BBecker- Environmental Justice

Pellow brings some interesting points to light in the first couple of chapters in his book Resisting Global Toxins.  The most interesting ones that he brings are the unison of the four interventions and their contributions to the justice debate.  By combining his contributions to the four ideas of justice talk, he points out the areas where environmental justice might not always have been considered.  The trade of toxins, and the underhanded methods that companies go to in order to get away with it sounds like an astounding problem of global justice and onen that poses a larger problem.  When injustice is being committed in the U.S. it is at least affecting people who have a chance to make it known to the rest of the nation.  When it is committed across oceans in nations that have no ability to bring news of their position to the rest of the world, it raises justice problems to a whole new level.  It poses an entirely new problem to the question of how best to approach environmental justice issues.  Also Pellow brings to the EJ debate the idea of class and social problems along with the race issues of environmental justice.  He shows that there are a greater number of vulnerable people out there who are subject to exploitation by structural institutions such as risk society and treadmill economics.  Having such imbalanced practices at the heart of building the nation creates a huge problem when trying to help the people at the bottom.  Also, when similar methods are used in other nations, it creates a global problem of exploitation.

The most interesting idea of chapter two was the idea of people of race seen as a toxic element of society.  This idea was entirely foreign to me and caused some feelings of resentment for Pellow but at the same time led me to look critically at the world I take for granted.  There are multiple examples where this situation could be claimed to exist.  The one which we mentioned earlier in class discussion was the housing market in which people of color are denied more loans and have lower property values than the rest of society.  It seems like there is something inherently wrong with that, yet it happens without second thought every day.  People are not necessarily acting with intention to be racist, but their activities allow racism to persist in social norms.

Pellow also brought up the idea of social movement organizations as a way to fight back against injustice and brings to the environmental justice debate the idea of transnational organizations to fight the expansion of injustices to the global scale.  Shrader-Frechette focused mainly on the effects at home and who to go after for injustices, but when the people in other nations are affected it makes it much more difficult to take action.  First and foremost you have to have proof of action and know exactly who is at fault.  Also you have to deal with multiple governments and their different regulations.  This means that there are discrepancies in feelings of who is to blame.  Is the the business who actually produces the waste, or the government for not having higher standards of health?

There were some very intersting points brought up by these last few chapters that may bring about a whole new look to the future of environmentalism and environmental justice.  The chapter on Biocolonialism expanded previous environmental justice issues into the more scientific based world of genetics.  It outlined the possiblities for possession of genes (human, plant, and animal) as a justice issue.  The conference was established to create an understanding between the scientific world of genetics and the environmental justice advocates.  While some activists felt that it was a true gesture of wanting to work together others pointed out its obvious disillusionment of some of the actual problems; for example trying to address the genetic problems with asthma when it is obvious that the bus depots spewing tons of toxic chemicals and particulates into the neighboorhood air is central to the problem.  Another interesting part about the biocolonialism chapter was the importance of indigenous people to the movement.  While the scientific community seemed like it was trying to help make sure that these people are not taken advantage of just because of their land and the assests on it, it did seem like they may have just been saving face with the environmental community to prevent getting bad public images.  This seems like a face value attempt to win over people by showing them how much good these companies could do for the impovershed but it doesn’t really tell how they will avoid making sure that these people are taken advantage of in the process of researching these new wonder medical advances.

The chapter talking about globalizing justice seemed to point out some very interesting and relevant problems that will be facing the environmental justice movement in the here and now.  With much of the environmental movement issues, as pointed out by the book, it is an example of a company or industry taking advantage of a poor or ethnic community.  However, in an age when companies are becoming global entities it is necessary to think about combating them on a global scale.  Just because a movement or NGO may prevent people in the US from being taken advantage of, it doesn’t mean that the company has learned its lesson.  In many cases it moves to places with large labor forces and few restrictions.  This causes a whole new bag of issues for environmental justice advocates to focus on.  With injustice going global it is important that organizations that fight injustice go global as well.  We need to make the global community aware of the problems of environmental injustice and raise a global resentment to it occuring.  If a company can no longer find someone to take advantage of because everyone knows what to expect, the company will eventually have to change or go under.  Yes, this is an ideal, but by reaching out to international communities, NGO and the environmental justice movement can begin making steps in that direction.  This means that the idea of community has to expand quite a bit.  Previously the most successful movements have been driven by strong community ties and involvement.  By working together to combat the company people in a community were able to overcome their lack of knowledge and relative lack of power as individuals.  They pooled their resources and were able to contact people to get the correct information needed to prevent injustice.  This has to expand to included people across national boundaries.  NGOs have to build international communities that can work together against international companies.

