1. COMM 125: INTRO TO
MEDIA, TECH AND CULTURE

2. When you take a step outside of the front door
of your house, have you ever paid attention to
the area that your home is surrounded?

3. What do you see?
Are the trees dark green and the grass
are cut and watered? Are the children and
pets running around on the sidewalks and
parks, breathing in and out clean oxygen
air? Or, is water running from the faucets
in sinks as well as in toilets and bathtubs
clean, pure and uncontaminated?

4. These are some of the things that we
take for granted. Not everyone has
access to clean water, green healthy
trees, breathing clean air or healthy
produce and foods.

5. Can you imagine your home, a place
where you consider safe, located near a
factory? Can you imagine drinking water
that is contaminated with harsh
chemicals? Do you know what it is like to
live in a neighborhood that does not have
access to grow their own fruits and
vegetables?

6. There are those close to us that are
living in devastating conditions you’d
expect from a developing country.
The people that live in these conditions
are predominately minority groups,
Latinos and African Americans in
particular.

7. How is this possible? There is one word that
can describe these kinds of situations…

8. Environmental
Racism

9. Environmental
Racism
By Tianamarie Smith and
Sonia Perez

10. What is Environmental Racism?
 In addition to the definition in the “About” section
 Environmental racism refers to environmental policies,
practices, or directives that differentially affect or
disadvantage (whether intentionally or unintentionally)
individuals, groups, or communities based on race or
colour.
 Also reinforced, by governmental, legal, economic,
political, and military institutions.
 Environmental racism combines with public policies
and industry practices to provide benefits for countries.

11. Environmental Racism as
Institutionalized Racism
 Environmental racism is a form of
institutionalized discrimination.
 Wait, what is institutionalized racism?
 Institutional racism is defined as “actions or
practices carried out by members of dominant
(racial or ethnic) groups that have differential
and negative impact on members of
subordinate (racial and ethnic) groups”.

12. How a Community Functions
Tiana and I believe that a community functions
with systems. Here are some examples of
systems that are core to how a community
functions:
foster care system, education system, jail
system, food system>food bank, water system,
home system and the street system
Environmental Racism has affected some these
systems as our video presents

13. FACTS
 16.7 million children under 18 in the United
States live in households where they are unable to
consistently access enough nutritious food
necessary for a healthy life.
 The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in
infant mortality. African-American infants die at
nearly twice the rate of white infants. The infant
mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate
nutrition among pregnant women.
 62% of children rely on school meals for food
and 1 in 12 go to bed hungry.

14. Before we go into some of the systems, we will
be focusing on how these systems and minority
groups are affected by environmental racism in
the state of California.

15. Environmental Racism in
California
Central Valley

16. Joining Forces: Prisons and ER
in California
 The young Latinos had a lot of threats to choose from: air
quality, one of the worst rated in the country; undrinkable
local water supplies; regular pesticide poisoning;
downwind drift from incinerators and power plants; and
mega-dairies with their toxic emissions
 In the face of the toxic load across the Valley, it came as a
surprise to some of the adult environmental justice
activists that the youth reported as the biggest threats in
their communities the “three Ps”: police, pollution, and
prisons. The environmental justice movement has
struggled with mainstream environmentalists over the
bounds of the term environment.

17.  Valley residents remain on the front lines of an
unprecedented prison-building boom. The
state has built twenty-two new prisons since
1983 (including Delano II), after building
twelve over more than a century, from 1856 to
1983. Between 1980 and 2005, California’s
prison population has grown 556 percent,
from 25,000 to 164,000 prisoners.

18.  California’s so-called prison alley has been the
site of numerous environmental justice battles.
The United Farm Workers fought a long battle
against pesticides that were sickening and, in
some cases, killing their members. Site fights in
Buttonwillow (a toxic waste dump) and Kettleman
City (the location of a toxic waste incinerator)
gained international attention.4 The proximity of
vigorous environmental justice activism to
California’s prison alley has helped activists from
both movements see the similarities in our fights.
Foremost among them has been the
statesanctioned imposition of toxic threats on the
poor, people of color, and immigrants.

19. Delano II
 June 1, 2005, marked an auspicious day in the
history of what one California official labeled “the
largest prison building project in the history of the
world.”
 After the building of twenty-three new prisons in
just twenty years, the June 2005 date marked the
first time in two decades that California did not
have a prison in planning or construction.
 This historic moment was, at least partially, the
result of a tenacious and multifaceted campaign
against the construction of California’s thirty fourth
— and purportedly last — state prison: Delano II.

20. Delano II
 The Delano II story begins in
1998, when Californians elected
the Democrat Gray Davis as
governor over the state’s
Republican attorney general
Dan Lungren
 Somewhat surprisingly, the
powerful state prison guards
union, the California
Correctional Peace Officers
Association (CCPOA), backed
Davis. Consistently the number
one contributor to state
legislative races, the CCPOA
donated over $1 million to
Davis.

