Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism

O’Connor is trying to point out in his article that capitalism is on a non-sustainable base to operate effectively in the future. The exploitation of labor and the commoditization of natural resources have led to a “crisis ridden system;” we have set goals to enhance the amount of profitability with disregard for the raw material extraction and overuse and use or the exploitation of labor.
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This process perpetuates the downfall of the capitalist system, the exploitation of labor eventually becomes evident to the laborers causing crisis in productivity, the availability of resources is eventually surpassed by the demand for it, and the inevitable outcome is that of further disguising of bourgeois capitalist practices as being more egalitarian and the non- manufactured materials of production to become another source of capital. These processes include nationalization and conglomeration, the presupposition is that in those forms of capitalism that there is more of an egalitarian structure when in all reality it just centralizes bourgeois power.

The crisis O’Connor refers to is the self defeating structure of capitalism. The profit is the main goal in capitalism and in this process the costs of production must be kept low to increase profits, thus further lowering costs of labor and raw materials. Increased demand causes the commoditized raw materials to become cheaper increasing the amount that production can buy, eventually degradation of the materials is created due to capitalist expansion in the name of profitability. This will eventually lead to the imbalance of supply to demand causing prices to increase, but in order for industry to maintain profitability they must lower costs of labor leading to wage decrease or layoffs (e.g. G.M./Chrysler). The ultimate self defeating part of this is that in the process of profitability the people who buy the product are essentially the laborers, with decreased income or lack thereof they are not able to buy the produced goods. Marx suggested an eventual move to socialism but in the current state the capitalist form mutates rather than transforming, disguising the poor practices of capitalist enterprise.

The commoditized material is the connection to environmental issues; the capitalist structure creates unsustainable industry around raw materials leading to degradation. The other portion he brings up is that in the name of profit environmentally responsible practices are left out because of the cost from business to participate in such practices, and governments do not want to hinder the activities of industry and therefore the process is slowed down.

Sorry for the extremely late post everyone.

O'Connor's "The Conditions of Production and the Production of Conditions"

Capitalist nature can be defined as “everything that is not produced as a commodity but that is treated as if it is a commodity”. Polanyi described “labor” and “land” as being fictitious commodities because of “the fiction that labor and land were produced for sale”. Marx’s idea of “conditions of production” is similar to that of Polanyi’s “labor and land”. Marx developed three “conditions of production”: “personal condition of production” which is the labor power of the workers, “natural/external physical condition” which is land, and “communal, general conditions” is physical infrastructure. Each of these conditions was determined to have no exchange value and to be fictitious.
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Capitalist states are both bureaucratic and political, and they have the function of protecting collective capitalist interests. These are served through a series of confrontations and conflicts. These conflicts are between movements in civil societies and within civil societies. Relationships between capital and production conditions are reconciled bye socioeconomic and political struggles, ideology, and bureaucratic realities. Sorry for the minimal summary, but I had a really hard time trying to follow this article. My brain is fried!

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction

O'Connor's central theme is to describe the traditional Marxist account of the contradiction between the forces of capitalist production and the relations of production, and then to describe his ecological Marxist account of the second contradiction of capital, between the forces/relations of production and the conditions of production, defined as the environmental factors, political, economic, ecological, social, and otherwise, that capital depends on to continue production of surplus value.

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The first, traditional Marxist, contradiction of capital is defined by O'Connor as overproduction of capital, or a crisis in realization of profit. Now the question is: What does THAT mean? Essentially, what I thought O'Connor was talking about (having never read any Marxist documents outside of the Communist Manifesto in high school) was the difficulty in the constant drive for greater production to increase profit. Capital, in seeking to produce more and more in order to make more money, gluts the market, experiences massive drops in commodity prices, and is forced to restructure the forces and relations of production in order to cut costs. This means mergers of smaller companies into larger ones, capital flight in search of cheaper labor, more efficient production processes, development of cheaper materials, and other obvious reactions to the inability to realize surplus value. The capitalist system is dependent on this process, because it is only through this process that expenditures on the restructuring of relations in the systems of production are economically viable, since they are unavoidable if the system as a whole is to survive. O'Connor says that this restructuring necessarily leads to more social relations of production, i.e. labor unions and government regulation of industry, but is careful to state that these changes are not irreversible or even necessarily indicative of a larger societal shift, a step that Marx and his contemporaries missed when they predicted the inevitability of a proletariat revolution.

