ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Volume 1, Number 4, 2008 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/env.2008.0522
New Allies for Nature and Culture: Exploring Common Ground for a Just and Sustainable Chicago Region Jennifer L. Hirsch
ABSTRACT
The environmental justice movement (EJM) has long focused on the intersections between environmental and social issues. Recently, movements linking these issues have been gaining momentum around the world. This article examines an initiative called New Allies for Nature and Culture that has been promoting the integration of environmental and social justice work in the Chicago region. Led by the Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) at The Field Museum with two partners, Lake County Forest Preserves and Friends of Ryerson Woods, New Allies involved a year of applied anthropological research followed by a series of gatherings that brought together representatives from diverse organizations across the Chicago region. The research identified five common concerns shared by environmental and social justice organizations: health and food, youth development, arts/creative practices, economic development, and climate change. It also identified three models for connecting social and environmental issues: creating “communities of choice,” environmental projects as holistic approaches, and linking nature and cultural heritage. New Allies’ initial impact on the work of the three project partners suggests that these issues and models have the potential to build stronger relationships between organizations working on social and environmental issues. The article concludes by exploring some implications of these growing integrated movements for the EJM. Briefly the implications point toward opportunities for the EJM to expand its influence as “translation” experts and promote just sustainability, as well as to evolve from a reactive movement to a movement that promotes a radical change in our system of values. INTRODUCTION: SUSTAINABILITY AND JUSTICE
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HE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (EJ) movement has long focused on the intersections between environmental and social issues. However, it is only recently that movements linking these issues have been gaining momentum around the world, fueled in part by the growing awareness of climate change as a crisis that can be mitigated only through an integrated approach.1 Many of these movements build on discourses of sustainable development and an integrative framework addressing the relationship between the three Es: economy, environment, and equity. In the United States, these movements include smart growth and green infrastructure planning, which are grounded first and foremost in environmental concerns, and regional equity and green economy, which emphasize equitable economic growth.2
Dr. Hirsch is Research and Operations Director, Cultural Understanding and Change, at Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo), a Division of Science at The Field Museum in Chicago, IL.
In the past few years, a number of scholar-activists involved in these movements have examined the difficulties they have had attracting EJ and other community-based organizations concerned with low-income people and communities of color. Some argue that this stems from an 1For example, see the United Nations’ 2007–08 Human Development Report, “Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World,” which states: “we must see the fight against poverty and the fight against the effects of climate change as interrelated efforts.” http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_ 20072008_en_complete.pdf (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 2See Smart Growth Online http://www.smartgrowth.org/ Default.asp?res 1024 ; Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse, “Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st Century,” http://www.sprawlwatch.org/greeninfrastructure.pdf (Last accessed on July 16, 2008); Heritage Conservancy, “Growing with Green Infrastructure: Preserving our Natural and Historic Heritage,” http://www.heritageconservancy.org/news/ publications/pdf/green_infra.pdf (Last accessed on July 16, 2008); Conversation on Regional Equity (CORE), “Edging Toward Equity: Creating Shared Opportunity in America’s Regions,” http://cjtc.ucsc.edu/docs/r_full_core_edging_toward_ equity.pdf (Last accessed on July 16, 2008); Green for All, http://www.greenforall.org/ (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
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insufficient focus on the “equity” part of sustainable development. For example, Julian Agyeman argues that “the most frequently used definitions of sustainability” generally omit any mention of “justice or equity.”3 Others, such as Manuel Pastor, Jr., recognize the hesitancy of community organizations to work in broad partnerships with more mainstream organizations, since there have been many times in the past when their interests have been overlooked in these types of coalitions.4 Overall, these scholar-activists argue that creating inclusive movements for sustainability that seriously address issues of equity requires identifying shared concerns and using them to build new alliances and a movement focused on “just sustainability.”5 In his article, “Alternatives for Community Development: Where Justice and Sustainability Meet,” Agyeman suggests that one way to begin articulating these common concerns is by “examin[ing] organizations that are exploring common ground or even a common agenda between justice and sustainability.”6 Elsewhere, he suggests the need to