The final chapter went about showing how the environmentalism and enviromental justice movements could possible benefit from working together as well as showing how they have both succeeded and failed while working apart.  By pointing out the occurrences where working together is most beneifitial, this chapter is helping point out the lack of importance of disparities.  People working together to solve local and global problems have the ability to pick and choose their battles.  It is important to take away from this chapter that there is no black and white when it comes to defining the relationship between environmentalism and environmental justice.  It is necessary for activists to know that this complete distinction, while useful for maintaining the movement, does not always require a clash over issues.  By working together the two movements can actually make a bigger dent in certain issues than by separating their time and efforts.

What was interesting about these chapters was the apparent disconnect between people on the Military Highway and the environment around them.  When interviewed they could point out five or six obvious and pressing issues, but nothing took precedence on their agenda.  I would have thought that the apparent trash abuse in and around their homes would have been the most prominent complaint, but things like being downwind of chemical factories and the multitude of mosquitos were more likely to be mentioned above trash.  This brought up a few questions or points of importance.  The poor have always been treated like they are ignorant of the problems around them and their ability to affect the results.  However, these people realize that they need a place for trash to go that isn’t inside their homes and so the abandoned, dried up lake was a good option.  Yet, they knew and were very frustrated by the very idea of being downwind of a chemical factory, and knew that there was nothing they could do to make the factory stop belching toxic chemicals into the air or water.  They removed themselves from some of the problems by buying bottled water for example.  They didn’t like the water, but instead of trying to take steps towards fixing the problem, they buy bottled water and avoid the issue all together.  What is most interesting about the interview process was the ability or likelihood that the people would go into extensive conversations about the problems around them.  It was interesting to note that the people contacted in the prosperous neighborhood were the most unlikely to let someone come back and get an interview at a later date.  This points out the apparent disconnect people have from the issues surrounding them.  If people do not directly feel pressure or strain upon themselves from environmental issues they won’t make it an issue for themselves to undertake.  However, although they were more removed, they were also more likely to have a feeling of connection or ability to affect the government system and so put more time towards helping an environmental cause.  The poor had a great “disenchantment” with the government and saw it as of no use to they current afflictions and therefore there was no reason to participate in it.  Many times people mentioned the two-faced nature of politicians but it only came from the poor people that were interviewed.  From this study it is important to take away the proximity, physical and intellectual/emotional, that people have to both to environmental issues and the functional ways of participating in the govnerment.

What was interesting about the next chapter was in apparent conflict between free market and environmentalism or environmental improvment.  There seemed to be a consistent affect or trend in free market profit motives taking over environmental concerns within the global market.   Whenever attempts were made to regulate trade in efforts in favor of environmental goals, they were fined as impedeing free market trade.  Until environmental goals take precedence over profit and free market globalization there will be no way to reach the Kuznets Curve point of turing degredation into improvement.

At the end of Shrader-Frechette the take home idea is that it is every citizen’s responsibility to get involved within their community to learn the issues, the NGOs, and to get involved with the community happenings.  This was a very localized idea because each community as noted by Shrader-Frechette is a case by case basis with variances that could not possibly be held across every spectrum.  By getting to know his or her own community, a citizen was doing the best possible thing to prevent environmental injustice.  After reading chapters 5/6 in Sander and Pezzullo, that idea changes just a bit.  As shown by the Massechusettes examples, there are many ways in which different factions can join together and get something done within the political system.  The examples showed many movements (environmental, labor, social and environmental justice) all working together to create a larger template for success that would allow them to gain important political access and consideration.  They opened the doors for communication between the state government and the concerned people in NGOs and allowed changes to happen on both a distributive and productive level.  They raised awareness of the problems in labor, environment, and justice movements, but were also able to get money, bills, and clean up action to be instituted within the entire state.  This example shows the effectiveness of organizations working together even though they have different goals and ideals.  Each organization was able to contribute a different set of skills to the fight and with their combined efforts they were able to make changes across the board.   At the end of Shrader-Frechette I thought the best thing to do would be to implement a template that could be shared amongst communities as an example of how best to organize, what issues to address, and how to gain support within the community.  This could be shared among institutions, such as churches, that already have a following gathered and just need a cause upon which to center their actions.  This would give a quick start method to NGO movements in small communities no matter what their structure or what the issue.  However, after reading chapter 5, which showed great examples of collaboration, it seems to me that there should be included within that template, a section that shows where certain movements might be effective working together to put more pressure upon the political, economic, or social structure which was leading to injustice.