The second contradiction follows much the same logic as the first, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where the first focuses on the difficulties on the output side of capital production and the difficulties of overproduction, the second addresses the input side of things, what O'Connor calls the "conditions of production". This can be understood as all of the inputs required for commodities to be produced, i.e. the cotton, steel, dyes, the fields and mines that these things come from, and all the labor required to farm, mine, and process the raw materials and to assemble them all into a pair of jeans: the output. These inputs are, by the very nature of capitalism, exploited in the constant need to increase the flow of capital. thus, the feilds are degraded, the mines exhausted, new ones dug, the workers are exposed to the maximum legal amount of work hazards to enable cheaper production, and worked for maximum productivity at the cost of workplace safety. This process continues until the environment, both natural and social, that capital needs to produce commodities, and therefore profit, is degraded to the point that production in the current mode is impossible, and a crisis of underproduction through decrease in volume of input occurs. This results, again, in restructuring of the relationship between the forces/relations of production and the conditions of production, involving massive ecological movements, workplace safety movements, urban environment restructuring, and government regulation to prevent exploitation of the social and physical environment. These restructurings are more obviously social(ist) than those mentioned in relation to the first contradiction, in that they address more directly conditions that are shared by all, and the regulation of capital's relationship to those conditions. The air and water, the streets of the city, and the workplace itself come to be seen as communal resources, and the people come to hold a certain, very important right over capital: the right to a clean and safe world. Again, O'Connor is careful to say that these measures are continually reinterpreted and can be applied in accordance with the needs of capital, but that the potential for a new social vision of the world lies in these movements.

What I found to be most compelling in O'Connor's argument, however, was the idea, not so much explicitly stated as implied, especially in the theoretical notes at the end, of the concept of cost. O'Connor seems to me to be implying two senses of the word, "cost". One is the tradtional capitalist view of the value that is attributed to the inputs of production. The other, which comes through in his discussion of "social costs", refers to the costs that are externalized onto the environment, again, social as well as physical, including health costs from pollution, education, ecological destruction, increasing personal and commercial rents, debt crises, and the list goes on. The government, and thus all of us, have to pay for all of this damage when it begins to become a crisis. This passage gave me the sense of the capitalist economy as a kind of wayward child, who breaks his favorite toy and comes running to his mommy to fix it for him. What is missing from this analogy, of course, is the sense in which the breaking of the toy is inevitable. Capital must continually seek to expand if it is to remain profitable, and so they keep destroying the conditions necessary for their own sustenance. I can also see this leading to more social forms in the relationship between capital and the state; a most encouraging prospect indeed.

Water Rights: Commons vs. Commodity

This document summarizes the crisis in the global south about water control issues. The main argument is the ownership of water rights; should it be a common or a commodity? For water to be a common means the ownership lays upon the people of the community. In contrast for water to be a commodity means it would be under private ownership and there are two distinct areas, the governmental side and the economic side. Each side, wether for or against the privatization of water, have their supporting arguments to their claims. The best management practice for water would be to place it under private control, but not at the expense of the community.More...

The main supporting argument for the anti-privatization of water remains on the issue of water being a human right, like food and shelter, essential for life. This side has a lot of support from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Is seems like such a simple principle that everyone should have access to clean water but the water just doesn’t clean itself. If the water was under management of the people it would go to hell just like anything else; there are just some people who do not care about others and ruin it for everyone. Everyone has their own water priority uses and it would not be fair for somebody taking just enough water to cook and drink for the day and somebody taking surplus for watering their plants. There would be some type of regulation but it would be very weak because not everyone would agree with the laws. The anti-privatization argument for water rights just doesn’t seem to be the best idea for the interest of the people.
The best management practice for water would be to put it under private control. There are many groups of people that believe water should be a source of income. This type of privatization would put a market on water with a fluctuating price. Many people would suffer from this because the prices would simply be too high while other would be in the riches. The pros of this solution would be the water quality standards; competition for the ‘cleanest water’ would arise which could bring economic boost to local areas. The best solution is obvious after reviewing the first two; water should be under private ‘governmental’ control. This is the best solution because it serves the best interest for all the people, remembering that there are some people who do just not care and would ruin it for the others. The water quality standards would be the best with this type of management and would be paid for by everyone in the community.
The issue of water rights is very serious, especially in developing countries. People see it as a necessity for life as others see it for a necessity of income. There are many supporting arguments for the anti-privatization of water but they just do not stand a chance with the arguments of the privatization sector. It would be in the best interest of all the people if the water was managed by some sort of agency which would set livable standards and make it available to all. It would be nice to think people wouldn’t have boil their water every time they need to use it.

