Growing pains for environmental justice movement. (NIEHS News).

"No justice, no peace!" So went the thunderous chants that rang out from a few hundred youth who drowned out a key plenary session at the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Held in late October 2002 in Washington, D.C., the summit was attended by representatives from numerous grassroots activist groups. Like the adult members of the environmental justice movement, the youth want a place at the table. "Like you, we don't want tokenism," said one member of Youth United for Community Action.

Such energy is just what the environmental justice movement needs if it is going to succeed in fighting growing conflicts with corporate interests, government entities, and others engaged in seizing land and communities for purposes such as nuclear testing and the extraction, production, and disposal of toxic, hazardous, and poisonous wastes. But first it must unite from within to work across cultures and among different communities. Building solidarity and sustaining the many cultures, races, and tribes involved are the leading challenges the environmental justice movement faces. "When we build the national agenda, we need to make sure the table is set for everybody," explained Pam Tau Lee, chairman of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

If the protests that erupted throughout the four-day summit are any indication, the challenges are multifaceted. Taking a cue from the youth, scores of non-English speaking attendees disrupted another plenary session the following day. They demanded that the remainder of the conference be translated for all nonnative speakers before many walked out of the meeting.

In essence, the protests represent a microcosm of the movement's internal friction; the fact that groups felt left out of their own meeting exemplifies the problems the movement faces in uniting. "We do not appreciate a discussion that we do not have the opportunity to participate in. We will not be disrespected," said Richard Moore, executive director of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. "We will do what it takes to make certain that we maintain the integrity of our environmental justice movement"--a movement that in theory strives for unity among many ethnicities and nations and works to protect all people of color, but in practice excluded factions of these very communities from its organizational meeting.

Summit speakers expressed not only the need to enhance alliances, collaborations, and cross-education, but to deal honestly with the issues of racism and classism that exist within the movement. Although women have assumed a leadership role in the movement in the past decade, tensions surrounding gender equality, sexism, and patriarchy remain and must be addressed if the movement is to be united, many participants asserted.

Yet despite the internal conflicts, summit participants did not lose sight of their common goals for the summit and the movement. "This environmental justice movement is really one of the most important movements going on in this country at this time," said Ashaki Binta, director of Black Workers for Justice.

Reaching Out

Representatives from all 50 states as well as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Guyana, Ecuador, South Africa, and India attended the second summit, which was funded in part by the NIEHS. They represented more than 150 environmental justice organizations, reported summit project director Zenaida Mendez, up significantly since the first summit held more than a decade ago, also in Washington, D.C.

The United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice convened the first summit in 1991. "It was probably the most important single event in the environmental justice movement's history," said Beverly Wright, chair of the executive committee and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University in Louisiana. The first summit established the platform upon which today's environmental justice movement has been built, and established the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice to guide policy and values.

At its core, the movement is targeting ways in which communities of color in this nation disproportionately bear the brunt of harmful environmental practices. For example, the majority of uranium that has been extracted in North America has come from indigenous lands, leaving populations living there exposed to radiation. The same is true for gold and other resources--the largest coal strip mine straddles the Hopi and Navajo reservations in Black Mesa, Arizona. In general, U.S. federal agencies charged with enforcing civil rights laws have historically failed to address such forms of discrimination, Wright explained.

Many issues have become more pressing in the past year. "As America steps up its `war on terrorism' and increases so-called homeland security, our communities actually feel more insecure," Wright said. "People of color are often the ones located closest to the refineries and petrochemical plants that are potential terrorist targets and the weapons production plants where lethal materials are stored. In an atmosphere where information is being withheld with national security as the justification, we are not even notified when such materials are being shipped through or near our communities."

Since the first summit, the environmental justice movement has grown to embrace global environmental issues. It has grown in size and diversity, too. Turnout at this event was estimated at more than 1,400, nearly double that of the first summit. The figure includes roughly 225 youth. "The environmental justice movement is a unique movement that is making significant contributions and strides that we should be proud of," said Joselito Laudencia, executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. "How many movements have an explicitly antiracist agenda and actively promote multicultural, multiracial, and multitribal constituency and leadership?" he asked.