After reading chapter 6 it is disturbing to see how the different ideologies of both environmentalism and environmental justice created such problems that they were unable, and still are unable, to take a large opportunity for environmental and environmental justice change and make a huge difference.  Instead, because Libby didn’t meet the parameters of either movement, it fell through the cracks and greater acts of environmental harm and injustice have been committed.  The asbestos was allowed not only to be spread around the US but was allowed to be exported to communities and nations outside the US.  Now it has truly become a global problem.  Where once there was a huge opportunity to  rid the world of a great amount of asbestos, instead there became the unfortunate spread of it to the entire world community.  This seems like to great a problem to leave be.  There has to be some realization that ideals are not the only reason for pursuing an opportunity.  People have to be able to recognize that they are part of a larger social community and that what happens on that large scale affects everyone.  Yes, the environment needs protection from humans, and yes humans need protection from humans, but humans are the main factor in both and so we should pay attention to what other humans are doing, or not doing, no mattter what.  By seeing that the asbestos problem affects not only the environment around it, rivers and bodies of water, but also the human population, the environmental movement would have jumped a huge problem before it got too bad.  Also, by recognizing the struggle of the people and the silencing that was going on in the area, environmental injustice movements would have been able to help the people to seek the emergency status they required and get the asbestos movement into the open air for people to get concerned about and make a stink about.  Both movements dropped the ball because their narrow visions of the world in which they live did not see the scope of the problem.  What people need to do and make sure of in their involvement within their communities, is make sure that other communities and issues are not forgotten.  Ensure that the community is safe not only from direct community actors, but indirect ones as well.  This is difficult to do since there is no national boy scout telling us who is doing what, but by keeping our eyes open we may see what others miss as opportunities to make a big difference, or avoid a big problem.

It is interesting to note in the essay by Jamieson that environmentalists are in themselves divided.  The book started out by showing how environmentalism and environmental justice are divided on issues, paths of rectification, and ideals.  Now Sandler and Pezzullo show that environmentalists cannot always agree upon what their “movement” entails and what its specific goals may be.  Some are nature lovers who like places to visit and connect with the non human element.  Their goal is to conserve and preserve these locations of wonder and relaxation.  Others feel it is the atmosphere and global climate change that is the main factor of environmentalism.  Human effects are harming the world community and making it unsafe for future generations.   Jamieson, as posed by the title, feels that justice is the uniting factor for both divisions, and that justice is the singular mindset that brings all voices together.  He points out that there are two main points of justice action, changing the distribution and the way people are punished.  Most environmentalists try to make sure that the environment/nature is harmed as little as possible in the process and feel it is the duty of the offender to clean up the messes they may make.  Those who are more concerned about the human aspect (environmental justice advocates) like Shrader-Frechette say that it is everyone’s responsibility to take action against the offenses and make sure that environmental injustice does not occur.  For people like Shrader-Frechette, it is the people’s original inaction or ignorance that allows injustice to occur and therefore each and everyone person is responsible for undertaking the project of educating him or her-self about what he or she can do to become activists within his or her own community.  They are to locally take action against the institutions that would inflict injustice by participating in NGOs.  Also, Shrader-Frechette sees the justice problem as an issue of rights or political equality.  It is soley an issue that deals with social status or lack thereof.  People, usually minorities, are taken advantage of because they are not granted the same rights or considerations  as the more involved, affluent, influential politically active people.  For this reason, the minorities are the ones who take the brunt of environmental injustices.  For those who don’t take the political equality view of justice, it comes down to who should be the ones bearing the cost or benefit.  It is the distributive justice ideal that comes to play.  The environment is the responsibility of everyone and therefore we all have an active role to play in maintaining order both in human and natural communities.

