the efforts of these groups, leading the public to believe that blacks are absent from the green movement.
“We have had for at least 20 years a racially segregated environmental movement,” says Jones. “Unfortunately, mainstream organizations have not had the same passion to protect poor people as to protect animals.“
Certainly, many of the big green groups, like Greenpeace or the National Wildlife Federation, are the sphere of college-educated, middle-class whites, centered on conservation and climate change. More than one-third of mainstream green organizations and one-fifth of green government agencies cannot count a single person of color on staff, according to a University of Michigan study.
On the flipside, signing up with the green giants has been of little concern for many people of color. African-Americans polled in another University of Michigan study were largely concerned with environmental issues that had immediacy in their lives and communities. That is even more so the case for low-income people of color.
“Poor people have a list of priorities that consist of quality of life issues,” says Jerome Ringo, president of Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor unions, environmental groups, business leaders, and elected officials promoting green jobs. “They are more concerned about next month's rent or getting some decent healthcare than global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer or habitat protection.“
Equally important, he notes, is the fact that environmentalism was born out of a conservationist movement led by white men, who remain the dominant group.
That was certainly evident when Ringo joined the Louisiana Wildlife Federation in 1994. Of the group's 20,000-plus members at the time, Ringo says he was the only African-American. He came to the federation after years of organizing communities in protest of petrochemical toxins. Having toiled in the oil refineries of Louisiana for 20 years, Ringo grew disillusioned by the effects on the nearby communities.
His work eventually led him to the largest environmental organization in the state, where he realized that general movement was not diverse. “People of color, who were the most impacted by poor environmental practices were the least involved,” says Ringo, who set out on a personal mission to diversify the environmental movement.
Rising in the ranks of the federation and appointed chairman in 2005, Ringo was the first African-American leader of a major national environmental group. While the achievement was monumental, the activist admits that overall diversity has been a slow-going process. Still, he is hopeful and with good reason. After concluding his term, Thomas G. Gonzales filled Ringo's seat and is the group's first Hispanic chairman.
A growing number of major groups are seeking new allies and attempting to make inroads in the under-tapped environmental justice movement. Since 1992, the Washington, D.C.-based Sierra Club has incorporated the cause into its mission, offering its assistance to community organizers.
“It's been an organic process,” says Leslie Fields, program director of the Sierra Club's environmental justice division. “We only work with communities at their request because we are not trying to speak for anybody.” The director notes that the 116-year-old conservation group has an internal diversity council and provides a workshop on dismantling racism for one million members.
“Organizations are moving in the right direction,” Ringo says. “Now, are they moving fast enough? No. It is more evolutionary than revolutionary. I wish the conservation movement looked more like America today. It would not only benefit the communities but also the organizations because there is strength in numbers, and there is strength in diversity and inclusiveness.“
This lack of diversity, say observers, has contributed to the exclusion of environmental justice as part of the agenda of the big green groups. Many do not see the relevance of community-centric environmentalism to the overall movement, say insiders.
"If we really looked at a map of our country for specific point sources for greenhouse gases, and some of the most egregious uses of our landscapes that affect our water, and our air, you would be looking at poor communities of color, and the facilities located there,” says Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx. “If you go to the middle of the South Bronx, where you will see people living on truck routes; you will learn of the effects on our children's health, and recognize that those are also point sources for greenhouse gases. If we dealt with these issues in those communities first, and invested heavily in renewable and alternative energy, then we would see a lot less damage in our wild areas. The earth is warming because of places that engage in that kind activity.“
Carter's seven-year-old organization advocates a holistic approach to environmentalism, pulling together strains from every segment of the movement. The non-profit fights the inequitable distribution of waste facilities, power plants, and sewage treatment sites in an area with one of the worst rates of asthma in the country. Simultaneously, it supports initiatives like Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training, a free 10-week program that certifies participants in practices like green roof installation and maintenance.
For Carter — also a co-founder of Green For All — and other eco-equity advocates, there is an intertwining of socioeconomic and climate justice. For many, nowhere was that more apparent than with the devastation following Hurricane Katrina.
“When you look at Katrina, the intensity of that storm was the result of the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico,” a direct effect of global warming, says Ringo, himself an evacuee. “And when you turned on the TV and saw people wading in the water up to their necks, those were black people, those were poor people. So even with global warming, the people that suffer the greatest impact are the poor.“
The storm converged with the agendas of climate change and environmental justice, making tangible the effects of the former. In the aftermath, groups like Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) began working to rebuild the city in a sustainable way.
"Our primary concern has been making sure that people who are coming back to the community can return to a clean and safe environment,” says Dr. Beverly Wright, DSCEJ founder, and executive director of the 15-year-old organization. Based in New Orleans, the group launched initiatives to help residents clean up their neighborhoods in an eco-friendly manner.
Wright, who is also the co-chair of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, is currently working on a book with Bullard, detailing the role of race and the environment in the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.
Before the storm, Wright's organization provided hazmat training to a number of young people. Those trainees were able to use the skills they learned to obtain jobs assisting with the rebuilding efforts. The DSCEJ has long made the connection between sustainability and economic mobility, offering such training as lead and asbestos abatement. The center boasts a 90 percent job placement rate, says Wright.
Across the country, the economic potential of eco-conscious employment is taking heart, largely thanks to the green-collar crusade. Accordingly, Jones is witnessing a shift toward greater inclusion in the environmentalism movement “as it becomes clearer that we can't solve the problems of the polar bears without solving the problems of poor kids in the inner cities.“
“The solution for both the mainstream environmental movement and those who are concerned about environmental justice is the same,” Jones says. “We need a green economy that is inclusive and strong enough to lead people out of poverty. That is where we are headed now to a common destination for both wings of the environmentalism movement.“
In December 2007, the green-collar campaign scored a major victory when Congress passed the Green Jobs Act under the energy bill. The legislation authorizes $125 million annually to train workers in a range of green industries. “Once we get the act fully funded, we will be able to train about 30,000 to 35,000 people every year,” says Jones. He is particularly enthused that 20 percent of the funding is dedicated toward employment support systems, such as childcare or remedial education.
“For somebody who is desperately low-income and has six kids, trying to get through a six-month training program itself is hard. And that's how people wind up stuck even when there are job-training programs,” he says.
Jones stresses the importance of the participation of people of color in the green economy, not just for sake of wealth accumulation, but also as an embrace of that which is culturally inherent.
“The idea that caring about the earth and being a good steward of the earth is a white thing is a bizarre concept,” he says. “Africans and indigenous people have always honored the earth. This is our own wisdom finally coming back into world consciousness, and we need to be very clear and proud.“