A movement born from radical action now risks being defanged by racism and elite capture. As the climate crisis continues to grow, the only viable path is a radical struggle for climate and environmental liberation.
“WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice.”
A Brief History of Environmental Justice in the United States
For many, the U.S. environmental justice (EJ) movement began in Warren County, North Carolina in the 1980s when members of a predominantly Black community protested the dumping and burying of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in their neighborhood. The protests culminated with the arrest of the Reverend Dr. Benjamin Chavis who, while being detained, proclaimed, “this is environmental racism.” The nascent EJ movement made national attention when Dr. Chavis and others in partnership with the United Church of Christ produced the landmark report, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, in 1987. Key conclusions of the report include:
- Race proved to be the most significant among variables tested in association with the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities. This represented a consistent national pattern;
- Communities with the greatest number of commercial hazardous waste facilities had the highest composition of racial and ethnic residents. In communities with two or more facilities or one of the nation's five largest landfills, the average minority percentage of the population* was more than three times that of communities without facilities (38 percent vs. 12 percent);
- Although socio-economic status appeared to play an important role in the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities, race still proved to be more significant; and
- Three out of the five largest commercial hazardous waste landfills in the United States were located in predominantly Black* or Hispanic communities. These three landfills accounted for 40 percent.
Despite the sound research and conclusions contained in Toxic Wastes and Race, mainstream environmental groups continued to deny the urgency of environmental racism and more or less ostracized Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities and the respective and collective challenges they experienced associated with disproportionate exposure to toxic waste and air emissions. The systemic and, oftentimes, racist and bigoted actions of mainstream environmental groups played a large part in the preparation of a letter by the Albaqueuque, New Mexico based, SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) in 1990.
The letter, which was addressed to the largest environmental groups in the nation at the time including the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth [full disclosure, I currently sit on this organization’s Board of Directors], and Natural Resources Defense Council who referred to themselves as “the group of 10,” was veraciously provocative to say the least. For instance, the letter notes, “The lack of people of color in decision-making positions in your organizations such as executive staff and board positions is also reflective of your histories of racist and exclusionary practices. Racism is a root cause of your inaction around addressing environmental problems in our communities.” SWOP and signatories of the letter also pointed out that, “Comments have been made by representatives of major national environmental organizations to the effect that only in the recent past have people of color begun to realize the impacts of environmental contamination. We have been involved in environmental struggles for many years and we have not needed the Group of Ten environmental organizations to tell us that these problems have existed.”
Nearly one year later, the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit released the 17 principles of Environmental Justice that acted as a major intervention point for a U.S. environmental movement that largely ignored or paid tawdry lip service to the specific environmental and associated public health issues impacting Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities. Even with the release of the EJ principles, mainstream environmental groups still demonstrated intransigence to diversifying their teams and a lack of understanding of how to better coordinate and organize with EJ groups and allow them to lead on issues directly impacting their communities. To this end, the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) hosted a meeting of EJ leaders from across the nation and released the 1996 Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing The six principles - Be Inclusive; Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing; Let People Speak for Themselves; Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality; Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves; and Commitment to Self-Transformation - were designed assist all organizations, but especially mainstream environmental groups, with centering those impacted most by environmental degradation and putting them in positions of leadership to foster solutions best for their people and communities. As noted by Dargan M.W. Fierson in his book, Climate Justice and Energy Solutions: Radical Visions of 100% Clean Power for 100% of the People, the Jemez Principles were designed to affirm, “...those most affected cannot be brought in as an afterthought. They should be present starting from the beginning of the decision-making process.” He adds, “Frontline communities know the solutions that are needed to help themselves. They’re also most able to see the root of the problems, and are more likely to come up with lasting, comprehensive solutions.” Fierson also notes, “Recently more mainstream environmental organizations, which have a checkered past when it comes to social justice, have adopted the Jemez Principles as well, to improve their relations with people-of-color-led environmental justice organizations.”
