Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis

Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis PDF Author: Trevor K. Fuller
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739188402
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis examines how place attachment, social capital, and perceptions influence citizen responses when their communities are environmentally threatened. Trevor K. Fuller determines what inspires citizens to take action by analyzing the responses of two communities in the Indianapolis, Indiana area afflicted with environmental hazards. Though both areas suffer from environmental hazards, one community was much more motivated to take an activist stance against current and future environmental issues in the community. Fuller investigates how political and economic forces shape the distribution of hazards, the scope of citizen activism, and ultimately, determine whether a community is rejuvenated. This work will be of interest to environmental, political, and historical geographers and scholars.

Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis

Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis PDF Author: Trevor K. Fuller
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739188402
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Get Book Here

Book Description
Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis examines how place attachment, social capital, and perceptions influence citizen responses when their communities are environmentally threatened. Trevor K. Fuller determines what inspires citizens to take action by analyzing the responses of two communities in the Indianapolis, Indiana area afflicted with environmental hazards. Though both areas suffer from environmental hazards, one community was much more motivated to take an activist stance against current and future environmental issues in the community. Fuller investigates how political and economic forces shape the distribution of hazards, the scope of citizen activism, and ultimately, determine whether a community is rejuvenated. This work will be of interest to environmental, political, and historical geographers and scholars.

Environmental (in)activism: Pollution, People, and Politics in Two Indianapolis Neighborhoods

Environmental (in)activism: Pollution, People, and Politics in Two Indianapolis Neighborhoods PDF Author: Trevor K. Fuller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This research examines the development of environmental activism (or lack thereof) in response to urban environmental injustices in two communities to understand differences in response between the communities. The goal is to better understand how and why residents take action to secure improvements in environmental quality and the forces that inhibit activism. Local activism has played a key role in efforts to address and redress environmental injustices in the U.S. yet activism varies greatly among communities resulting in an uneven geography of environmental remediation and response. Two communities in Indianapolis, IN are chosen as case studies 0́3 West Indianapolis and Martindale-Brightwood. Both of these low-income communities endure an abundance of environmental hazards including toxic releases. However, each community has responded differently with Martindale-Brightwood residents forming an environmental justice collaborative, while no collective activism has emerged in West Indianapolis. Contrasting forms and levels of environmental activism provide an opportunity to investigate the place-specific forces that encourage or deter local environmental movements. The research objectives are: (1) Analyze the spatial distribution of environmental hazards in the two study areas relative to the City of Indianapolis, (2) Trace and interrogate the economic, political, ecological, and social forces which have collaboratively produced the damaging environmental histories of both areas, (3) Assess residents0́9 interpretations and understandings of environmental hazards and the influence of place attachment, perceptions of the hazards, and social capital in producing different interpretations and understandings of the local landscape within the study areas, and (4) Evaluate the roles of local institutions, including community development organizations, churches, government organizations and industries in producing or deterring activism. This research relies on quantitative and qualitative methods. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to analyze the spatial distribution of environmental hazards while a mail survey and in-depth interviews reveal how residents0́9 place attachment, social capital, and environmental concerns and knowledge intersect with the contaminated medium in motivating activism. The research is situated within environmental justice and urban political ecology literatures. Macro-scale political and economic forces that shape the uneven distribution of environmental hazards are integrated with analysis of people0́9s perceptions of and responses to environmental hazards to provide a more complete understanding of environmental activism. This research contributes to the environmental justice and urban political ecology literatures by revealing the place-specific social, environmental and political forces that influenced the development of environmental activism in response to environmental hazards. The findings contribute towards place attachment literature by revealing the socially constructed nature of place attachment as the state, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and the physical environment all influence and shape the emotions, memories, and meanings residents attach to their respective neighborhoods. Corporate parties in West Indianapolis exert their influence on residents through the offering of various community meetings at their sites and on local organizations (West Indianapolis Development Corporation) via various funding mechanisms. The perception of environmental injustice, inadequate political response, and individual impacts from hazards are not sufficient without large stocks of place attachment and social capital (particularly institutional and church-related social capital) among residents. Viewing the two communities individually and as parts of the larger urban development of Indianapolis illuminates the political-economic factors which have shaped the physical and human landscapes in the two communities and conditioned residents0́9 responses. An innovative aspect of this research is in the finding of how residents0́9 varying perceptions of and experiences with the medium contaminated (soil or air) impact their decisions to become activist. Within Martindale-Brightwood two entities appear to dominate and influence the direction and efforts of the Martindale-Brightwood Environmental Justice Collaborative. First, the non-profit organization IKE and its conflict of interest in using EPA funding to challenge the EPA remediation effort (which has redirected some of the initial MBEJC agenda); and, second, the influence of the City of Indianapolis on the Martindale-Brightwood landscape in terms of socio-environmental characteristics. The City0́9s influence is playing out currently as the agenda of the MBEJC offered support for the City0́9s goal of redeveloping Martindale-Brightwood as a 0́8sustainable community0́9. However, the risk of such a redevelopment approach, firmly rooted in economic conceptions of sustainability as opposed to social and environmental conceptions, will likely produce a 0́8sustainable0́9 but also gentrified community.