Bird - The Social Construction of Nature

Elizabeth Ann R. Bird’s piece, The Social construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental Problems, begins with the question: “Where do environmental problems, and how can we account for their appearance in such ways as to prevent their recurrence?” This seemingly simple and open ended question leads Bird into a whirlwind of thoughts regarding the scientific base of research and it’s relation to the social construction of nature. Bird’s main focus is to separate the idea of scientific knowledge as being regarded as a representation of nature, from the idea and possibly reality of a socially constructed interpretation of nature. From her work it can be noted that scientists can merely make claims about their knowledge regarding the “truths” about nature.
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It should be noted that everything in this world is socially constructed, meaning that it is socially shaped and influenced by cultures and society. Bird just brings to the foreground the concept of scientific knowledge as being socially constructed. Science is subjective, and relies on repeated, accurate and identical studies in order to prove a “truth”. However what may not be realized is that scientists must manipulate and change the environments in order to reproduce identical studies, thus producing socially altered results. When looking closely at nature, nothing in nature can be reproduced identically.

Bird asks the question “What is the relationship of scientific inquiry to nature?” and delineates three possible considerations. The first being the paradoxes that physicists and ecologists have posed, which implies that experimental practices determine the character of the output, constructing a filter for perception in shaping the nature of what is perceived. Second being ecologist and environmentalist suggestions pertaining to the social practices of humans as scientists have altered the conditions of the “nature” which they are studying. The third consideration comes from sociologists of science and Marxist theorists suggesting that objects scientists study may not be nature at all, drawing from Marx’s concepts of labor processes lending themselves to the notion that human nature (including society) and external nature are a mutually constitutive dialectic, or the idea that the world cannot be understood adequately in the abstract but only through one’s actions (259).

Moving forward the idea of there being no single reality in the world in which we live. In their being no single reality it is to be understood that there are multiple realities and what is represented is depends on one’s relationship to or one’s position in the field of negotiation. This brings back the ideas of conditioned states of reality, showing that a particular negotiated reality is reproducible under certain conditions.

“Environmental problems are not the result of a mistaken understanding of nature. Rather they are the result of mis/taken (unfortunate or ill-chosen) negotiations with and constructions of nature in the shaping of new socio-ecological orderings of reality.” (261). In order to approach the issues regarding environmental problems we must first learn how to renegotiate and interact with nature. Social interaction with nature, as it stands today, must be addressed and altered in order to maintain an ecological balance. Without balance of society and nature there is sure to be significant problems down the road, larger problems than we face today.

Social Construction of Nature

In The Social Construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental Problems by Elizabeth Bird, she talks about where environmental problems come from. She believes that “scientific knowledge should not be regarded as a representation of nature, but rather as a socially constructed interpretation with an already socially constructed natural-technical object of inquiry.” Unfortunately, science is influenced by other social constructs such as politics and cultural views. Bird then goes on to talk about scientific knowledge itself and questions it’s existence.
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Bird also wonders whether “The existence of environmental problems, in fact, may pose a challenge to our assumption that what is known by science is nature.” Then there is a discussion of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. If you are observing something in nature, doesn’t the fact that you are observing it change it? When scientists study nature are they changing what is already there? Many other theorists are then mentioned. Robert Young’s labor process of science is discussed which “suggests that science cannot be understood naively as being about nature, because it is engaged in a productive process with its raw materials or objects.”
Bird then discusses the ideas of Latour and Woolgar. They mention how realities of science can be negotiated. They talk of it as a productive activity and suggest that it should be treated as a social production. They also talk about how science is known for reproducing certain conditions in order to check the knowledge, but that is not representative of nature.
One of the problems with nature is that is has not been represented accordingly throughout history. “…environmental problems are the result of a reductionist science that does not adequately take the whole of nature into account.” Often in the U.S. there is this false idea of what nature really looks like or is supposed to be. There is not a one universal truth to defining nature. Bird suggests that when looking at environmental problems we should also be looking at social issues, culture, etc. We need to examine historical interactions of society with nature to find the solution to the problem. Many of our social problems have greatly effected the environment.
I can see how it would be difficult to come to any conclusions using science to talk about nature when both are terms that are not easily defined. There are many ideas concerning both that have been shaped throughout history by our society that is culturally constructed.

