BBecker- Environmental Justice

As I was reading this last chapter, I found myself agreeing with most of what Schrader-Frechette had to say about bias amongst the system and within our society.  We as consumers, voters, and workers have allowed the interests of the few, powerful elites become the norm for how the system is run.  Large corporations have say over what happens in the economy and in relation to workers rights.  They are allowed to cut corners and purposely harm the environment in the effort to pocket a larger profit.  Politicians are constantly responding to the interests of powerful lobbyist groups that have very narrow interests in mind.  Frequently, actually almost always, these interests have no human rights or environmental concerns at heart and due to this, policy is passed or enacted that goes directly against both of those issues.  It was very interesting to read her statistics on the amount of company involvement in research projects at higher education facilities and even more interesting to the restrictions that companies put on the way their money is used.  The statistic about how many research projects on drug effectiveness especially rang home because it shows just how prevalent and influential company involvement is.  It also makes me question whether the research I have participated in has contributed to similarly motivated interests or if it actually went to providing useful conservation information like I was led to believe.

The one problem I had with this chapter, and maybe it is with the answer itself, is that the only thing we as responsible citizens can do is to organize or participate in NGOs.  To me this seems like a backwards way to go about tackling problems for which we are accountable.  Yes it would be futile to directly take on oil companies, like Exxon, and make them change their ways, but it feels like that is the right thing to do.  Direct action against the offenders feels right and NGOs seem like we are seeing the problem and just doing our best to beat them at the game of politics.  Using our collective power to oust companies from the political system seems like a tedious, inaffective way to go about instituting change.  It takes time to get enough support to institute collective action and even more time to establish a group as an effective political group.  Once a group is established and working towards political goals, it takes time to get legislation through the system and even more time to get it enforce throughout the nation.

Collective action also doesn’t seem to work effectively for things like school bias.  If a school needs money to continue research and companies are the only thing that are providing the money, how does a collective action effort influence that company to put its profit seeking motives aside?  I guess there could be restricitions enforced by the school about how money is used, but that won’t stop companies from going to schools that will give the results they desire.  Also, it doesn’t address the fact that profits still carry more value than actual research that affects people’s health.  If faulty research leads to people using the product and dying as a result, what does the company do?  It, like the nuclear test stories, works to cover up the instances and keep them from getting out into the public sphere.  Only when there is a massive public reaction does anything happen to rectify a situation.  So how do we create a situation of massive public outcry at the idea of funding research?  Research has to happen and it seems like having a school would be the best place to carry it out.  It is supposedly a non-biased institute of reputable status where we should be getting the best of information from.

A final thing I found interesting about this chapter is the tales of Dixie Lee and her outrageous antics and actions.  The chapter tells a tale that makes you look at the book in wonderment about how stupid some people can be, but at the same times tells you how her book was published by “reputable” publishing company.  How can a company be reputable if it doesn’t realize the crap that it is putting out.  It puts out this book only because it will make money and cause a stir, at least in my opinion.

NGOs and collective action seem to be our only asset to fight the ongoing encroachment on human rights and environmental issues.  It is my sincere hope that more people are exposed to the “tilted platform” and see that their involvement is key to fuel any sort of change.  It seems like a lot is riding on the hope that people will get involved and take steps toward making a difference in their own lives.  Unfortunately as Schrader-Frechette points out, it is a case by case business with little overlap other than the fact that NGOs are the best way to fight back.  People need to get involved within their communities to make environmental justice a working threat to the bias present.

What is interesting about these chapters is the fact that land ownership has now been added to the possible ways in which environmental injustice is present in our nation.  As Shrader-Frechette points out with the Appalachian and Californian examples, corporations are using their “right” to buy up land with latural resource value.  This action puts small and minority farmers off their own lands and gives them nothing to work with.  By taking the money and land out of the farmers hands, these large, removed corporations take the money away from the small communities that depend on it.  As described by Shrader-Frechette, after a farmer loses his land, he loses the ability to acquire any sort of loan or supplement in order to start over somewhere else.

