‘Why is this happening to us? We know why it’s happening.’

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the Evanston Environmental Justice Conversation Series, co-sponsored by a coalition of civic and religious organizations (including Environmental Justice Evanston, a group which I am now supporting).

Keynote speakers and panelists were folks with deep personal and professional experience in the impacts of racial injustice.

One thread in my environmental justice (EJ) learning journey has been reading about the connection between racial and class-based discrimination, the environment and climate change. But hearing the live voices and seeing folks in person, speaking their truths about local racial and environmental injustice, just brings it all home in a different and impactful way.

I’ll do my best here to share select moments from the two keynote speakers, and what it means for my own developing understanding of EJ.

The quote in the headline is from Rev. Candace Simpson, a Phd candidate at Garrett Seminary whose research included interviewing Black and Brown community members who live near Evanston’s waste transfer station. (See some history of the waste transfer station, the air pollution and health impacts it creates in Notes on Evanston environmental equity).

“A theme that repeatedly arises in Minister Simpson’s conversations is how racial politics guide who city planners decide should live near what other people throw away. ‘Every person I’ve spoken with has made the unprompted connection between race and where we put undesirable things,’ she says. ‘I keep hearing the question, ‘why is this happening to us?’ followed by the admission that we know why it’s happening.’ These feelings are intensified by the knowledge that Evanston isn’t even using the waste transfer station for its own garbage.” (Source: Interview with Rev. Simpson in Faith Mattering Grant with AAAS Dialogue on Science and Religion)

This theme of poor or working class Black and Brown neighborhoods taking the brunt of the health and well-being impacts of pollution and other damaging environmental conditions is expressed in many different ways of looking at the system of racial injustices. I just ran across a recent piece by Alyssa Battistoni, a political science academic, who wrote in N+1:

“The struggle over the burden of social costs [such as pollution] is better characterized in terms of struggle between classes with disparate power than as a market exchange between equal individuals. Class power grants the ability to decide not only which commodities to intentionally produce, but also which byproducts to generate in the course of rearranging raw materials and labor processes into new form. It is not only the power to command the labor of others within a given production process, but the power to impose costs on those who stand outside the production process altogether.” (Source: Injury to Buildings and Vegetables – The ability to impose pollution on others is another aspect of class rule)

All true. And you can find similar analyses and insights describing this power dynamic.

But what Rev. Simpson put her finger on – through the interviews – is that regular folks know this. They feel it. They live it. They know when the emperor has no clothes (a story she referenced in her talk). But this lived wisdom doesn’t seem to find the same audience and attention as, say, a political science professor summarizing her (good) book for a magazine.

The problem I want to work on is how to make these stories, and these voices, be heard and acted on. Let me rephrase that. This is obviously a problem that many folks have been working on forever. I want to find the opportunities where my particular pair of hands can make some contribution to the continuing work.

Nia Williams, the other keynote speaker, is an example of folks putting their pair of hands to work in a way that aligns with their own theory-of-change.

Williams is an avowed abolitionist and told stories of how she engaged in the political work and led protests in Evanston aligned with that philosophy. Following that work, in 2021, Williams co-founded the West End Garden, situated in one of Evanston’s historically Black neighborhoods.

“’The main reason why I do this work is being able to form connections,’ Williams said. ‘We say ‘grounded in abolition,’ but you can’t always be shouting theory to people. You got to actually do what you’re preaching.’” (Source: ‘Grasping things at the root:’ Abolition activism grows at West End Garden – Daily Northwestern).

I am paraphrasing from memory after the EJ Conversations event, but what I took away from Williams’ talk is how grounded she and her team are in literally starting from the ground up and building the kind of community they wish to live in – right where they already live. They do the work of growing food to build community, to connect with neighbors, and to focus on the very basic need for food. “If we can eat, we can survive. if we can survive, we can fight,” she noted.

Williams also reflected during the EJ Conversation panel discussion (post keynote) about how she might connect trans rights and experience to the cycle of environmental injustice and climate change. It’s a straight line from the power to discriminate: Discrimination means you cannot get work that provides a living wage, which means you live in poorer neighborhoods that are affected by environmental issues, which leads to impacts on your body and health.

Class power at work.

One final take away – and another theme I am hearing. Both Rev. Simpson and Williams tell us, and show us, that folks don’t just want to move away from the communities impacted by the inseparable issues of racial, class and environmental injustice. They want to make it right. Williams is doing that by creating a space to build new community connections. And Simpson noted that same point in her talk. Folks told her in her interviews that these conditions are wrong for everyone, anyone.

We love our community. And we want to make it right, they say.

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The photographs which accompany these posts are taken by me, and show different settings and views of Evanston (where I live). It is a visual reminder that this is the most important setting for belonging and contributing to community: our neighborhoods, our cities.