On Thursday April 2nd, our class visited a community site in Roxbury, MA led by Alternatives for Community and Environment’s (ACE) former Executive Director and Urban Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) professor Penn Loh and youth organizer Tyree Ware. ACE is an environmental justice organization primarily based in Roxbury, MA but also works on a variety of environmental justice issues across Massachusetts both with communities of color and of low-income. While the main focus of our class is on environmental justice as it applies globally, it is important to locate environmental injustices occurring in our local communities and involve ourselves in the justice movements for environmental, labor, housing, food, youth, socioeconomic, etc.
Our visit began with a brief history of the urban renewal that occurred all over the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, urban renewal processes such as eminent domain were used to knock down land and re-make urban centers for a different community that was predominantly white and well-off. Urban renewal in Roxbury particularly took the form of the building of an I-95 highway through South End, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and part of Fenway. The city tore down the homes of thousands of residents, which resulted in many abandoned buildings and vacant lots.
After community opposition, a compromise was struck in the 1980s- the city would instead build an Amtrak system and the commuter rail, and relocate the existing elevated Orange Line along Washington Street. They promised an alternative transit corridor that would have equal or better services. Finally, in 2002, the city installed a series of buses--the Silver Line-- which would shuttle residents and workers to and from the community. The “Silver Lie,” however, was nowhere near equal or better service- the large number and concentration of buses, the exhaust fumes from their idling, and the slowness of transportation were clear transit, health, and environmental injustices. During our visit, a community member overheard Penn and Tyree’s account of this history and yelled, “the promise was never fulfilled.”
ACE wanted to organize and work with the community, and thus started community-driven initiatives such as the T Riders Union (TRU) to improve transit and public space. TRU has also worked on assuring that T rates do not spike up and become even less affordable for working-class, poor folks because the city is in a structural deficit wherein their funding is not covering their costs and are in a lot of debt. TRU has worked with youth on a Youth Affordabili(T) Pass so that younger people may pay at a discounted rate for the T.
However, there is also fear of being “victims of our own success.” The community work being done to improve local health and to revitalize the space may lead to current residents not being able to live there as the neighborhood becomes more desirable. That is why ACE is part of housing coalitions such as Right to the City wherein they advocate people’s right to remain. Currently, Right to the City is working on raising awareness and passing legislation for just cause eviction, which will only allow tenants to be evicted under just causes [nonpayment of rent], versus at the landlord’s whim [when rent prices go up and they want to make a profit]. ACE is also supporting projects to preserve and build permanently affordable housing, as well as considering community land trusts which will allow land to be controlled by a coalition of the local community.
One of the most memorable spots on our community site visit was to one of ACE’s community gardens, which were built on formerly vacant lots that the community reclaimed. Toxic trash left in these lots has polluted the soil, so a tarp was used as a protective between the original soil and the raised beds that were built there by the community. This reclamation is part of ACE’s youth-led community group, Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project’s (REEP) food justice campaign Grow or Die. Youth leaders were frustrated by the lack of healthy and affordable food in the community, and began the campaign that, to date, has transformed five lots into community gardens and several household gardens. As Tyree succinctly put, we must either “grow our own food or die from what the system is feeding us.”
ACE’s roots are in the larger environmental justice movement. As Penn related to us on our tour, lawyers Charlie Lord and Bill Shutlin were at a mainstream environmental conference where they met environmental justice activists who challenged them to focus on their own communities. While protecting wildlife was important, who would protect their own communities from environmental harm? This was the inspiration for founding ACE.
While ACE is involved in coalitions and campaigns with groups across the greater Boston area and Massachusetts, it primarily serves the Roxbury neighborhood. Roxbury is a historically and predominantly Black neighborhood and center of culture. Malcolm X and civil rights activist Melnea Cass have called Roxbury home. ACE’s work follows in Cass’s legacy: she supported women’s suffrage and helped women register to vote after the passage of the 19th amendment. In Roxbury, she worked with people who had been left homeless thanks to urban renewal and fought against racial segregation as an organizer and activist. Much of her work is evocative of current ACE campaigns, especially around opposition to gentrification and racism through community activism and political engagement.
ACE has had a number of historical successes in their struggles against environmental racism and injustice. One of these earliest victories was against a proposed asphalt plant in the late ‘90’s. In his book The Land that Could be, Environmentalism and Democracy in the 21st Century, ACE founder Shutkin writes that existing environmental laws were not strict enough to stop the plant from further poisoning communities already facing disproportionate negative health impacts. This raises the question: Who are these laws for? What purpose do they serve? It necessitated community organizing to make the issue heard and involve the Board of Health of the Boston Public Health Commission, which ruled against the plant.
Since that initial victory, ACE has built an air quality monitoring station by the Dudley Square bus terminal, forced a polluting construction company to clean up asbestos waste, helped stop a diesel power plant in Chelsea, won the addition of 100 non-diesel fueled buses, and pressured Massachusetts to create an Environmental Justice Policy, which it did in 2002. It is worth noting that ACE’s approaches to environmental justice work are diverse. Sometimes, they are oppositional, in protesting the construction of new polluting infrastructure or forcing previous polluters to pay. Other times, they are legal, in advocating for public policy. And still other times, they are autonomous: ACE sees a problem, and then creates the solutions itself.
Sources: Melnea Cass http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=179; Famous Figures from Roxbury http://www.boston.com/yourtown/boston/roxbury/gallery/famous_figures_roxbury/
twitter (@aceEJ) https://twitter.com/AceEJ
No comments:
Post a Comment