Power Politics: Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles - Softcover

Brodkin, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813546087 ISBN 13: 9780813546087

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2009

Synopsis

In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages, a group of environmental justice activists blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. Why did they choose this battle? And how did the largely high school student activists come to prevail in the face of statewide political opinion?

Power Politics is a rich and readable study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that pitted good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and in doing so unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues. Power Politics' activists stood at the forefront of a movement that is building broad-based environmental coalitions and placing social justice at the heart of a new and robust vision.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages a group of environmental justice activists, largely high school students, blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. "Power Politics" is a study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict pitting good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues.

About the Author:

Karen Brodkin is a professor of anthropology and women's studies at UCLA. She is the author of How Jews Became White Folks (Rutgers University Press).

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0813546087
• ISBN 13: 9780813546087
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256