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Mobilizations across Boundaries: Latinos and New York's Environmental Justice Movement
In this proposal, I argue first, that while the U.S. environmental justice (EJ) moveent has been painted mainly as an African-American struggle, there is a strong, undervalued Latino contribution in New York City. Second, there are transnational dynamics in Latino environmental activism in New York (between the diasporic community and the home country) that may serve as a model for other immigrant activists in New York. Finally, as a political scientist, my focus is on the results of Latino (EJ) activism on particular policies, programs, and projects.
I am interested in the several decades of Latino (especially Puerto Rican) social/environmental justice activism in New York and the transnational processes between mainland and island activists. While Puerto Rican activists are not, technically, transnational given the island’s political status, their behavior is similar to transnational Cuban or Dominican networks (e.g. Duany 2011) or environmental justice networks working on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border (Carruthers 2007).
I begin my overview with the public health and sanitation campaigns of the Young Lords in the late 1960s early 1970s and how this coincided with a growing environmental consciousness in Puerto Rico over the excesses of industrial development in one of the most densely populated places on earth. I next chronicle how Latinos have been at the forefront of conflicts over urban greenspace—particularly for culturally relevant greenspace with casitas and community gardens--starting in the 1970s. In the late 1980s, I chronicle several “classic” EJ battles over disproportionate siting of noxious infrastructure (e.g. incinerators, waste transfer stations, transportation hubs, and energy plants) in poor neighborhoods. I end with the “victory” of sorts in Vieques, which ended the Navy presence in 2003 but where justice activists still fight to remediate sixty years of military toxics.