Shrader-Frechette suggests that land restrictions need to be put in place to secure a future for the small communities.  One of the biggest problems pointed out by the book is that the portion of people who have land rights varies greatly and causes discrimination.  Very small percentages of land owners, corporations, own the largest tracts of the best land available.  Also, these owners are from out of state and pay very little in taxation for the land they own to the community in which the land resides.  Also, these corporations are using the land with little regard for the people who actually live around it.  Due to these disparities, Shrader-Frechette suggests that limits be put on the amount of land one person can own, specifically siting those land tracts with natural resources on them.  This would help break up the monopoly land ownerships and leave some of the land for local farmers and communities.

What I found interesting about this proposition is that it bases its whole argument off the idea of right and wrong.  It is wrong for companies to take land away from local farmers and make them into huge monopolies where the money only leaves the community and goes into the corporations bank.  It is right to allow small farmers and communities a chance to live their lives in peace and harmony without big bad corporations throwing them out on the street.  When looking at the examples it is very obvious that people are being taken advantage of, but this is being done well within the law and it is going to take a lot more than a “They are being mean,” argument to get legislation or judicial backing to limiting land use or ownership.

The rest of the chapters talk about the right of free informed consent and how it is being abused around the nation much like the land ownership is.  Large companies come in and take advantage of local, usually minority, communities and put harmful/hazardous sites right in the communities.  The companies follow the rules and file the ES/EIS and give the communities just enough information to let them know that a site is going to be put up and has these certain requirements.  The communities are forced to make decisions of whether or not to accept based on very limited information and so end up with a uranium enriching site in their backyards. In order for the communities to fight these episodes, they much come across information that is held very close to the organization and back through a web of red tape lines.  To cross these lines one not only has to know which road to take, but also mush be able to understand what they come across at the end of each road.  The information, when actually found, is usually in very technical terms that no everyday citizen, much less uneducated ones, would be able to interpret.  All of this leads to discrimination amoungst mainly poor, uneducated, minority communities who have no help in fighting the corporations off.

While this is another good argument for change and draws attention to seemingly obvious exploitation, it also calls for a change that is not easy to obtain.  Unfortunately, the LEC company did not do anything other than withold certain details about the project.  They did everything according to the law and even asked local communities to give options for who wanted the site the most.  Bids were taken and communties put their own sites up for consideration.

In both cases the corporations are doing things that are considered to be only ethically/morally wrong.  Outside of changing the law or the way judges make decisions, there is not much that will be done to help fix these problems.  It seems like the only way that these issues can be fixed is raising awareness to the problems and getting outside pressure on the companies or government to change the system and make new requirements or stricter siting processes.

My one question and the defining theme of the time spent doing this reading is, “What is PPFPE?”  It is a concept to which Schrader-Frechette refers repeadtedly and seems to base her entire theory the second chapter, and it seems like the entire book.  This conception involves participative and distributive justice and many obstructions that make it hard for those two ideas to be fully realized within our democractic society.  Schrader-Frechette devotes an entire chapter to something that isn’t laid out in any sort of specific definition for readers to understand or even look up.  On google search PPFPE just comes out with an excerpt from the book so I assume this is some concept that she has developed and implemented in her own studies.  What is most frustrating about this book so far is that she continually references this PPFPE concept.  Since it is not clearly defined none of the other salient points make any sense.  I realize that I might have restated my frustrations a few times, but that is how difficult I found this reading to be.

Other than the PPFPE, the introduction had some interesting ideas as well.  The opening paragraph about Earth First! I found quite intriquing and so I looked into the organization.   Their website had some interesting literature and I highly encourage you to visit their website for a good laugh as well as an nice insite into a more extreme order of “environmental justice.” One section from this website includes how to make your own EF! group and this following section is an excerpt from it.

