Environmental Justice
What is environmental justice?
Environmental Justice(EJ) is a movement that focuses on the social justice issues and unequal burdens resulting from/related to environmental harms. It challenges the white, middle and upper class framework of the mainstream environmentalist movement by instead historically centering BIPOC, low income, and immigrant communities who disproportionately shoulder environmental burdens and are excluded from decision making processes.
EJ in Chicago
The modern EJ movement began when low-income communities of color organized against hazardous waste and other polluting facilities being placed in their neighborhoods in the 70s and 80s, including on the south side of Chicago. The mother of EJ, Hazel Johnson, founded People for Community Recovery on the southeast side of Chicago. Generations of discriminatory planning, zoning practices, and disinvestment that have segregated Chicago have also placed the burdens of pollution onto predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods. Treating Black and Brown individuals as dispensable, corporate and state entities have used South and West side communities as “sacrifice zones”, dumping grounds for factories, freight operations, and waste facilities. This means low income Chicagoans of color are breathing the dirtiest air and drinking the dirtiest water – with Black Chicagoans almost three times as likely to die from pollution exposure as of 2020. Communities of color continue to organize for their access to clean and safe air, water, and land, including, for example, recent and ongoing battles against General Iron on the southeast side, Hilco in Little Village, and Mat Asphalt in Mckinley Park.
UChicago perpetuates environmental oppression
Through its role in the continual disinvestment, displacement, and contribution to carceral violence against Black and Brown communities on the south side, UChicago is culpable in the creation and maintenance of these sacrifice zones.Land back, restoring stewardship of the land to Indigenous people and restoring justice to all who have been impacted by imperialism, is an essential part of environmental and climate justice. UChicago neither officially acknowledges that it occupies the land of the Peoria, Miami, Kickapoo, and Potawatami nations, nor has it taken any steps toward land back or restorative justice.
UChicago is also funding climate change by investing a portion of its $10.3 billion endowment into the fossil fuel industry, including fossil fuel companies and ties to direct environmental violence, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is despite calls for divestment since 2012 – this campaign was revived in 2021 with additional calls for financial transparency and community oversight over the endowment, as well as peer institutions committing to divestment. UChicago claims to be committed to climate resilience and has sustainability plans to cut emissions by 50% by 2030, yet still putting potentially billions into what’s killing our planet and the people on it. EJ is notably absent from UChicago’s sustainability plans, and UChicago is even investing in initiatives that have the potential to greatly exacerbate environmental injustices like its new geoengineering program. The impacts of climate change are already being disproportionately felt by low income people of color, both locally on the south and west sides of Chicago and globally in the Global South.
Get Involved
Local EJ organizations
Chicago Environmental Justice Network – composed of Blacks in Green in Woodlawn, Neighbors 4 EJ in Mckinley Park, LVEJO in Little Village, Southeast Environmental Task Force in Hegewisch, and People for Community Recovery in Riverdale
Sign the petition for fossil fuel divestment and transparency at uchicagodivest.com and follow @divestuchicago on Instagram
Engage with the Environmental Justice Task Force at UChicago, which both leads the divestment campaign and engages with local EJ initiatives – follow @ej_taskforce on Instagram
