Alonzo Spencer describes himself as a man who always had a social conscience. He was active in the civil rights movement. He joined the PTA when his kids were in school. He wrote his congressman from time to time on issues that concerned him. But he didn’t begin to think of himself as an environmentalist until about 13 years ago, when he first heard of a plan to build a huge toxic-waste incinerator in a residential section of his hometown, East Liverpool, Ohio.
Concerned about the presence of the wastes, and upset by the slow pace of the cleanup, Herrera and several of her neighbors founded the San Jose Community Awareness Council to help move things along.
In northwest Indiana, it was steelworkers who decided to act. In the late 70s the steel companies were declaring that the water they discharged was cleaner than the water they took in, but the people who worked in the water processing operations knew that wasn’t true. And they could see objects floating in the Grand Calumet River, objects that are politely referred to as raw sewage.
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The new movement grows out of the day-to-day experience of working-class people and people of color in communities across the country. These isolated local actions are now coalescing into a national force that is evoking a response both from politicians and from the established conservation groups. President Clinton has just directed all federal agencies to pay particular attention to the effects of their actions on poor communities. Greenpeace assigns organizers to help with battles over toxics in working-class areas and communities of color. The Sierra Club is now training its volunteer activists to work with community groups. Even the usually conservative National Wildlife Federation is issuing demands for environmental justice.
Another Church of Christ study compared the locations of illegal waste dumps or waste dumps created prior to the passage of environmental laws with the locations of legally permitted dumps. The results showed that legally permitted dumps were even more likely to be located in communities of color; in other words, the involvement of government had made the bias worse.
Of course recognizing there’s a problem is only the beginning: then you have to do something about it. And that is not easy, because the machinery of environmental regulation has little to do with the health concerns of ordinary people. The Superfund law, for example, offers little opportunity for public involvement. Other environmental laws do require that interested citizens be given the chance to comment on any actions that fall within the laws’ jurisdiction, but that requirement is usually treated as narrowly as possible.