analyze the “practical attempts to address the tensions . . . between economic development, environmental protection, and social justice with innovative ideas, programs, and strategies . . . “7 This article responds to Agyeman’s suggestion by examining an initiative begun in 2007 in the Chicago region called New Allies for Nature and Culture8 (hereafter New Allies), led by the Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) at The Field Museum with two of its environmental partners, Lake County Forest Preserves and Friends of Ryerson Woods. This initiative aims to further develop and promote an integrated approach to social change that links environmental and social issues and help build a more coordinated, innovative movement towards regional sustainability. The following sections describe the New Allies initiative, summarize our research findings, and discuss some of the project’s initial results.9 NEW ALLIES FOR NATURE AND CULTURE: AN OVERVIEW New Allies consisted of two stages: research and gatherings. During the first year, we conducted rapid ethnographic research with approximately 200 environmental, social, and cultural organizations across the region, using the anthropological methods of participant-observation, interviewing, and focus groups. Most of the organizations focus primarily on either an environmental issue—such as environmental conservation or environmental education—or a social issue—such as the arts, community development, affordable housing, or poverty. But many of them are involved in projects that involve both types of issues. For example, the Center for Neighborhood Technology has been a regional leader in sustainable development for the past thirty years, through research, policy, and collaborative community work focused on the issues of “transportation and community development, energy, natural resources, and climate change.”10 More recently, the Civic Knowledge Project (CKP) at the University of Chicago launched an “environmental and social action network” called Partnering for a Sustainable
Chicago, to facilitate networking and education between organizations working on Chicago’s South Side that largely serve low income, African American communities. CKP is committed to building bridges between community issues and traditional environmental issues, by “fostering a larger sense of justice that recognizes the crucial importance of sustainability, environmentalism, and biodiversity.”11 During the second year, New Allies held a series of gatherings that brought together approximately 200 people from many of the organizations involved in the research. The events drew on the resources of the partner institutions as learning tools. For example, at the first Field Museum gathering, participants engaged in a selfguided tour of The Ancient Americas exhibition that directed them to examine how the first people on this continent used culture to adapt to and change the natural environment. Then, in small group discussions, they related their thoughts on the exhibit to their experiences working for social change today. At the second gathering held at Ryerson Woods, participants were given a hands-
3Julian Agyeman. Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice. (NYU Press, 2005). 44. 4Manuel Pastor, Jr., “Regionalist Risks, Community Opportunities,” Urban Habitat (Spring 2000, “Perspectives on Regionalism”). 5Julian Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment: Where Justice and Sustainability Meet,” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Vol. 47, No. 6 (2005): 11–23. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008); Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullard, and Bob Evans (eds.). Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World’ (MIT Press, 2003). Similarly, in “Living Environmentalisms: Coalition Politics, Social Reproduction, and Environmental Justice,” Giovanna Di Chiro argues in favor of a “politics of articulation,” which she defines as “the linking of diverse movements, common ideas, and situated knowledges in the hopes of surviving together.” Environmental Politics, 17:2 (2008): 280. Informaworld Journals (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). Other examples of articles addressing intersections between social justice and environment/sustainability include: Robert Kleidman, “Community Organizing and Regionalism,” City & Community, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2004): 403–421. Synergy Blackwell Premium (Last accessed on July 17, 2008); Joel Rast, “Environmental Justice and the New Regionalism,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 25 (2006): 249–263. Sage Premier 2007 (Last accessed on July 17, 2008). 6Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment,” 11. 7Julian Agyeman and Tom Evans, “Towards Just Sustainability in Urban Communities: Building Equity Rights with Sustainable Solutions,” Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 590 (2003): 35–53. SAGE JOURNALS Online (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 8The word “culture” is used here in the anthropological sense to refer to the practices and values that comprise everyday life. For this project, it is shorthand for sociocultural issues. 9New Allies for Nature and Culture was sponsored by Boeing and Grand Victoria Foundation. 10See http://www.cnt.org/accomplishments (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 11See http://civicknowledge.uchicago.edu/sustainability. shtml (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). The Field Museum has partnered with the Civic Knowledge Project to use their listhost, web site, and blog for ongoing communication among New Allies participants.