To start an Earth First! group in your area, consider the following elements: Contacts: Even though it is up to every individual EF!er to come up with campaigns and strategies and carry them out, a successful group still needs a “contact” to:

• Educate yourself on the ways you can attract attention to environmental concerns and dissuade people and corporations from destroying the Earth.

• Learn the law. While getting arrested will often bring increased media attention, weigh all the options. Freedom is an important asset. Avoiding jail is sometimes a better strategy.

• Become aware of the risks to which you will be exposed. Activists are often arrested during legal actions by police ignorant of the law.

• Establish a web site for your local area so that anyone may get in touch with you and learn what you’re doing to help.

• Gather people to help instigate actions and spread the word on what needs to be done to protect the Earth.*(http://www.earthfirst.org/about.htm )

As I was reading this website it made me think of some other examples of rather extreme motions that Drake students have taken here in Des Moines.  In my Grassroots Globalism class Professor David Skidmore required that students participate in some sort of NGO as a volunteer section of the class.  Five or six of his students decided to join the campaign against old growth wood being sold in local chain hardware stores.  During a protest four of the students joined together at the neck with bike locks and were all arrested after jaws of life were used to separate them. It will be interesting to see if that opening paragraph was just a shock factor to draw in a reader or will be referred to later in the book.

One thing I did like about the introduction was that Shrader-Frechette opened up the discussion from more than just her side of the argument.  She allowed the reader to know that there are many different factors that affect how environmental justice and how it works within our system.  She does list and address some very good questions about where environmental injustice comes from and who is responsible for it.  What I did not expect was her conclusion that everyone should be held responsible for the actions taken by government and corporation.  “We the people ultimately are responsible for environmental injustice.  We have allowed corporate and government abuses to disenfranchise the weakest among us.” (p. 7) While at first read it seems like a first glance ( a common gut reaction I feel) it does point out a very important point.  Cohesive communities are the most important factor in fighting environmental justice issues as we learned in From the Ground Up.  Since we as a society have not worked harder to ensure the basic human rights for underpriviledged  communities present in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, since we have allowed laws with loopholes for corporations to exploit, and since we have not batteded an eye at the lack of legal action by enforcement institutions, we the people are indeed “ultimately responsible.”

Red and I were chilling watching the chiefs and we have both concluded that this is going to be one very disappointing season.  They are down to their 3rd quarter back and it is only the 2nd game of the season. It is going to be rough.  I deliberated our options for a while, made some changes to fantasy baseball (also a sore subject), and grabbed a drink as soon as the game was over.  Currently Red acts as my verbal punching bag.  Since the girlfriend doesn’t watch football and my family at home has already given up on the cheifs it is Red who takes the verbal abuse during games that haven’t been going well.  It seems a bit unfair, but since it actually helps the “guy” grow, I can’t honestly admit to being to sorry about our current relationship.  During the week I am pretty busy with house duties and homework and so we spend a good afternoon watching games.  My fantasy football is doing alright and so I do give him some posivitive feedback when I see a member of my team doing well, but other than that he is the perfect organism to have by your side on a quiet evening/afternoon.

*Racism:

*Structure:

2 a: something (as a building) that is constructed b: something arranged in a definite pattern of organization <a rigid totalitarian structure — J. L. Hess> <leaves and other plant structures>3: manner of construction : makeup <Gothic in structure>5: the aggregate of elements of an entity in their relationships to each other <the structure of a language>

*Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

Is our society built upon structural racism?  Do you see it within your own community and daily activities? Are we racist without purposely being racist, or by participating in a racist system, if indeed our society is, does that make one racist?

If yes is the answer to any of the above questions, and especially the first one, what does that say about the people we are?  We have a constitution and bill of rights that pertain and explicitly state that all persons are equal under law.  Why can’t we live this out?  What about us as shumans allows us to live in a system that is built to exude or thrive off of racism?  After reading the first couple of chapters these questions began to arise within myself and the answers provided were both enlightening and disturbing.