Social Construction of Nature

In Bird’s article, she focuses on where environmental problems come from, and how people can account for them in a way that will prevent their reoccurrence. She says that scientific knowledge isn’t really a representation of nature, but a socially constructed interpretation. We need historical accounts of society’s interactions with nature that have caused environmental problems to find behaviors and modes of thought that contribute to this.
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Natural sciences assume that scientific knowledge represents nature as it exists outside of us. The most that scientists can claim to know is a relative truth about nature. Recent social constructivists question that and say that nature is inaccessible to representation since science is a social construct. Bird asks “what is knowledge if not the representation of something external to us?” The existence of environmental problems could challenge the assumption that what is known by science is nature. Neither humans nor nature as historically emerging processes can be comprehended except by the dynamic interaction between them. Marx asserted that the world could only be understood through one’s actions, not theoretically.

One way of explaining what science is about is that it’s an ongoing process of negotiating reality. Scientists’ negotiations of meaning, interpretation, or theory are what social constructivists point to. Science uses nature to negotiate reality, and the part of that reality represented depends on what the scientists believe they’re doing. This means that “science” is technically the same as every other kind of social productive activity, and historians should treat it as any other aspect of social production. The resolving and preventing of environmental problems should deal with how we negotiate and interact with nature. Human interactions with nature will always be changing, and to prevent environmental problems we need to develop social principles for appropriate interactions. We need to determine what ethics in science, social structures influencing it, and myths about scientific theories infused by nature will create the world we want.

Risk & Justice: A comment...

The environmental justice movement begun in the local areas, empowered by those impacted by particular social and environmental inequalitites within geographically small local regions bringing together the civil rights movements with the environmental movement. Whereas the national environmental movements fail to consider the individuals at the local level.

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While these national organizations have had some push on environmental changes and influencing the EPA and I do not beleive it is easy to directly blame one particular entity for the commodification of pollution, but more of a failure of the freemarket and outcome of the privatization of waste services and the nature of capitalism. Although many forms of pollution do not directly impact the area where the pollution is being "created" instead they are sent off somewhere further away, where the poor minorities are still being impacted. Particular legal acts have cleaned many visible source pollutions, but still they fail to acknowledge the inequalities within the relocation of pollution.

Particular risk factors are important to take into account, the author questions the political systems ability to fairly distribute risk factors, and that localities should have more control over what takes place within their locale, rather than just a yes or no ultimatum. There are a few lines that hit me as being right at the heart of the authors argument; "there has been insufficient attention given to the role of capitalist production in producing these risks in the first place."

My interpretation may not be accurate, or I may be missing something, but to me it seems that, among many other points within the article the author is trying to make, at the heart of it all is the inability for capitalism to embrace healthy social conditions for as many as possible, and is willing to accept unhealthy environments for its poor and minorities so long as there is a profit.

The author goes into a great deal of history with the development of manufacturing within the United States as well as the commodification and profitability of natural resources.



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Risk and Justice

In response to environmental justice studies that document the uneven distribution of environmental risk and the current focus of policy on pollution control, Field argues the origination of environmental risks in the economic system of capitalist production which should be addressed in a more democratic system that focuses on pollution prevention rather than control. He offers three perspectives on environmental justice research: risk, fairness and capitalist production. All three are interrelated, but each has different political implications. Risk is the basis of the current U.S. system in which the state serves as the regulator. This system poses two questions: what is the acceptable level of risk and what controls can be imposed so that pollution does not exceed the limits. This system ignores the reason why pollution exists in the first place.

Although environmental justice studies have documented the uneven distribution of risk to poor and minority communities and the fairness in siting, they fail to link this inequality to the production practices that produce and shape the distribution of pollution. This connection is demonstrated by an analysis of where, what and how pollution is produced and moved. The spatial element of pollution production is determined by the decision of industry to locate production in proximity of natural resources for extraction or in the urban landscape. This unequally distributes environmental risk to the people in nearby communities who are primarily poor and minority.