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NEW ALLIES FOR NATURE AND CULTURE on tour that explored maple syrup tapping and highlighted the historic connections between the natural and cultural development of the conservation area. The New Allies initiative had four goals, which were to: 1) assess and make visible the scope and nature of social change work in Chicago that is linking environmental and social issues or demonstrates the potential to do so 2) identify shared interests that can provide the basis for further collaborative work 3) help people think in new ways about human connections to nature and each other that are often masked by market relations12 4) spark new alliances between organizations that might not have thought to work together in the past, towards the end goal of creating systemic regional change. RESEARCH FINDINGS New Allies research revealed a number of shared interests held by environmental organizations and organizations that focus primarily on social issues. These include health and food, youth development, arts/creative practices, economic development, and climate change.13 Notably, these common concerns are different from those identified by Agyeman and Evans, which included land use planning, solid waste, toxic chemical use, residential energy use, and transportation.14 Our research thus expands the list of areas for potential collaboration. Beyond issues, our research also identified models for connecting environmental and social issues, three of which are described below. Creating “communities of choice” One model could be described as creating “communities of choice”—a term taken directly from Bethel New Life (BNL), a faith-based community development corporation that serves the Austin and Garfield Park neighborhoods, both of which are primarily African-American, economically depressed communities. BNL has gained national recognition particularly for its construction of the Bethel Commercial Center, a LEED Gold-certified building completed in 2005 as part of a transit-oriented community development plan.15 The Center reflects BNL’s “Community of Choice” philosophy, which calls for sustainable development in which “residents have every option available that other residents of other communities enjoy.”16 CEO Steven McCullough specifically stated that BNL takes a regional perspective on their work. This approach directly parallels the regional equity movement’s focus on creating opportunities in and for communities.17 BNL’s goal is threefold: to develop their communities in sustainable ways, provide community members with job training in a growing green economy, and ensure that residents have transit access to opportunities throughout the Chicago area.18 The Gary Comer Youth Center, which provides extracurricular opportunities for low-income African Amer-
ican youth in the Grand Crossing neighborhood, takes a similar approach to youth development. Marjorie Hess is the manager of the center’s rooftop garden, which she views as a “stepping stone” to other opportunities, many of which are outside the community. Hess said that her goal is to expose the youth to the same issues that youth in wealthier neighborhoods are learning about. Her hope is that once they get used to the rooftop environment—a new type of experience in a new type of place—they may consider participating in a variety of other opportunities around the city, for example, at the Chicago Botanic Garden, located in a suburb about one hour away. Hess wants the students to understand that learning about things like gardening can lead to all sorts of advantages, such as college scholarships.19 Environmental projects as holistic approaches Another model uses environmental projects as a basis for working holistically to address multiple community issues, using what may be thought of as a “wrap-around” approach. This model is being used by some traditional community-based organizations that do not identify “environment” as a primary focus area, such as The Steans Family Foundation. This foundation funds community revitalization programs in Chicago’s North Lawndale
12David Harvey, “Class Relations, Social Justice and the Politics of Difference.” In Michael Keith and Steve Pile (eds.). Place and the Politics of Identity. (Routledge, 1993). 41–66. 13For written and visual materials summarizing New Allies research results, see http://www.fieldmuseum.org/ccuc/ allies.htm . Organizations highlighted include: Bethel New Life, Blacks in Green, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, Chicago/ Calumet Underground Railroad Effort, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago Wilderness, Climate Justice Chicago, El Valor, Evanston Food Policy Council, Friends of Ryerson Woods, Greenbelt Cultural Center, Greencorps Chicago, Artist Andrea Harris, Illinois Local Food and Farms Coalition, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Lake County Forest Preserves, Lake Forest Hospital, Liberty Prairie Conservancy, Lill Street Art Center, North Branch Restoration Project, Openlands, Prairie Crossing, St. Leonard’s Ministries, The Resource Center, and Waters School. 