Indeed, an Environmental Justice Timeline of Milestones released at the meeting notes many legal and legislative achievements over the intervening years. In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued one of the first comprehensive government reports on environmental justice, and in 1993 the United Nations founded its Commission on Sustainable Development. In 1994 President Clinton issued an executive order to address environmental justice in minority and low-income populations, which was signed at the only major government-sponsored environmental justice symposium to date (for which the NIEHS was the lead government agency). That symposium marked a new beginning where community acitivists, government leaders, and academic researchers came together in dialogue, said Marian Johnson-Thompson, the institute's director of educational and biomedical research development. It also marked the initiation of NIEHS-supported environmental justice research requests for applications.

More milestones followed: In 1998 the Florida legislature passed a bill establishing the Center for Environmental Equity and Justice to develop policies and conduct research, education, training, and community outreach--the first such state act. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture settled in a class action suit brought by black farmers charging discrimination in administering of loan applications for federal support. Meanwhile, the list of successful campaigns and the establishment of environmental justice organizations and centers such as the Washington Office on Environmental Justice, a collaboration of community-based environmental justice networks and grassroots organizations, only continues to grow.

But the movement is at a critical juncture, Laudencia said. "Many of the tensions and struggles that have happened here at the summit are nothing new. These tensions have existed over the last ten years since the first summit. If these tensions ... are not resolved, the divisions will deepen; we will lose the momentum in bringing in an exciting new leadership, including youth in this movement who will either be burned out or turned away by these internal conflicts."

The Summit Delivers

Even though the summit was punctuated by vocal protests by various factions of environmental justice constituents, significance progress was made at the meeting. A crowning achievement of the summit was passing the Principles of Working Together, which lays out basic guidelines to ensure mutual respect, allowing people from diverse backgrounds to work together meaningfully in the environmental justice movement.

The organizers believe it is important to stay true to the movement's grassroots origins and core principles. "There was serious work done on how we as a group must work together to move forward to ensure that it remains a grassroots-led movement," said Penn Loh, executive director of Alternatives for Community and Environment.

Summit representatives also passed a resolution against war in Iraq and 13 other resolutions on assorted national and international issues, including one on Vieques, Puerto Rico. The Vieques controversy revolves around the U.S. Navy's use of this island during the past half-century for live-fire training. Although the Navy recently agreed to cease its training there, unexploded ordnance litters the area near the live-fire range. The summit resolution was to see that the land is cleaned up.

Progress was made toward laying a philosophical base from which new environmental justice workers, groups, and networks can operate. Other tasks broached included broadening the scope of the environmental justice vision to strengthen its analysis and strategies with regard to economics, immigrant bashing, globalization, welfare, government accountability, and the overall health of communities; paving the way for concrete improvements in the lives of people of color over the next 10-50 years; and spurring growth of grassroots involvement to the level sufficient to achieve systemic change.

Workshop discussions covered everything from developing ethical alliances with mainstream environmental groups to transportation equity and transit justice. In the end, 24 policy papers were produced covering issues from children's environmental health to climate change. There was a consensus that, internationally, "climate change can be a unifying issue," Lee said.

Future Accountability

The obstacles seem daunting, however. Privatization, structural adjustment policies, and trade agreements make it harder for environmental justice communities to hold governments accountable, Laudencia said. For example, regulations seeming to favor industry's interests or even giving companies a free pass on past environmental violations are often written into trade agreements.

In fact, even the term "environmental justice" has been co-opted by government agencies and corporations, attendees noted. They charge that such entities have taken over use of the term and use it in introducing policies that often work against principles of the movement or, at minimum, dilute the real notion of environmental justice.

Moreover, many partnerships designed to help communities have had smaller payoffs than expected. For example, communities that have agreed to participate in research projects often see little return in exchange for their cooperation. In some cases, they have not been given access to survey data or study findings. This is not acceptable, Lee said.

At the same time, the movement has to accept responsibility for its future. "We have to be accountable for where we're going in the next ten years," said Benishi Albert, of the Sacred Alliance for Grassroots Equity Council. Such internal issues of sexism, paternalism, and ageism must also be addressed. "We have to clean house amongst ourselves," Albert said.

If the youth's enthusiasm is a fair barometer, the second summit succeeded in energizing the environmental justice movement, recognizing its milestones to date, and fostering a lively discussion on the emerging and ongoing issues that lie before it. "The youth are the future of the movement, and they seem more than up to the task," Lee said.