It appears that there is no clear cut way for most of these questions to be answered because there are many complexities to the situation.  First and foremost the chapter talks about ways that outcomes may be construed as racist, as well as ways in which communities may get themselves into situations to where advantage may be taken of them.  The books explanation of “lifestyle” choices seemed to me to be a bit of a copout.  Yes people like to live with friends and those that they feel most comfortable around and so people of different ethnicities my stick together.  But no one, no matter how much a person would like to live with friends and family, no one wants to or chooses to live in places of known or prevelant health hazards.  The trend of poor people moving into such a place is seen due to the pressure placed on them by their position within society.  They are forced to live in such places because they have no outlet, no escape route from their economic situation, basically they live where they can, not because they want to but because they have to.  The “market dynamics” seems just to be an easy way for companies to cover their asses in situations that may be construed as racist or exploitive.  Yea markets may determine where is a cheap place to live, but if a community of underprivileged ethnic groups just happen to live there its nothing against them, I just want to build in cheap areas. Ok.  But why don’t more companies provide crucial information to these communities?  Why isn’t there someone in there explaining to each member what exactly will happen and what exactly the risks are, and what exactly the company planned on doing to maintain public saftey?  Unfortunately the answer is an easy one determined by market dynamics, it isn’t cost effective.  It is much easier for companies to play the its not me its the market card and get away with promoting racist acts.  Their intent may not be to bring down black or latino communities, but they sure like taking advantage of the markets in such areas.

Structural racism has many implications in a society.  It calls for change and most importantly for explicit action on the peoples side.  According to the Bill of Rights, article 12, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” * What can be taken from this is that if the structure of the system, the United States in this case, has a problem it is up to the people to take responsibility to bring out change.  Knowing this re assess the beginning questions and then consider how you contribute to your own community and the stucture of the world in which you live.

*http://www.constitution.org/billofr_.htm

I realize that I am an active force in making the environment around me.  I impact the environmetn with my decisions and, as a result, wish to pursue a career protecting the place in which I live.  My attitude towards the environment has been cultivated by family outings and classes taken here at Drake.  While in these courses, I have heard about the issues of environmental justice on a very broad basis and came into this class with the understanding that people are taken advantage of by businesses.  After reading the introduction and preface to this book, I realized that my general understanding barely scratched the surface.

Environmental justice, or injustice, has been prevalent for much longer than I would ever have assumed.  What is worse, it has been ignored or avoided on a large part by much of the nation.  Not only did politics and law take time to come but it has remained low on the totem pole of media coverage and general public concern.  Only in recent history has anything been done to actively pursue environmental justice on any kind of a national scale.  Most of the activism that has arisen comes from communities that had previously been taken advantage of by a company.  While there are laws in place to try and prevent environmental injustice, the enforcement by government, and adherence by companies has remained extremely loose.

I was previously unaware of the particular circumstances provided by the case studies of how grossly unbalanced the system was.  Yes a company may have to provide a community with knowledge, and yes the community has some avenue of contention which they can follow to fight a site placement project, but I did not realize that the odds were so slanted in favor of business.  It seems very undemocratic or legal for communities of of underprivilaged people to be taken adavantage of so easily.  The laws in place don’t do anything to protect them.

Another thing I hadn’t taken into account is the importance of a communities relation.  It seems self evident that communities, like the one in which I grew up, are very close knit and communicate effectively with each other.  What isn’t so apparent is the fact that this closeness is exactly what keeps businesses from taking advantage of a community.  Communities of mixed race or ethnicity seem to have less connection and so do not communicate as freely about issues within themselves.  This lack of connectivity gives businesses just the opening they are looking for to exploit low property costs.

I feel that the best way to address such issues and concerns is to make people see how affected each individual is by the environment around them, both human and natural.  If indeed connected communities is the best way  to reduce the instances of injustice then we need to figure out the best ways to promote cohesiveness within the underprivileged.  With increased conjunctive effort, the people themselves may be able to succeed where the system has failed.