21. Environmental Impact (for jails)
 While legal challenges carry the danger that organizers will lose
resources and energy if the issue is defined too narrowly as a
legal one for which the remedy is in the hands of lawyers and
courts, the Delano campaign successfully undertook an
environmental strategy that used litigation, while not relying on it.
 As the activist lawyers Luke Cole and Sheila Foster point out,
“while legal action brings much needed attention to
environmental justice struggles, legal strategies rarely address
what is, in essence, a larger political and structural
problem.”Recognizing the limits of litigation as a solution to social
problems, organizers nonetheless successfully made litigation
one strategy in a larger, multifaceted campaign.
 WILL TIE INTO GANG ACTIVITY AND ANY RELATIONS TO
GANGS

22.  The value of environmental law lies largely in the fact that it
requires a full public disclosure of the real costs society will pay
for building, in the opportunity litigation can provide for public
education and organization, and in the possibility it offers for
residents to voice their concerns. Environmental law provides
that all who might be affected by a project have a right to
demand that the negative effects be made public before project
approval, and, if possible, that the developer mitigate those
negative effects.
 As we continue to investigate and compile studies about the
negative effects of prisons, examining the wide range of people
harmed by prisons, we have a substantive campaign to unify
opposition to mass imprisonment. These opportunities melded
with the Delano campaign’s central premise: if the public knows
the damage wrought by prisons, people will organize to stop its
realization.

23. Water System-Research in Nitrate Contaminated Water in the
San Joaquin Valley
 Background: Research on drinking water in the United States has rarely examined
disproportionate exposures to contaminants faced by low-income and minority communities.
This study analyzes the relationship between nitrate concentrations in community water
systems (CWSs) and the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics of customers.
 Objectives: We hypothesized that CWSs in California’s San Joaquin Valley that serve a
higher proportion of minority or residents of lower socioeconomic status have higher nitrate
levels and that these disparities are greater among smaller drinking water systems.
 Methods: We used water quality monitoring data sets (1999–2001) to estimate nitrate levels
in CWSs, and source location and census block group data to estimate customer
demographics. Our linear regression model included 327 CWSs and reported robust
standard errors clustered at the CWS level. Our adjusted model controlled for demographics
and water system characteristics and stratified by CWS size.
 Results: Percent Latino was associated with a 0.04-mg nitrate-ion (NO3)/L increase in a
CWS’s estimated NO3 concentration [95% confidence interval (CI), –0.08 to 0.16], and rate
of home ownership was associated with a 0.16-mg NO3/L decrease (95% CI, –0.32 to
0.002). Among smaller systems, the percentage of Latinos and of homeownership was
associated with an estimated increase of 0.44 mg NO3/L (95% CI, 0.03–0.84) and a
decrease of 0.15 mg NO3/L (95% CI, –0.64 to 0.33), respectively.
 Conclusions: Our findings suggest that in smaller water systems, CWSs serving larger
percentages of Latinos and renters receive drinking water with higher nitrate levels. This
suggests an environmental inequity in drinking water quality.

25. Environmental Justice Movt.
 The environmental justice movement fights racial and
class discrimination in environmental policy making, the
selective enforcement of environmental laws, and the
targeting of communities of color and poor communities
for environmentally disastrous land uses, such as toxic
waste disposal sites. Communities of color and poor
communities bear an unequal and unfair number of
environmentally destructive land uses, land uses that
take from the community but do not give back to it. The
environmental justice movement seeks to end
environmental and economic injustices by eliminating
the location of environmentally toxic facilities anywhere.

26. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
ORGANIZATIONS
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Oakland)
Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Resource Center (San Francisco)
Borneo Project, The (Berkeley)
Californians for Pesticide Reform (San Francisco)
Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (Santa Cruz)
Center for Creative Land Recyling (San Francisco)
Center for Environmental Health (Oakland)
Center for Health, Environment and Justice
Communities for a Better Environment (Oakland)
CorpWatch (San Francisco)
Crissy Field Center (San Francisco)
DataCenter (Oakland)
Energy Justice Network
Environment and Human Health, Inc.
Environmental Health News
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (Oakland)
Environmental Justice Resource Center
Environmental Law Foundation (Oakland)
Environmental Research Foundation
Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (San Francisco)
Friends of Alemany Farm
Generating Renewable Ideas for Development Alternatives (Oakland)
Global Community Monitor (El Cerrito)
Global Justice Ecology Project (West Coast Desk) (Berkeley)
Greenaction (San Francisco)

27. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
ORGANIZATIONS
HOMEY (San Francisco)
Impact Fund, The (Berkeley)
In These Times
Indigenous Environmental Network
International Indian Treaty Council (San Francisco)
Literacy for Environmental Justice (San Francisco)
National Religious Partnership for the Environment
Pacific Institute (Oakland)
People Organized to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (San Francisco)
People United for a Better Life in Oakland (Oakland)
Pesticide Action Network North America (San Francisco)
Prometheus: A Social Justice Law Firm
San Francisco Department of the Environment (San Francisco)
Susan Ives Communications
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network
Urban Habitat (Oakland)
Video Activist Network, The (San Francisco)
Western States Legal Foundation (Oakland)
Youth United for Community Action (East Palo Alto)

28. The world is not fair. We, and you, are
not that naïve to fail to see that.

29. Home is next door, next city, next state,
and all the states together as one USA.

30. We’re only as strong as our weakest link,
so we must work together.

31. “There is some good in
this world worth fighting
for.” J.R.R. Tolkien