Invisible Women of the Environmental Justice Movement

This is part three of a blog series that will cover accomplishments of just a few of the women who were rendered invisible in the history books but integral throughout the Environmental Justice Movement.  

We cannot start talking about environmental justice without first naming the systems of oppression which propelled the United States to a point where the environmental justice movement became necessary. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang write about settler colonialism and its long-lasting effects on attitudes toward Indigenous people, land, and water in the US. They argue the arrival of settler colonists manifested a triad. Settler-native-slave are the three components of the triad telling a story of genocide and chattel slavery occurring on the land of the US – Tuck and Yang go on to parse out external and internal colonialism. These are dense ideas, but matter greatly to the story of environmental justice (Tuck & Yang, 2012).   

External colonialism  

Described as the process of an authority (assumed or real) taking parts of the Indigenous world away, like land, plants, animals, and/or people to serve the colonists need for space, financial capital, and superiority.  

Internal colonialism  

Described as the ways people, land, plants, and animals are biopolitically and geopolitically managed through systems like prisons, ghettos, school, and policing to “ensure ascendancy of a nation and its white elite” (Tuck & Yang, 2012).   

With these ideas, we can begin to understand the settler-native-slave triad as a product of both internal and external colonialism. On one point of the triangle there is the erasure of Indigenous people both in the destruction of Indigenous people themselves and the stories of Indigenous people to make way for settler colonists. On another point of the triangle exists the settler colonist prerogative to build on the land and demonstrate ownership of property and people made way for the enslavement of people who worked the land and built property. The third point is settler colonists themselves. In the image below notice how land is central to the triad. Land is the place on which erasure and enslavement occur – it is also the place where liberation and agency can exist. These are components of the environmental justice movement. 

I am in a place of consistently reevaluating my relationship to place and my role as a white, settler woman living on colonized land. Generations of white women tightly held the common narrative of ecofeminism and environmental justice without listening to or getting out of the way of BIPOC women who have been doing the work for centuries.  

In The Intersectionality of Environmental Justice and Women of Color, Shauntice Allen, Haley Lewis, and Nina Morgan say “no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies”. Environmental justice encompasses the interests of many historically oppressed people who disproportionately experienced and experience negative impacts from unsafe or unhealthy practices. Sociologist Susan A. Mann reminds us how “groups identified as a threat to the existence of life of the nation or the body politic are controlled, managed, and even eradicated with impunity” (2011). This links directly to the story of removal and ongoing erasure of Indigenous people, Black people, and immigrants. The process of making environmentalism for and about BIPOC communities is ongoing.  

Mary McDowell

Environmentalism became a social concern in the late 19th century and the efforts to implement healthy and safe infrastructure were led by progressive, white, middle-class men and women. Overtime, women took on more work regarding clean air, water, and disease prevention. Mary McDowell, led the way on city-wide garbage and waste management in Chicago – she leveraged her social capital to make needed changes in safety for immigrant communities.  

Lugenia Hope

During the Great Migration, over 750,000 Black Americans moved north. The influx of people required continued attention on living conditions and healthy and safety components. A group often left out of the stories of environmental justice are the black women’s clubs. The activities of the clubs were focused on the needs of the black community including home and neighborhood clean-up campaigns and reduction of disease arising from unsafe air and water. Black people were intentionally left out of local government or social welfare programs so black women’s club did the heavy lifting around community development. Lugenia Hope led the development of the Atlanta Neighborhood Union in 1908. Among providing schooling and medical care, this union engaged Black college students in assessment of environmental conditions in Black neighborhoods and addressed things like water safety and sewage (Mann, 2011). The Black women’s clubs of this era were a precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  

Juana Beatríz Gutiérrez and other members of the Mothers of East L.A. at a water conservation press conference.

Juana Beatriz Gutierrez and Mothers of East Los Angeles

In more recent history, environmental justice is known from the national attention gained by a protest in Afton, North Carolina in the 1982. The construction of a hazardous waste facility paved the way for 6,000 truckloads of soil containing PCBs to be dumped. Residents in Afton, a mostly Black city, shared concerns about the PCBs getting into their drinking water and they stopped the trucks by lying down on the roads that led to the landfill. There were 6 weeks of marches and nonviolent protests, over 500 people were arrested, but the toxic waste was eventually dumped in the landfill anyway. Despite this, the national attention on the action taken in the community propelled the people and the issues into the forefront. The last example of women in environmental justice embody the spirit of Afton.  

The Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA) and their co-founder Juana Beatriz Gutiérrez demonstrated the communal power of Chicana women and mothers who cared deeply for the environment. Reminiscent of the Black women’s clubs of the late 19th century, the MELA initially organized around stalling and stopping the construction of a state prison in East Los Angeles in 1985 and became leaders in local environmental issues like water conservation and health education.  

The stories of women in environmental justice are still being written – by activists, authors, artists, musicians, scientists, educators, and so many more. Women’s advocacy is not one dimensional and never will be, relationship to and care for a place is based on storytelling. It is rooted in the women who protect us and consistently look out for our collective liberation by telling stories that need to be heard to change the lives of the most vulnerable.  

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