Sch-Deeper Shades of Green - Hardcover

Jim Schwab; Lois Marie Gibbs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871564629 ISBN 13: 9780871564627

Publisher: Random House, Inc., 1994

Synopsis

Deeper Shades of Green documents the convergence of two great American movements -- conservation and the struggle for social justice. Environmentalists, once faulted for ignoring minorities and the poor, are recognizing the need to find common ground. Poor communities of all colors, the worst targets of pollution and waste-dumping, are perceiving that environmental ills are part of their larger fight. Spurred to action out of concern for their families' health and safety, they are bringing new energy and focus to mainstream conservation.

As a blue-collar college student, author Jim Schwab worked summers in a Midwest chemical plant and saw its toxic effects on fellow workers. As an environmentalist and urban planner, he was troubled by the relative absence of poor and nonwhite people in the conservation constituency. All that began to change, he recounts, with the landmark Love Canal case, which transformed a shy housewife named Lois Gibbs (who has Contributed a foreword to this book) into a nationally known citizen activist and gave impetus to other neighborhood struggles.

In evocative, hard-hitting reportage, Schwab profiles eight minority and blue-collar communities that rose up against environmental injustice -- in an African-American suburb of Chicago, Louisiana's notorious "Cancer Alley," and an Ohio mill town, among others -- in the process forging unprecedented bonds with national environmental groups. He notes the special place of Native Americans in this web of newfound allies: America's first victims of social injustice, they have been among the strongest voices linking abuse of the land with abuse of human rights.

In a later chapter, Schwab examines how industrial America can clean up its act, spotlighting progressive businesses and utilities, anti-pollution technologies, and other practical solutions. But change starts with people power, and that is his real subject: "African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and blue-collar whites" joining together "in an environmental revival that is on the verge of shaking American politics at its roots."

About this title

About the Author

Jim Schwab earned master's degrees in journalism and planning at the University of Iowa, and is currently a senior research associate for the American Planning Association in Chicago. He is a frequent contributor to many noted periodicals, including The Nation, The Progressive, and Country Journal; he is the author of Raising Less Corn and More Hell, which examined the farm crisis of the 1980s, and other works.

From the Back Cover

"A new merger of movements is aborning. African-Americans, who had largely ignored much of the environmental movement as irrelevant to their primary social and economic concerns, became increasingly aware that racial discrimination can take the form of environmental injustice. Workers, long accustomed to the adage that jobs are more important than preserving the environment, have discovered that they were often sold a bill of goods....In the process, these groups have found each other. They have become America's newest, most radical, and most committed environmentalists. Radical, not because they adhere to esoteric theories about humankind's ecological crimes against the biosphere, but because they have discovered a mother's passion for true family values when her child's life or health is in danger. Committed, not because they believe deeply in a particular political philosophy, for most come from fairly unremarkable backgrounds, but because they are America's real communitarians. They believe that neighborhoods matter and that government should be in the business of protecting, not destroying, our sense of community."

Jim Schwab, from the Introduction

"Deeper Shades of Green is about the struggle for a better environment at home, in our communities. The heroes of this struggle are people of every walk of life, every income bracket, every color, who have banded together to protect their neighborhoods....Issues of drugs, violence, and poverty are as much a part of their struggle as a proposed incinerator or landfill. Residents living in communities described in this book are people fighting for their basic right to participate in decisions about their environment."

Lois Gibbs, Executive Director,

Citizens' Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes

From the Inside Flap

s of Green documents the convergence of two great American movements -- conservation and the struggle for social justice. Environmentalists, once faulted for ignoring minorities and the poor, are recognizing the need to find common ground. Poor communities of all colors, the worst targets of pollution and waste-dumping, are perceiving that environmental ills are part of their larger fight. Spurred to action out of concern for their families' health and safety, they are bringing new energy and focus to mainstream conservation.

As a blue-collar college student, author Jim Schwab worked summers in a Midwest chemical plant and saw its toxic effects on fellow workers. As an environmentalist and urban planner, he was troubled by the relative absence of poor and nonwhite people in the conservation constituency. All that began to change, he recounts, with the landmark Love Canal case, which transformed a shy housewife named Lois Gibbs (who has Contributed a foreword to this book) into a nationall

Reviews

Environmental planner, journalist, and activist Schwab draws on broad primary and secondary research and hundreds of interviews with participants to analyze the energetic and effective grassroots activism stimulated by environmental justice issues in working-class and minority communities across the country. The book describes specific battles in some detail: Robbins, Illinois; South Central and East L.A. in Southern California; Cleveland and East Liverpool, Ohio; the Calumet region of northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana; "Cancer Alley" on the Mississippi and other pollution pockets in Louisiana; the once and future mine lands of Appalachian Kentucky; and Native American lands in several parts of the country. The final chapters trace the slowly developing relationship between environmental justice groups--which came together at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991--and more traditional green groups; describe ways that industry and government can move toward pollution prevention (rather than control) and waste reduction (rather than management); and discuss the future of the movement for environmental justice. A lucid, enlightening survey; includes notes, appendixes, and bibliography. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House, Inc.
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871564629
• ISBN 13: 9780871564627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 490