Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color.

Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color edited by Robert D. Bullard (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1994); 400 pp.; $25.00 cloth.

In 1986, several oil companies planned to build a pipeline between two coastal towns in California. In order to protect the mostly white, affluent coastal region, the proposal included a costly 20-mile detour inland through a predominantly Latino, low-income neighborhood. The oil companies did not get their way--but, some would argue, it was no thanks to environmental policymakers, regulators, or main, stream environmental organizations.

The story of how a tiny neighbor, hood activist group, Mothers of East Los Angeles, led the fight against an oil pipeline is one of dozens told in Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. An outgrowth of the First National People of Color Conference in 1991, the anthology charges that environmental racism" is behind the siting of polluting industries and hazardous waste disposal, as well as the unequal enforcement of environmental protection laws. Contributors include journalists, academics, lawyers, politicians, and neighbors-turned-environmental activists. Taken together, these often angry accounts serve as a primer on the intertwined histories of racism, environmental degradation, and social-justice activism in the United States. The result is the birth of a new movement: environmental justice.

In the chapter "Living on a Superfund Site," former resident Patsy Ruth Oliver recounts the tragedy of Carver Terrace. In 1964, under Jim Crow segregation laws, Carver Terrace was the only place in Texarkana where middle-and upper-middle-class African-Americans were allowed to own homes. But city officials neglected to mention that wood-processing plants had previously inhabited the site, contaminating the soil and groundwater with deadly levels of PCPs, arsenic, and creosote. Little did I know I was living on a tim bomb. I was ticking, but we could it.... It was a nightmare camouflaged as a dream " Even after residents won a protracted battle to get the area designated as a Superfund site, relocation was a long time in coming. According to Oliver, many people died and many more became ill before the residents of Carver Terrace were finally moved out of their contaminated homes.

Areas like Carver Terrace have been dubbed "national sacrifice zones." Another such area is "Cancer Alley," Louisiana's 85-mile industrial corridor along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. In the chapter "Coping with Poisons in Cancer Alley," the predominantly African-American residents describe numerous battles with neighboring chemical plants. The region accounts for nearly one-fourth of the nation's petrochemical production and is home to over 100 manufacturers of fertilizers, gasoline, paints, and plastics. The air, ground, and water are all heavily contaminated by what residents call a "toxic gumbo" of carcinogens and other highly toxic pollutants.

Unequal Protection covers a wide terrain-culturally as well as geographically. In "Black, Brown, Red, and Poisoned," authors Regina Austin and Michael Schill cite an array of grass-roots groups working for environmental justice. Take, for example, the Native American group called The Good Road Coalition. When a private company proposed to build a 6,000-acre garbage landfill on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, residents initiated a recall election against tribal leaders who had agreed to the landfill siting. The landfill proposal, dubbed "Dances with Garbage" by opponents, was resoundingly defeated. Far afield in Brooklyn, New York, is an unorthodox group named after a horror movie: the Toxic Avengers of El Puente. The group's members range in age from nine to 28. In addition to fighting against environmental racism, the Toxic Avengers also struggle against what they call adultism--"adult superiority and privilege."

In addition to targeting polluting industries and government agencies, Unequal Protection also reserves some criticism for traditional environmentalists. Charging that "the Achilles heel of the environmental movement in the United States is its whiteness," many of the contributors accuse mainstream environmental organizations of caring more about nature and wildlife than people--especiany low-income people of color. (This anthology appears to be a response to this criticism.

Unequal Protection is one of a multitude of books to hit the market recently on the subject of environmental justice. Because the compilation is presented as a diversity of voices and styles, it is often redundant and sometimes contradictory. Some readers may disagree with the claim that race, rather than income or other factors, is the primary determinant in environmental discrimination. Still others may take issue with the sentiment exemplified in the following comment directed at environmentalists: "They're going to have to get off the stick of preserving birds and trees and seals and things like that and talk about what's affecting real people." Ironically, however, the anthology's uneven and sometimes raw style may very well be the source of its many strengths

The environmental justice movement is just beginning. As Patsy Ruth Oliver points out, we need "to keep building the network. Somebody else's cause that you help will be your own--because we all live downstream from someone."

Karyn Taylor writes on environmental and technology issues and hosts "Common Ground," an online environmental forum on Women's WIRE in San Francisco. She holds a B.S. in conservation and resource studies from the University of California at Berkeley.