14Agyeman and Evans, “Towards Just Sustainability in Urban Communities,” 41. Our research results may have differed from Agyeman and Evans’ in part because they focused more narrowly on environmental justice and sustainability organizations, whereas New Allies looked broadly at organizations working on environmental issues and social issues. In addition we included only a limited number of traditional EJ organizations in our research. 15 http://www.bethelnewlife.org/community.asp?id sub Case_Study-Bethel_Center (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). Bethel New Life is referenced in Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment,” 23 and Manuel Pastor, Jr. This Could Be the Start of Something Big: Regional Equity Organizing and the Future of Metropolitan America (forthcoming). 10–11. 16 http://www.bethelnewlife.org/about.asp?id 02 Strategic_Plan (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 17Manuel Pastor, Jr., Keynote Presentation at the New Allies for Nature and Culture Gathering, June 19, 2008, The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois. 18Steven McCullough, interview with author, August 8, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). 19Marjorie Hess, interview with author, November 30, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
192 neighborhood, a low-income community that is primarily African-American. Executive director Reginald Jones explained that when the foundation was originally established, it focused on education; but their initial experiences convinced them that significant change will come about only through a holistic approach that addresses multiple issues simultaneously. Recently, they made a significant investment in Windy City Harvest, a major urban horticultural project that will be situated on fifteen acres and include a number of partner organizations from throughout Cook County.20 According to Jones, the project will address a variety of issues, including “community wellness, composting, growing food, nutrition, horticulture, and green business.”21 This approach is increasingly being used by environmental justice organizations. Founded in 1994, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) works primarily in the Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods on the West Side of Chicago, which are economically depressed communities made up primarily of Latinos of Mexican heritage. In its early years, LVEJO focused on traditional EJ issues such as pollution and lead reduction. Recently, though, it has turned to urban agriculture and co-ops to improve health and create new, more enjoyable job opportunities for residents. Coordinator Kimberly Wasserman Nieto explained that this expanded focus is an effort to go beyond cleaning up the environment, to provide community members with new opportunities. “The definition of environmental justice needs to be amplified,” she said. “It’s not just about clean air, clean water, and clean land. It has to do with all the environments, home, work, church, school, anywhere that you are. [ . . . ] [E]nvironmental justice also means economic development, economic justice, social justice, work, labor justice, all those justices fall within environmental justice. So that’s why we felt it was obvious to us that co-ops were the next place to go.”22
HIRSCH “heritage” farming—as a basis for reconnecting youth with their African roots.25 Along similar lines, activist Naomi Davis is working to re-engage African Americans in environmental initiatives by combining the language of environmental opportunities with the African American legacy of environmental stewardship, through two organizations: Daughters’ Trust consultancy and BIG: Blacks in Green™. The consultancy is developing a new paradigm for community development called “green village-building,” which combines the green concepts of sustainable urbanism with development without displacement and African American traditions of self-reliance and close connection to the land. According to Davis, the goal is to create environmentally and economically sound neighborhoods that have culture, spirit, and soul.26 BIG is positioning Chicago’s African American communities to take advantage of opportunities in the green economy, by partnering with schools and community organizations to create “epicenters” for green training and leadership development. BIG has begun to gain national recognition through its collaborations with the organization Green for All, which is leading the green economy movement.27
DISCUSSION: INITIAL RESULTS It is still too soon to evaluate the long-term impact of the New Allies initiative. However, all three project partners participated in this initiative partly to push our own work in new directions, and it is instructive to examine how New Allies has succeeded to date in this goal. The most significant success for The Field Museum’s Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) has involved a new collaboration between two significant consortia in the region, Chicago Wilderness (CW)—a partnership of over 230 conservation organizations—and the Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA)—a partnership of over 25 ethnic museums and cultural centers.