One intersting consideration in the article by Allen et al. is that of people seeing the environment in different ways.  These authors point out the differences in which races may distinguish the environment around them, but I like to apply it to the different ways in which each individual applies the notion.  As an environmental science and policy major I feel that I see the environment in a much broader scale than do some of the other students here at Drake.  To provide an example: my good friend Andy sees the environment from a much more recreational lens.  To him hunting and fishing are the too main reasons to protect the environment, and having the job of killing deer in an overpopulated area is the way in which he contributes to the cause.  He is not an environmental activists in many people’s sense, but in his own experiences of the environment and nature, this is the way in which he does his part.  My own view is somewhat different.  After taking classes and seeing how much differences in land management affect the world we live in, I have decided to pursue a career in environmental consulting.  I would like to become the consultant for private engineering or conservation firms that have land projects and just don’t know how to manage the property in which they wish to develop.  Development in this sense could mean returning the land to its natural states, making it good for recreation, or just adhereing to environmental constraints put in place by the EPA.  In all cases, by making sure that the least amount of harm is inflicted, and by maximizing the benefits that the land has to offer, I can present a plan of action for the firm to follow.  I take the considerations of law, land, nature, and society and mix them into a solution that allows for each to coexist with as a little confrontation or harm as possible.  That I feel is the best way in which I can contribute the the promotion of the environment around myself.  I mix the two thoughts of environmentalism, like many due, from chapter 3, but I feel that it is necessary to see as many angles as possible or you will miss out on the best opportunity.

Interestingly enough, the book does come around to  say that communities working together make the biggest difference in situations of environmental justice.  The last chapter alludes to “transformative politics.”  As implied by the title From the Ground Up, justice and action start with the little man.  When people change the way they act, the entire system changes.  Lots of little voices telling the government that it isn’t doing its job add up to a significant moving power.

Before people can change the system in which they live, the awareness has to be raised that the system is indeed flawed.  Without this understanding, it is impossible to determine the best corrective course of action. Success by grassroots organizations showed just this idea.  Lots of aggrevated or concerned people decided they had had enough and worked to better their odds.  By connecting all the little voices into networds of informed individuals  who can add pressure to the apporpriate actors, individuals are turning the government into a living, working institution of environmental justice.

Some interesting things to note that the book brought up are that the idea of transformative politics is only possible in a democratic system.  It assumes that since everyone in a democracy is able to voice their concerns and opinions, there is a good chance that changing an individual will have cascading effects in the democratic system itself.  However, it is interesting to point out that environmental justice, as earlier described by the book, occurs in places where commercial voices are much louder than the local community or individuals.  This inequality is not due to the democractic system, but to the larger societal ignorance and apathy.  Changing these problems will definitely lead to a change in the structure and system because it will make everyone realize that our nation is a community and we are not separated by economic status, and we are a unified front against any and all instances of injustice!!!…Sounds very appealing.  But how does one go about changing apathy? Make the community more cohesive! Make people understand how they are affected! Make the system more open to the public and give equal say to people and corportations!  Make people realize that they have a say in the politics around them!  Listing these goals sounds like something is being done, and it is I just wrote lots of words with exclaimation marks but gave you no idea how any of these things will be accomplished or how.  I feel like that is the biggest problem with this book.  It suggests that the community is the main factor in environmental justice issues, and that a community should bond together to change the system around them.  Transformative politics will change the system one person at a time!  But honestly, I couldn’t tell you one environmental issue facing the Des Moines community right now.  I could tell you that Drake is making a “green movement” effort, but I have no idea what that entails.  If you look outside of Meredith right now, the east windows face a dirt mess.  When it rains, all that dirt washes away and causes sedimentation in nearby water systems.  The coffee shop in Olmstead changed to free market but a Starbucks in being put just accross the street under the West Village apartments.  All I could tell you is that the furniture in Olmstead now sucks. The chairs are much less comfortable than they used to be and so I choose not to sit there between classes.  That is the extent of the issues I could tell you about in the community of which I have been a part for 3 years now, almost 4.  I’m sure that these changes all occurred for good reason and are promoting a better environment, but I never was informed they were going to happen, I never was given the opportunity to put in my ideas.  There is a student senate, but I know nothing about what it does.  Every year, people come to chapter and express their stern belief that if I elect them to (insert position name) they will change the communication problems and make my voice heard.  So far I haven’t even gotten an e-mail from this group.  I read in the TD what the senate is doing, but there is no guy calling me up and putting me on speaker phone during a meeting.  This is a tangent but I feel it is somewhat relevant.  The ability to change a community seems like a very daunting process and I don’t feel like I am the only person in the world who looks at the prospective of community change as anything but a piece of cake.  I personally would like a directory of who is most influential, where they eat and at what time so I can meet with them and make change happen, without wasting lots of time and effort talking to dead ends.  When that directory is made please make sure to send me a link.

