A lot has happened in the past several weeks on the environmental justice front and I want to document the moment as we move deeper into 2026.
But I also do not want to ignore the current state of life as the US devolves into an autocracy. Minneapolis is under assault by federal government forces after those same forces murdered Renee Good and kidnapped community members. Trump wants to “own” Greenland because owning offers a more satisfying psychological feeling and because he was snubbed by the Norwegians for the Nobel Peace Price. He’s willing to risk destroying NATO to feed that megalomania. Venezuela military actions were a pure play for oil. And so on.
It turns out, however, that local folks who work to address climate change and environmental justice also really don’t like wannabe fascist dictators. And so, they are active resisters to our batshit leadership.
That’s not cause-and-effect. It’s identity. It’s how folks see themselves as community members at both the local and global levels.
This it’s-all-one-identity was reinforced for me by the writing of Sean Sherman. Sherman (aka The Sioux Chef) lives and works in Minneapolis, is a James Beard award-winning chef, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, and an activist focusing on Indigenous food systems and culture.
He begins one of his posts about ICE and fascism by writing: “I’m writing this as a chef, a parent, an enrolled citizen of a tribal community, and most importantly, as somebody who gives a f*ck.”
When he writes, he brings stories and sensibilities and history to this moment which come from all aspects of his identities. What you get is a very strong sense of the many ways of seeing that all of this is just wrong. And the way out of it is through community and showing no fear.
EJ folks also give a fuck. They show up. And they have histories and stories and insights that will move us through the moment.
Janet Alexander Davis – an Evanston civil rights elder and environmental justice leader – captures it in a recent story on climate action activism in the age of Trump.
“It’s up to us, it’s always up to us, to make this happen, regardless of who’s in the government. It’s up to all of us to do what we can. When I pass on, I won’t be taking my money, my car, my house — whatever you have in a material way. We must do all we can. Everybody do something. Nothing is too little.”
Evanston environmental justice update
On January 12, the Evanston City Council voted unanimously to accept the final Environmental Equity Investigation (EEI) Report and Plan.
In the weeks before that event, at the end of 2025, grant money was awarded to the newly-forming Evanston Environmental Justice (EJ) Coalition. Part of the grant proposal emphasized how the Coalition intends to co-create actions with community members in specific Evanston neighborhoods.
The two events are deeply interconnected in history and in what may happen next.
The history behind both the EJ Coalition and the year-long EEI project is tied to 15+ years of work of a handful of environmental justice advocates (Jerri Garl and Janet Alexander Davis central among them). Neither would have come into existence without those leaders and the many actors they brought in over the years.
As to what may happen next: The EEI report specifically calls out the EJ Coalition as a potential key actor in the city’s next-step efforts to address and repair historical injustices in specific neighborhoods. Similar organizations In other municipalities – Seattle and Minneapolis, for example – hold direct or indirect power in distributing funds and prioritizing projects for designated environmental justice zones. The Evanston EEI report recommends that two specific segments of the city be designated as “green zones” for similar environmental equity efforts.
Action on this possible future path is more potential than reality as I write this. But the path is being laid by the same folks who brought us all to this moment in the first place.
Those folks are spread across a few different organizations – some are members of more than one – who have a stake in environmental justice in Evanston. What I know about these folks, having worked with them during the past year, is that they skilled at quick collaboration and they deeply understand where the city needs to be pushed and the community engaged.
An example:
A near-final draft version of the EEI report – provided by city staff who led the project and the consulting team that researched and wrote it – was shared with a selection of community stakeholders in late November. Final written feedback and comments by all stakeholders were to be made by Dec. 10.
This was a very short turnaround time and, given holidays and year-end workloads, did not allow time to reach out broadly and re-engage folks who live in the community but may not be part of organized environmental or environmental justice organizations.
There was talk about asking to extend the feedback deadline until the first quarter 2026 to address that gap. But the contract for the consulting firm which wrote the report ended on Dec. 31. Here’s what folks did:
- On Dec. 2, one leader drafted extensive feedback and comments on the EEI report and shared them with a selection of advocates.
- On Dec. 5, eight of those advocates convened on Zoom to review and revise the draft document. An updated draft was shared with meeting participants and a selection of others.
- On Dec. 9, two folks consolidated all comments and created a final document.
- On Dec. 10, the document was sent to city staff as the official feedback of the EJ Coalition.
The document began with a strong position statement which outlined major themes. Among these were accountability and leadership in the form of commitment to action by both city staff and elected officials. “These emerge from our experience and long history of seeing potential go unrealized,” the group noted.
That sentiment became the basis for members of the EJ Coalition – representing several groups – spoke during the public comment period at the City Council meeting on Jan. 12, just prior to Council members voting to accept the final EEI report. Speakers gathered quickly in the few days before the meeting to organize messaging.
It is also forming the basis for on-going collaboration and advocacy and action in the coming weeks.
What’s fascinating for me to observe, at this point, is that none of this is centrally organized through a single organization. Yet, anyhow. That may be what the EJ Coalition becomes.
If it does it is building off an extremely strong base of folks who know how to quickly work together toward a common outcome.
Jeff Merrell 