Linking nature and cultural heritage Another model approaches nature and the environment through the lens of cultural heritage. A number of community organizations are using this model for youth education. For example, the American Indian Center has been working in partnership with researchers from Northwestern University to develop a science education program that builds on Native knowledge of the natural world to improve learning outcomes.23 Similarly, community-based organization El Valor, located in the largely Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen, works in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Notebaert Nature Museum to run a science and technology summer camp for youth. Part of the curriculum centers on the migration of Monarch butterflies, which have special significance within Mexican culture and follow a similar migration path to that of many Mexicans living in Chicago.24 Likewise, God’s Gang, which started in the 1970s at the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development, uses urban agriculture and organic farming—which they refer to as
20 http://www.chicago-botanic.org/info/windycityharvest (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 21Reginald Jones, interview with author, August 8, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). 22Kimberly Wasserman Nieto, interview with Heather Stratton, August 3, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (transcript in possession of the author). 23Doug Medin and Sarah Unsworth, interview with Josh Ostergaard, July 16, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). 24Rolando Madrid and Lety Almanza, interview with Josh Ostergaard and Paty Perea, July 30, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). 25 http://godsgang1.net/default.aspx (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 26Naomi Davis and Martha Boyd, interview with author, December 14, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). See also http://blacksingreen.org/ (Last accessed on July 18, 2008). 27 http://www.greenforall.org (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
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NEW ALLIES FOR NATURE AND CULTURE The Field Museum is a major participant in both consortia and was instrumental in their founding and development. For the last few years, we have been encouraging them to work together, but they did not see what they had in common. After our research identified youth development as a common concern, we linked CCA’s focus on youth programming with CW’s recently launched Leave No Child Inside initiative, which aims to reconnect children with nature. This past spring, the CCA applied for and received a small grant from CW, for a youth education project involving cultural traditions of nature and outdoor play.28 The CCA also became a member of CW, and recently the Chicago Zoological Society, a member of Chicago Wilderness, joined the CCA to incorporate more cultural traditions into their zoo activities. The other project partners, Lake County Forest Preserves and Friends of Ryerson Woods, engaged in this initiative to develop strategies for reaching out to the growing Latino population in Lake County, which doubled between 1990 and 2000.29 The New Allies initiative laid the groundwork for moving in this direction. The research process established new connections with a number of community- and faith-based organizations that work with Latinos, while the gatherings brought people from these organizations and many of Lake County’s environmental organizations together to begin to explore common ground. New Allies spawned a new Lake County network of organizations interested in the intersections between environmental and social work that has been meeting regularly, and Friends of Ryerson Woods has started participating in activities run by a city library and a Latino church. In addition, New Allies helped the Lake County partners think more broadly about the methods they should use to connect to diverse populations. For example, one conversation that we had during a focus group held at Ryerson Woods about immigration included a discussion about whether conservation organizations should be involved in immigration activities such as marches to gain the trust of the Latino community and better connect the protection of natural areas to the protection of people. Our challenge at this point is to continue to translate our research findings and the momentum of the gatherings into more innovative collaborations, particularly on a broad and coordinated level that will effect systemic change. We are beginning to address this in part by working closely with CW as they develop a Green Infrastructure Vision (GIV) to be integrated into the 60 to 2040 Regional Plan being developed by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. GIVs are visions for conservation development that prioritize the protection and maintenance of natural areas in land use planning, by focusing simultaneously on their benefits to nature and people. They have been popular in Europe and are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. New Allies is helping CW develop the GIV in an integrated fashion that considers not only the direct services provided by nature, such as floodwater storage and clean air, but also the relationship between land management and social issues such as transportation, housing, and economic development.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT While not always acknowledged, the new movements linking environmental and social issues are borrowing key strategies from the environmental movements of lowincome communities and communities of color. These latter movements have always made environmental issues relevant by addressing their relation to community life and, in modern times, civil rights. In other words, while the notion of “sustainability” may be gaining steam, it is not new. As Sylvia Hood Washington explains, the Urban League’s Block Club Movement of the 1940s—which eventually evolved into the nation’s first Urban Conservation Movement—aimed precisely to create sustainable communities, defined as “clean, crime-free, economically viable living spaces.”30 Indeed, Joan Martinez-Alier argues that environmental justice is one of the “‘main forces for sustainability,’” together with its international counterpart, environmentalism of the poor.31 These new movements may provide key opportunities for the EJ movement to expand its influence, by drawing on its experienced role as a “translator” between issues and people to develop successful working relationships with some of the stakeholders that have traditionally been its adversaries, including but not limited to the mainstream environmental movement.32 The EJ movement may also have an important role to play in ensuring that issues of equity and justice receive sufficient attention in movements for sustainable development. This role is crucial in making sure that these movements benefit low income people and communities of color. Manuel Pastor, Jr., writes of one such movement: “Smart growth . . . offers a progressive promise but its liberating potential could be lost if its stress on business competitiveness dictates lowering standards rather than simply streamlining regulation, or if the emphasis on the environment winds up protecting the hinterlands but fails to redirect investment to tired inner suburbs and innercity neighborhoods.”33 However, in these new, integrated movements, the EJ movement may find an opportunity to rethink its own
28 http://www.chicagoculturalalliance.org/projects/ (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 29Timothy Ready and Allert Brown-Gort, The State of Latino Chicago: This is Home Now (Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2005). 30Sylvia Hood Washington, Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865–1954 (Lexington Books, 2005).160. 31Joan Martinez-Alier, “Environmental Justice, Sustainability and Valuation,” Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, March 21, 2000, http://ecoethics.net/hsev/200003txt.htm (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 32Scholar-activist Michel Gelobter and colleagues lay out some of the key ways in which the EJM and sustainability movements in the U.S. have re-framed environmental issues, in “The Soul of Environmentalism,” http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2005/05/27/gelobter-soul/index1.html (Last accessed on July 18, 2008). 33Pastor, “Regionalist Risks, Community Opportunities.”