The Aftermath of the EJ Movement’s Interventions Point to a Subtraction of Justice
While it’s true that mainstream environmental organizations are found of parading the Jemez Principles on their websites, during their meetings, and as part of their general rhetoric in an effort to appeal to EJ organizations as well as philanthropic bodies who also want to appear to be inclusive and righteous, it can still be argued that not much has changed since SWOP’s 1990 letter to “the group of 10.” For instance, according to a report released by the group Green 2.0 in 2021, “data from about 40 of the largest nonprofit environmental organizations in the country and the top 40 foundations and grant providers show that, on average, these groups added six people of color and eight women to their full-time staff from 2017 to 2020, added two people of color and two women to their senior staff in that time, and one person of color and one woman to their boards since 2017.” These statistics, among others, informed Green 2.0 conclusions including, “The latest numbers demonstrate a noticeable shift, but still highlight that the organizations and foundations remain overwhelmingly white — even as many of those groups released statements last year calling for racial justice and recognizing how despite their progressive ideals, they failed to react to systemic disparities that people of color have been subjected to in the United States.”
Green 2.0’s second report on the state of diversity in mainstream environmental movement groups indicates that they have actually lost staffers of color since 2020. As the report names, “For the first year, the data for NGOs showed that the representation of staff of color has decreased at all levels. For full-time staff, it was the largest decrease in the history of the report. The rate of progress after 2020, a pivotal point for racial equity and justice in the nation and in the sector, slowed year after year and now, four years later, there is a steep decline in representation at all NGO levels.“ The report further notes, “The environmental sector has historically excluded marginalized communities, and this year’s report demonstrates active work is needed to create long lasting change.” The idea of long lasting change becomes important when considering the successes of the EJ movement as it pertains to analyzing what policy gains have been secured and implemented to improve material conditions of frontline/environmental justice communities.
Regardless of the mainstream environmental movement’s consistent inability and unwillingness to prioritize environmental justice, the mid 1990s did see some key policy gains for the EJ movement. For instance, in 1994 President Bill Clinton signed one of the most significant Executive Orders, Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations that directed federal agencies, “To the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, and consistent with the principles set forth in the report on the National Performance Review, each Federal agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States and its territories and possessions, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands.”
While the Executive Order did result in a legal mandate for projects that received federal funding to analyze impacts to EJ communities pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), this did not result in a reduction of environmentally racist practices by governments and corporations alike. This much was made clear in a 2007 report released by the United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, which states, “It is ironic that twenty years after the original Toxic Wastes and Race report, many of our communities not only face the same problems they did back then, but now they face new ones because of government cutbacks in enforcement, weakening health protection, and dismantling the environmental justice regulatory apparatus.” Making matters even worse, the second Trump Administration, on its first day in office, rescinded Executive Order 12898 as part of its larger war against non-white people and the poor. Couple this with the Trump administration’s quest to extract and burn more fossil fuels, further deregulate bedrock environmental laws like NEPA and the Clean Water Act, as well as the precipitous proliferation of data centers to power Artificial Intelligence - largely powered with fossil fuel infrastructure - it’s fair to conclude that the situation has become more perilous for frontline/environmental justice communities than during the 1980s.
But it’s not just Trump or the lack of diversity in mainstream environmental groups that have diminished the material conditions of frontline/environmental justice communities - the environmental justice movement also needs to exercise principled and objective introspection to see where it, in far too many cases, have contributed to the state of iniquity and precarity facing historically marginalized communities.
In the last five years, certain environmental justice groups and their agents have enjoyed the selective largesse of mainstream environmental groups and governmental agencies at the federal and State level. On the one hand this has increased the ubiquity of environmental justice, at least rhetorically, as well as the operating budgets for select environmental justice organizations. But we must ask ourselves what was/is the cost for certain environmental justice organizations to enjoy being selected and hand picked as the “leading” groups and primary spokespeople for the environmental justice movement? And, equally important, what effects do these “selections” have on the larger environmental justice movement, especially those community-based, grassroots organizations that are accountable to the poorest and most polluted communities in the nation and, in some cases, as the case with Cancer Alley in Louisiana, the entire world?
