What gets lost in my weekly thinking-out-loud routine here is the through-line of activity generated by Environmental Justice Evanston (EJE), the group with which I became associated earlier this year. A lot is happening behind the scenes and I want to honor that work. For what it accomplishes in environmental justice, and for what it teaches me about communities and power.
This is especially true of the work of EJE co-leaders Jerri Garl and Janet Alexander Davis. Jerri had a 30+ year career at the EPA, developing expertise in environmental justice and community work. Janet is a civil rights and community engagement legend in Evanston,
Their current project is the Evanston Environmental Equity Investigation. I can say “their current project” because their hands are all over the effort, even though it is being executed by the city of Evanston through a consulting contract.
The project came into existence because of EJE’s advocacy, resulting in the city council approving a 2020 environmental justice resolution that acknowledges Evanston’s history of racial discrimination and the environmental disparities it created. The Environmental Equity Investigation is the city committing budget and resources to repair the outcomes of that history and embed practices and structures in its operations to move forward in a more just and equitable manner.
That, in itself, is a huge win. I touch on it in Legacies and transitions.
But what I am currently witnessing is all the work Jerri and Janet do in the background, and the power of years of relationship building and developing deep community knowledge. I now attend the Environmental Equity Investigation community events. It seems everyone knows Janet and Jerri. And the few who may not, know them soon enough; the duo know how to work a room. Many attend these events as a result of the direct recruitment effort of the two co-leaders. The same goes for other Investigation outreach efforts; it’s Janet’s and Jerri’s network and relationships that result in participation.
I also see their work in continuous informal meetings and communications where the two play a watchdog role, applying their expertise to move the Investigation effort (and all its stakeholders) toward delivering more effective outcomes. They were there before the project began, also, to ensure the project scope and consulting team met the opportunity outlined in the environmental justice resolution.
Their work is, to me, the story of what community and citizen power looks like. It results in big moments (the equity investigation) but is built on a drumbeat of small actions. And above all, it’s about focusing on relationships forged by learning to work together.
Focusing on relationships forged by learning to work together is part of my professional DNA, but it has been expanded through a bit of reading and learning this past month. It began by reading about Peter Block’s “common good” perspective, which advocates for shifting more power and control to citizens by recognizing we all have the “cooperative capacity” to produce well-being for ourselves and others. That led to The limitation of relying on a single style of community meetings – our routine reliance on expert-led community engagement events. Even the most well-intentioned and best designed of these events subtly reinforces a subservient role for citizen power. Rather than always rely on experts to design potential solutions to all our community issues, we might sometimes also ask: What neighborhood assets and capabilities do we have to achieve the change we wish to see? That’s a question at the heart of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), a way of seeing and engaging communities in change. I share more about ABCD in Asset Based Community Development, design justice, and signals from the universe.
Among other compelling ideas, the ABCD folks frame citizen power as existing on a ladder of four rungs:
- Residents as recipients
- Residents as information sources
- Residents as advisors/advocates
- Residents in control
To me, Jerri and Janet are exemplars of the advisor/advocate position. They perform advocacy expertly themselves, but they are also curious and energetic learners, a capability that allows them to bring in and engage others to act on that same advocacy rung of the power ladder. It’s hard, continuous work.
Models like ABCD offer insights and methods that are often useful. Yet it is important to understand – as one ABCD practitioner notes – that ABCD mimics how marginalized communities often survive: They build their own solutions to address needs by using assets they have at hand. It is a testament to the fact that academic models and methods first emerge by analyzing the activity of real folks, doing real things. I don’t want to lose sight of that.
Be present and do stuff. It is the foundation of developing citizen power.
And doing stuff – acting – is also the foundation of hope.
“Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position,” writes Rebecca Solnit in Hope in the Dark. “Both excuse themselves from acting. [Hope is] the belief that what we do matters, even though how and why it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.”
Jeff Merrell 