194 strategies and even how it defines “justice.” Chicago activist Jifunza Wright-Carter has called on the Chicago community to use global warming as an opportunity to shift from an ego-centered society to a collective society in which we work together and honor each other.34 Similarly, José López of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center calls for a new model of society based on principles of social ecology—what he terms, “live and help to live.” In an interview with a New Allies ethnographer, López explained this philosophy as follows: “I am responsible, not only for my fellow human beings, for the people in this community, . . . for the people in this city, for the people in the world, but . . . I am also responsible for me, everything that moves around, everything that is alive, everything that exists in this world.”35 The EJ movement’s seventeen visionary Principles of Environmental Justice36 could provide a significant springboard for moving in this direction. Many of these principles harken back to traditional beliefs of communities of color—whether real or imagined—about the interdependence of people and nature. Laura Pulido writes that the EJ principles are “guidelines about how we might refashion our relationship to one another and the rest of the world.”37 She argues that their power lies precisely in their focus on spirituality as an alternative force to the economic rationality that pervades Western life. But EJ organizations have not always fought for radical change. Collin Williams and Andrew Millington place the EJ movement within a discourse that they call “weaker sustainability,” arguing that it has not challenged the paradigm of economic growth and development so much as fought to have costs and benefits distributed more equitably.38 Perhaps these new integrated movements present an opportunity for the EJ movement to evolve from a movement primarily focused on reacting to external threats—what Robert Bullard calls “‘protecting humans from the environment’”39—into a movement that will play a key role in developing and promoting a plural and moral system of values. The EJ movement could be at the forefront of a movement aiming for what Williams and Millington term “stronger sustainability”—a radical rethinking of social relations that recognizes our interdependence with each other and nature and treats wealth not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to human and environmental well-being.40
HIRSCH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my New Allies for Nature and Culture colleagues: Nan Buckardt, Christine Dunford, Sofya Leonova, Josh Ostergaard, Paty Perea, Rebecca Puckett, Laurel Ross, Sarah Sommers, Heather Stratton, Douglas Stotz, Kirk Anne Taylor, Madeleine Tudor, Sophie Twichell, and Alaka Wali. Thank you also to Bart Schultz for his helpful comments on a previous version of this article. Address correspondence to: Jennifer L. Hirsch The Field Museum 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive Chicago, IL 60605-2496 E-mail: jhirsch@fieldmuseum.org
34”A Community Solutions Salon with Van Jones and Green for All,” DuSable Museum of African American History, June 25, 2008, Chicago, Illinois. Scholar-activist Michel Gelobter et al make a similar point in “The Soul of Environmentalism,” arguing that to achieve deep-rooted change, today’s movements need to focus on the concepts of community and interdependence. http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2005/05/27/ gelobter-soul/index1.html (Last accessed on July 18, 2008). 35 José López, interview with Heather Stratton, July 28, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (transcript in possession of the author). 36The Principles of Environmental Justice (EJ), http://www. ejnet.org/ej/principles.html (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 37Laura Pulido, “The Sacredness of ‘Mother Earth’: Spirituality, Activism, and Social Justice,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Dec. 1998): 720. JSTOR (Last accessed on April 7, 2008). 38Colin C. Williams and Andrew C. Millington, “The Diverse and Contested Meanings of Sustainable Development,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 2 (June 2004): 101. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 39Quoted in Joyce A. Baugh, “African-Americans and the Environment: A Review Essay,” Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 1991): 191. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). 40For an interesting anthropological perspective on creating new, sustainable systems of exchange, see Alf Hornborg, “Learning from the Tiv: Why a Sustainable Economy Would Have to Be ‘Multicentric,’” Culture & Agriculture, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2007): 63–69. Anthrosource. (Last accessed July 17, 2008).