Poverty & the Environment: A Grist Special Series
Poverty & the Environment
An article index for our seven-week series
13 Feb 2006
Weeks One & Two: Land and People
Week Three: Consumption
Week Four: The Midpoint
Week Five: The Movement
Week Six: The Good Fight
Week Seven: Looking Ahead
What constitutes "the environment" in American environmentalism? The iconic images of the movement -- California's redwoods, Yosemite's Half Dome, the arches at Zion -- suggest one answer: the environment as wilderness, a pristine domain to be protected from human incursion. But, almost by definition, that's not the environment we actually live in. The first two weeks of this special series on Poverty & the Environment will focus on the land where we do live -- specifically, the land consigned to the poorest among us. This is a land where people live near the freeway or next to a power station or miles from public transit; a land where the neighbors include landfills, oil refineries, nuclear-waste repositories, factory farms. This is a whole different kind of environment -- but one that is no less American, and no less deserving of a movement to protect and transform it.
Flat-screen TVs, iPods, plane tickets, supersized fries, tall skinny lattes, North Face jackets, motor homes, second homes: what (and how) we consume speaks volumes about our class background, our relationship to the environment, and what those two things have to do with each other. In week three of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment, we look at class, consumption, and environmentalism -- from the price tag of environment-affecting essentials to the difference between "simple living" and simply surviving. Plus: photos of trash (no, really!) and an artist's take on how the other half lives.
This week, the midpoint of our series, seemed like a good time to step back and take the long view. Hence, we present Matthew Klingle and Joseph Taylor's look at the history of the environmental movement and how it came to be so white and affluent. Meanwhile, Oliver Bernstein talks about what happens when that movement rubs up against a very different environmental ethos, in a story on the Texas-Mexico border. Also, Tomasita González answers questions about her environmental-justice work with the SouthWest Organizing Project.
While the mainstream environmental movement is just waking up to the relationship between environmental and economic devastation, the environmental-justice movement has sought from its founding to protect the environment while simultaneously securing the political, economic, and cultural liberation of all people. This week, we feature an interview with one of EJ's founding fathers, Robert Bullard, who has spent the last two decades helping to organize and lead the fight for environmental equity. We also feature some of the movement's youngest members -- children from Houston's impoverished Fifth Ward, who used art and photography to document the Superfund site that is despoiling their community -- as well as other voices pushing for environmental justice.
Poverty, inequality, environmental devastation -- not exactly the most fun party in town, is it? Our magazinely mission forbids us from indulging in all gloom all the time, so in this penultimate week of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment, we turn our attention to the good fight: to the people, ideas, and strategies that are effectively countering economic and environmental injustice. We profile Sheryll Cashin, who is rethinking one of the root issues of the civil-rights movement -- integration -- as the key to improved environmental and social justice. We take you on a tour of the Sokaogon Chippewa tribal lands in Mole Lake, Wis., to profile their efforts to halt the reopening of a nearby mine -- by buying it. And, to lighten the gloom in a different way, we turn to the movies, and to the burning question of why, from Silkwood to Erin Brockovich to North Country, downtrodden white women who fight environmental battles make such darn compelling film.
This last week of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment doesn't so much wrap things up as open them up. We bring you a dialogue between a mainstream environmental leader (Frances Beinecke, president of Natural Resources Defense Council) and an environmental-justice leader (Eric Mann, of the Labor/Community Strategy Center), who together try to figure out how to move forward on securing a just and sustainable future. We hear firsthand about the challenges of doing so in an opinion piece by Na'Taki Osborne about trying to save Atlanta, Ga., from its reputation as the sprawl capital of the South. We look beyond our borders to the problem of global slums as a devastating nexus of environmental and economic catastrophe. Finally, we're proud to bring you the last in our series of virtual walking tours -- this one, a trip around Pacoima, Calif., a community of recent immigrants who are working with their better-off neighbors to form a multi-language, multicultural coalition to clean up the environment.
Week Three: Consumption
Week Four: The Midpoint
Week Five: The Movement
Week Six: The Good Fight
Week Seven: Looking Ahead
Weeks One & Two: Land and People
What constitutes "the environment" in American environmentalism? The iconic images of the movement -- California's redwoods, Yosemite's Half Dome, the arches at Zion -- suggest one answer: the environment as wilderness, a pristine domain to be protected from human incursion. But, almost by definition, that's not the environment we actually live in. The first two weeks of this special series on Poverty & the Environment will focus on the land where we do live -- specifically, the land consigned to the poorest among us. This is a land where people live near the freeway or next to a power station or miles from public transit; a land where the neighbors include landfills, oil refineries, nuclear-waste repositories, factory farms. This is a whole different kind of environment -- but one that is no less American, and no less deserving of a movement to protect and transform it.
- Introduction to the series
- Facts and figures on poverty in the United States
- A virtual walking tour through Columbia, Miss., with Charlotte Keys of Jesus People Against Pollution
- Community-garden activist Steve Frillmann of Green Guerillas in NYC answers questions
- How developing countries prosper and get greener at the same time
- Could a Western wildfire be the country's next Katrina?