When starting this book it was hard to understand why environmental issues had justice perspectives on them.  The environment belongs to us all and so it seems intuitive that everyone must bear the burden of how the environment is treated.  Unfortunately, like many realities, this is not the truth.  There are large portions of the world where people are taken advantage of for the sake of money, and the environmental issues are no exception.  Once that fact is accepted the question of why people would live under such treatment arises.  The later chapters helped add enlightenment to this puzzle but didn’t quite answer everything. People may more to an area with waste sites or other environmental hazards for the cheap property, but how in fact does a community without such a facility allow once to crop up?

These chapters were very useful in providing some further insight to the above question.  It is interesting to note that while there are options for public involvement, these options are not tailored to the publics interest but instead to industries.  Cole and Foster hit it very well when they state that most decisions are made by “Bureaucrats win state and local environmental agencies [who] respond to pressure, and when deciding between the desires of a community and those of a company, they often favor the interest that puts the most pressure on them.”  The decision is not made by the community, but instead by those who may have no connection to the community, other than being part of the same state.  The people on the committees that make decisions about placement of facilities are often not from the affected neighborhoods and so have entirely different perspectives on the claims made by both the company and the community itself.

This alone begs the question of representation and makes me wonder whether or not the laws or provisions in place are actually effective at all.  The regulations are made with built in loopholes for companies to exploit as well as built in hoops for communities to jump through if they wish to oppose a movement.  Even if a community has the information and activism necessary to show opposition, bureaucrats can still decide that all their work is not worth taking the time to consider, as shown by the Chester, Pennsylvania example…Why have the rules at all?  If they are in place just for face value, then what is the point?  We live in a democratic system where the people are supposed to be the ones with the power to change, but when they take the initiative they can still be told that their thoughts don’t matter? One company can outweigh a community?

The chapter continues to effectively illustrate the shortcomings of every presentable way for the public to participate.  Each successive path meets with either long difficult processes or problems of influence and disinformation.  How can a community of uniformed people fight a company with millions of dollars and a bureaucrat’s sympathetic ear?  How do you argue with an expert when you can’t understand what is being talked about?  Why is it that politics overrules morals and the value of other’s lives?  It is quite a though provoking chapter and points out a daunting task for any community involved in environmental justice claims.  Truly there is no justice in such a situation.  There is a facade of justice, but not actual justice.  But what is the best way to change the system? Grassroots systems seem to have zeroed in on the best and more effective solution.  Interestingly enough it completely bypasses the structure.

The examples given by the book allude to this new strategy.  Communities that went around the system were able to make changes not only for themselves, but for communities across the nation.  The examples of CARE and IEN show that communities bypassing the system and working to create a network of informed and involved members have the ability to extend a community’s concerns to those that matter, the decision makers, the bureaucrats.

What is shown best by CARE and IEN is the simple fact that informed people and communities make informed decisions and have a great amount of influence and power.  Information is the biggest power shifter.  Those who have information know who to talk to, where to gather funding or support, and have access to those pressure points that will provide the most effective results.  Part of this is made possible by the wealth of information available through current technology.  People can look up just about anything on the internet and can communicate in many ways, most in a matter of seconds.

(http://www.ejnet.org/ej/twart.pdf and http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/voicesfromthegrassroots.htm) Two very interesting web sites which I encourage you to visit

Another interesting point from both the book and class is the idea of making a judgment about fairness based on the results.  This chapter notes that Environmental Assessments (EA) and Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) are required in some states.  These practices allow the decision makers to see the possible impacts that the facility will have on the environment around it.  While these are indeed good practices and give the decision makers better insight into the effects of the facility, it only focuses on the harmful effects to the earth.  It does nothing to state the effects the facility will have on the community it resides in.  Yes it will have to prove that it doesn’t cause direct health hazards, but it doesn’t point out indirect social consequences.  By failing to look at the effects on the community itself, EA and EIS continue to perpetuate the structural racism seen the in previous chapters.

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