The Environmental Justice Reader

The Environmental Justice Reader PDF Author: Joni Adamson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816547858
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
From the First National People of Color Congress on Environmental Leadership to WTO street protests of the new millennium, environmental justice activists have challenged the mainstream movement by linking social inequalities to the uneven distribution of environmental dangers. Grassroots movements in poor communities and communities of color strive to protect neighborhoods and worksites from environmental degradation and struggle to gain equal access to the natural resources that sustain their cultures. This book examines environmental justice in its social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions in both local and global contexts, with special attention paid to intersections of race, gender, and class inequality. The first book to link political studies, literary analysis, and teaching strategies, it offers a multivocal approach that combines perspectives from organizations such as the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and the International Indigenous Treaty Council with the insights of such notable scholars as Devon Peña, Giovanna Di Chiro, and Valerie Kuletz, and also includes a range of newer voices in the field. This collection approaches environmental justice concerns from diverse geographical, ethnic, and disciplinary perspectives, always viewing environmental issues as integral to problems of social inequality and oppression. It offers new case studies of native Alaskans' protests over radiation poisoning; Hispanos' struggles to protect their land and water rights; Pacific Islanders' resistance to nuclear weapons testing and nuclear waste storage; and the efforts of women employees of maquiladoras to obtain safer living and working environments along the U.S.-Mexican border. The selections also include cultural analyses of environmental justice arts, such as community art and greening projects in inner-city Baltimore, and literary analyses of writers such as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Linda Hogan, Barbara Neely, Nez Perce orators, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Karen Yamashita—artists who address issues such as toxicity and cancer, lead poisoning of urban African American communities, and Native American struggles to remove dams and save salmon. The book closes with a section of essays that offer models to teachers hoping to incorporate these issues and texts into their classrooms. By combining this array of perspectives, this book makes the field of environmental justice more accessible to scholars, students, and concerned readers.

Environmental Justice and Environmentalism

Environmental Justice and Environmentalism PDF Author: Ronald Sandler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262195526
Category : Environmental justice
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In ten essays, contributors from a variety of disciplines consider such topics as the relationship between the two movements' ethical commitments and activist goals, instances of successful cooperation in U.S. contexts, and the challenges posed to both movements by globalisation and climate change.

Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger

Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger PDF Author: Julie Sze
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520300742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

The Nature of Hope

The Nature of Hope PDF Author: Char Miller
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607328488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
The Nature of Hope focuses on the dynamics of environmental activism at the local level, examining the environmental and political cultures that emerge in the context of conflict. The book considers how ordinary people have coalesced to demand environmental justice and highlights the powerful role of intersectionality in shaping the on-the-ground dynamics of popular protest and social change. Through lively and accessible storytelling, The Nature of Hope reveals unsung and unstinting efforts to protect the physical environment and human health in the face of continuing economic growth and development and the failure of state and federal governments to deal adequately with the resulting degradation of air, water, and soils. In an age of environmental crisis, apathy, and deep-seated cynicism, these efforts suggest the dynamic power of a “politics of hope” to offer compelling models of resistance, regeneration, and resilience. The contributors frame their chapters around the drive for greater democracy and improved human and ecological health and demonstrate that local activism is essential to the preservation of democracy and the protection of the environment. The book also brings to light new styles of leadership and new structures for activist organizations, complicating assumptions about the environmental movement in the United States that have focused on particular leaders, agencies, thematic orientations, and human perceptions of nature. The critical implications that emerge from these stories about ecological activism are crucial to understanding the essential role that protecting the environment plays in sustaining the health of civil society. The Nature of Hope will be crucial reading for scholars interested in environmentalism and the mechanics of social movements and will engage historians, geographers, political scientists, grassroots activists, humanists, and social scientists alike.

Community-based Activism Within an Environmental Justice Frame

Community-based Activism Within an Environmental Justice Frame PDF Author: Joseph William Dorsey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Energy facilities
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


Lessons in Environmental Justice

Lessons in Environmental Justice PDF Author: Michael Mascarenhas
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1544321961
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Lessons in Environmental Justice provides an entry point to the field by bringing together the works of individuals who are creating a new and vibrant wave of environmental justice scholarship, methodology, and activism. The 18 essays in this collection explore a wide range of controversies and debates, from the U.S. and other societies. An important theme throughout the book is how vulnerable and marginalized populations—the incarcerated, undocumented workers, rural populations, racial and ethnic minorities—bear a disproportionate share of environmental risks. Each reading concludes with a suggested assignment that helps student explore the topic independently and deepen their understanding of the issues raised.

Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline

Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline PDF Author: J. Timmons Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521669009
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline, first published in 1991, provides a rare glimpse of the environmental justice movement as it plays out in four landmark struggles at the end of the twentieth century. The book describes the stories of everyday people who have decided to take to the streets to battle what they perceive as injustice: the unequal exposure of minorities and the poor to the 'bads' produced by our industrial society. In these struggles residents and local, state, and national environmental and social justice groups are on one side pitted against local and state government representatives and industry on the other. By employing historical and theoretical lenses in viewing these struggles, the book reveals how situations of environmental injustice are created and how they are resolved. These cases bear great similarity to battles occurring across the nation, and are setting precedents for national and state agencies as they handle these cases.

Echoes from the Poisoned Well

Echoes from the Poisoned Well PDF Author: Sylvia Hood Washington
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739114322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This book is an historical examination of environmental justice struggles across the globe from the perspective of environmentally marginalized communities. It is unique in environmental justice histography because it recounts these struggles by integrating the actual voices and memories of communities who grappled with environmental inequalities.