- How a California group is keeping communities safe from wildlife
- Mountaintop-removal mining is devastating Appalachia, but residents are fighting back
- The faces and voices of West Virginians battered by mountaintop removal
- An excerpt from Missing Mountains, a new book about mountaintop-removal mining
- Evon Peter, director of Native Movement and former Gwich'in chief, answers questions
- Poultry producers are ravaging the rural South
- How the feds make bad-for-you food cheaper than healthful fare
- A farmers' market helps brighten a Brooklyn neighborhood
- Community forests help revitalize hard-hit New England towns
Week Three: Consumption
Flat-screen TVs, iPods, plane tickets, supersized fries, tall skinny lattes, North Face jackets, motor homes, second homes: what (and how) we consume speaks volumes about our class background, our relationship to the environment, and what those two things have to do with each other. In week three of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment, we look at class, consumption, and environmentalism -- from the price tag of environment-affecting essentials to the difference between "simple living" and simply surviving. Plus: photos of trash (no, really!) and an artist's take on how the other half lives.
- A virtual walking tour through the South Bronx with Omar Freilla of Green Worker Cooperatives
- Alan Hipólito, champion of green jobs for low-income communities, answers questions
- An anthropologist muses on "simple living" vs. simply surviving
- An interactive illustration of how the other half lives
- Photos of Louisiana communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina
- Stats on how much Americans pay for essentials
Week Four: The Midpoint
This week, the midpoint of our series, seemed like a good time to step back and take the long view. Hence, we present Matthew Klingle and Joseph Taylor's look at the history of the environmental movement and how it came to be so white and affluent. Meanwhile, Oliver Bernstein talks about what happens when that movement rubs up against a very different environmental ethos, in a story on the Texas-Mexico border. Also, Tomasita González answers questions about her environmental-justice work with the SouthWest Organizing Project.
- Environmental-justice activist Tomasita González answers questions
- How environmental issues look different on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border
- A look back at how the environmental movement got its elitist tinge
Week Five: The Movement
While the mainstream environmental movement is just waking up to the relationship between environmental and economic devastation, the environmental-justice movement has sought from its founding to protect the environment while simultaneously securing the political, economic, and cultural liberation of all people. This week, we feature an interview with one of EJ's founding fathers, Robert Bullard, who has spent the last two decades helping to organize and lead the fight for environmental equity. We also feature some of the movement's youngest members -- children from Houston's impoverished Fifth Ward, who used art and photography to document the Superfund site that is despoiling their community -- as well as other voices pushing for environmental justice.
- Francisca Porchas, a clean-bus campaigner in L.A., answers questions
- An interview with Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice
- Robert Bullard explains why the response to Katrina wasn't a fluke
- A little time in the lab could teach big business how to help the poor
- A plan to spruce up D.C.'s Anacostia River has some residents anxious
- Houston kids living near a Superfund site tell their stories in pictures
- Multiple Chemical Sensitivities can drive sufferers into poverty as well as ill health
Week Six: The Good Fight
Poverty, inequality, environmental devastation -- not exactly the most fun party in town, is it? Our magazinely mission forbids us from indulging in all gloom all the time, so in this penultimate week of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment, we turn our attention to the good fight: to the people, ideas, and strategies that are effectively countering economic and environmental injustice. We profile Sheryll Cashin, who is rethinking one of the root issues of the civil-rights movement -- integration -- as the key to improved environmental and social justice. We take you on a tour of the Sokaogon Chippewa tribal lands in Mole Lake, Wis., to profile their efforts to halt the reopening of a nearby mine -- by buying it. And, to lighten the gloom in a different way, we turn to the movies, and to the burning question of why, from Silkwood to Erin Brockovich to North Country, downtrodden white women who fight environmental battles make such darn compelling film.
- Tirso Moreno, farmworker organizer in Florida, answers questions
- An interview with Sheryll Cashin, who argues integration can help fight poverty and environmental degradation
- An excerpt from Sheryll Cashin's book The Failures of Integration
- A virtual walking tour through Wisconsin's Sokaogon Chippewa community, which is fighting off a proposed mine
- A look at Hollywood's downtrodden eco-chicks, from Silkwood to North Country
Week Seven: Looking Ahead
This last week of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment doesn't so much wrap things up as open them up. We bring you a dialogue between a mainstream environmental leader (Frances Beinecke, president of Natural Resources Defense Council) and an environmental-justice leader (Eric Mann, of the Labor/Community Strategy Center), who together try to figure out how to move forward on securing a just and sustainable future. We hear firsthand about the challenges of doing so in an opinion piece by Na'Taki Osborne about trying to save Atlanta, Ga., from its reputation as the sprawl capital of the South. We look beyond our borders to the problem of global slums as a devastating nexus of environmental and economic catastrophe. Finally, we're proud to bring you the last in our series of virtual walking tours -- this one, a trip around Pacoima, Calif., a community of recent immigrants who are working with their better-off neighbors to form a multi-language, multicultural coalition to clean up the environment.
- Jason Edens of the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance answers questions
- Will an Atlanta parks and redevelopment project benefit low-income residents?
- In the world's slums, the worst of poverty and environmental degradation collide
- Two eco-leaders -- one mainstream, one radical -- debate the movement's past and future
- A virtual walking tour through an L.A. neighborhood with activists from Pacoima Beautiful
- A conclusion to Poverty & the Environment: the series ends, but our concern doesn't
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