In too many instances we are witnessing a repeat of what happened to Black radical movements in 1967 and since then. In his book, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, Robert L. Allen reminds us of what happened to Black radicalism when governmental and philanthropic forces set its sights on mollifying righteous and beautiful Black rage that erupted across the U.S. when an estimated 164 “civil disorders” were reported that resulted in roughly $500 million in property damage and indirect economic losses. Allen writes, “And by making suitable overtures to the ‘reasonable’ militants, convincing them that a nonviolent transfer of power is possible, white leaders could hope to use these militants to isolate the ‘extremists’ and pacify the angry and unprecedented ghetto youths.” He then concludes, “The intent is to create the impression of real movement while actual movement is too limited to be significant.”
We have observed numerous examples of these handpicked environmental justice “leaders” vindicating Allen’s words and analysis. This was most recently on display during the previous Biden Administration when many who are exalted and honored, rightfully so, flocked to Biden’s white people’s house to watch him sign an insignificant and insouciant executive order that did nothing to improve and transform the material conditions of frontline environmental justice communities. It became clear that many of these environmental justice leaders were hoping that the optics they provided for Biden would assist him in the 2024 election, which would also lead to their groups and communities receiving a large share of the billions of dollars set aside as part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA_. But as I have written previously, the IRA was not a historic climate justice bill as much as it was a manifest capitulation that would have placed numerous frontline/environmental justice communities in harm's way while making them more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The IRA has all but been dismantled by President Trump and Democrats seek to further deregulate bedrock environmental policies that, at least, offered some protections and redress for environmental justice communities in the name of speeding up project via “permitting reform” under the umbrella of a co-opted and neoliberal iteration of “Abundance.”
It must also be named that by capitulating to mainstream environmental organizations and allowing themselves to become willing agents of the Democrat Party, many environmental justice groups have instituted intra movement class warfare as many of their leaders have become the latest crop of the Black bourgeoisie and essentially victims of, in the words of scholar and author Olufemi Taiwo, elite capture. This has massive consequences and as Allen reminds us, “If this process of takeover goes unchecked, the united front is transformed into an instrumentality serving the interests of the Black middle class alone. The needs of the popular Black masses go by the board, and a new oppressive elite assumes power.”
What is to Be Done
Given the position we find ourselves in - a worsening climate crisis on a rapidly heating planet, increased militarism domestically and globally, and an increased competition for resources necessary for survival - and as we observe deteriorating material conditions of our communities we must ask ourselves what is to be done? How do we contend with the elite capture of environmental justice principles and prevent them from being uttered and exercised speciously and ineffectively.
For one, the environmental justice movement must strive for independent social and political power as part of its larger initiative to improve the material conditions of Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor communities. This requires tearing itself asunder from a Democrat Party that has never fought and will never fight to confront and dismantle environmental racism. And this is because a Democrat Party that acts as vanguard for capitalism, militarism, and endless growth cannot be viewed as an ally, and certainly not as an accomplice when it comes to dismantling the root causes of environmental racism and the climate crisis.
Further, we cannot depend on mainstream environmental organizations to do what is necessary to emancipate communities like Cancer Alley from the clutches of slow genocide at the hands of fossil fuel cartels and petrochemical corporations. How can we expect groups that barely permit Black people to be represented in their spaces to then be agents of our liberation from the same white “supremacy” ideology ensconced in their operations and philanthropic networks?
The elements of the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice are as temporally germane today as they were four decades ago. But the stakes are not the same, the threats against our communities are more powerful and coordinated, and even the physical conditions of the planet are not the same as they were in 1991. As such, while we must retain the intent and elements of the environmental justice principles and the Jemez principles, we must also move past the limitations of climate and environmental “justice” as there can be no justice for our people and communities until there is first a concerted and long-term effort that affords them climate and environmental liberation through processes that directly combat capitalism and militarism.
Whereas far too many in environmental justice spaces look to the State to rescue us, a climate and environmental liberation framework, much like mutual aid, seeks to surface the contradictions and failures of the State as part of a larger initiative to design and develop alternative systems that we should and must be organizing to realize and implement. Climate and environmental liberation requires moving beyond justice because in a world that has become so imbalanced and unequal, exacerbated by a white supremacist, capitalist-fueled climate crisis, achieving ‘justice’ or ‘ecological balance’ is impossible without liberation, which requires defeating the interlocking systems of oppression that cause this imbalance and inequality: capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, militarism, and all forms of imperialism.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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