Like most politics, this book gives me the sensation of all talk no action.  It describes what the issue is, how some people have gone about success and others failure, but ultimately just tells me to institute “transformative politics.”  No instructions, no guidelines, just become more informed and create that all important network.

The introduction was interesting in that it presented the book as a printed contradiction to itself.  It has 10 papers in which authors neither pick a side nor tell exactly which way the reader should take the issue.  Instead it is presented as a book which will tell the wonders the environmental justice and environmentalism movements could do if they just decided to work together.  This all seems to make for some interesting reading and indeed the first chapter is.

It was very interesting to read the different interpretations of both environmental justice and environmentalism.  The first part of the chapter seemed to be all groups/individuals who consider the earth and environment as a tool for human life and development.  It has no precedence over humans or human rights and those who do support environmental causes are seen as outcasts and are given no respect.  “Indeed, the environmental justice movement attacks environmental groups that support wilderness or endangered species as racist and classist.” (p.27) Another interesting quote said something the effect that “humans are an endangered species.”  Somewhat comical to think about considering there are over 6 billion of us present on the earth today.  These individuals see the environmental justice movement as purely human centered and a problem of color, exploitation, and distribution.  It is a movement that has to be made by humans to protect the rights and privileges of those who are disadvantaged and have no voice.  It is a problem of industry, government and business in which goals to clean up the enviroment are centered around the human need for a safe place to live.

There are others in the chapter like Thoreau and Marx who see that people are not “apart from nature but a part of it.”  It is up to people to realize their place in nature and utilize their skills to protect that which is the support system on which we depend.  Without nature, the book mentions a few times, there is no human race and there are no problems of distribution, status, color, or anything else.  It remains the key goal to protect the earth for current and future populations, and that may come at a cost to some humans; be it economic or otherwise.  These proponents of environmentalism seem to take on the perspective that by saving the earth, we are saving humans and will inadvertantly correct the problems that are facing disadvantaged populations.

Like the book says, it is interesting to see how the two sides come into conflict with one another and could cause some seriously hindering tensions.  However, this does make one question the ability of two such organizations to successfully exist and accomplish their stated goals.  If the two sides have such issues about deciding who or what to protect and the best way to go about achieving such protection, it seems like they will fruitlessly cancel each other out.  While some are destroying the earth in the name of saving humanity, others are deferring cost to humanity while trying to save the earth in the name of protecting humanity.

What I find most intersting is that both sides seem to have such resentment for the other.  In the introduction, Sierra Club and the NRDC both stated goals or desires to work together, but the Sierra Club spokeswoman pointed out that no cooperation would ensue unless complete equality was agreed upon.  Money seems to be a constant problem for any sort of environmental justice or environmentalist movement to move forward from.  It is the sole decider of who has the power and therefore who gets their way.  Without it nothing happens, but when it is present there is so much argument over who controls it and how best it should be used that nothing happens; or at least something happens, but only a few are content with the outcome.

My final overarching question after reading these two parts of the book is plainly this.  How can success be made on either frontier (EJ vs E) if no one agrees that they are two parts of the same fight?  Is there anyway to pursue an overarching theme that covers both reasonably well while still achieving the ultimate goal of a clean earth for everyone?

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.”