Extraction industries are encouraged by government incentives that make depleting natural resources more profitable than more environmentally sound alternatives. Native American communities typically bear the environmental burden due to the rich mineral deposits on their land that attracts these industries. Throughout history, non-extractive industries have typically located production in urban areas which, through advances in technology and suburbanization, have become dominantly poor and minority communities. These communities have low property values and less political power which make them the prime target for industry production and. People in these communities are not financially able to relocate and thus are forced to bear the burden of historical and present contamination and pollution.

The second point of the analysis is how the production process determines how much and what type of pollution is being produced. The post-war mass production economy introduced thousands of new toxic chemicals and synthetic materials to decrease the costs of labor and subsequently produced mass amounts of toxic waste to be disposed in the surrounding communities that are primarily poor and minority. Field argues that any supposed benefits of synthetics does not make up for the “impact of the 200-300 million tons of hazardous waste generated in the process [that] is borne by the 3,000 or so local communities which host the facilities which treat, store and dispose of most toxic waste” (86).

Neglecting the connection of environmental risk to the production process has led to current regulations to control pollution by capturing waste. As a result, industrial waste has been commodified and distributed to hazardous waste sites primarily located in poor and minority communities. Current policy ignores the ways that this system worsens the burden on these communities and fails to properly regulate contaminants. Scientific studies of ‘risk’ are prevented by the constant introduction of new chemicals that make it nearly impossible to determine the harmful types and levels of pollutants.

Another policy failure is its limitations of the political participation of local communities in environmental decisions, such as the siting of waste disposal facilities. Pollution prevention would be a more appropriate response than pollution control because it attacks the root of the problem rather than displacing it. Prevention legislation does exist, but only as voluntary provisions. Another solution is to increase participation of local citizens in the administrative process as they are the ones most affected by these policies and processes. The link between government and industry and the limited role of the people in the decision-making process prevents policy from moving forward to preventative measures. Pollution prevention costs more than pollution control and does not generate ‘enough’ profit for industry. It is simply bad for business. This is similar to how pharmaceutical companies will not manufacture curative medicine or will halt research that is close to finding a cure for a disease or condition. In both cases, capital trumps the livihood of the people. Treatment is more profitable than a cure, just as cap and trade is more profitable than prevention.

Risk and Justice (Field)

In the introduction to the article, Field provides an overview of environmental risk, which he describes as local—pollution affecting real people in unique situations. He asserts that many analyses of risk focus on political control of pollution rather than the original source, economic power. We must understand how current production processes create and spread pollution. One of the primary problems is that current environmental regulations focus on control of pollution rather than prevention. In addition, citizens affected by industrial pollution should have more power in the administrative process.

More...

Field then provides a brief history of the environmental justice movement. The author cites Jane Addams and the Hull House activists as the first organization similar to the environmental justice movement, pointing out that environmental justice leaders are often women as well. There methods have redefined the “environment” as the place where people live, rather than objective nature untouched by humans. The mostly middle class environmental movement often used to interfere with civil rights movements by taking attention away from them, but now they are allies via the environmental justice movement, as became apparent in 1982 when both groups protested pollution dumping in a poor black community in North-Carolina. Thus environmental justice advocates have espoused the belief that “environmental concerns are not separate from other social issues” (p.71). In fact, they have found that hazardous waste disposal disproportionately affects minority and poor communities. A 1987 study found that 3/5 of African Americans and Latinos live near hazardous waste sites. Another study found that the same is true regarding air pollution. The EPA has acknowledged such findings but still claims that it does not prove that pollution among minority communities is the cause for their greater number of health problems. A particularly startling statistic is that 70% of low-income African American children have blood lead levels higher than the threshold established by the Centers for Disease Control. Clearly, something is wrong with this situation.

The author provides three theoretical perspectives to analyze this issue. The first is through risk, the second through political fairness, and the third through production. The author provides the following definition of risk: “the concept which delineates the boundary between the legitimate authority of the government to act in matters of health and safety and illegitimate interference with private property” (p.75). The goal of environmental risk is to determine the acceptable level of risk and what should be done to keep pollution within those boundaries. Therefore EJ activists must prove that minorities and poor communities receive more pollution scientifically. However, many still argue that elevated health problems in these communities are merely due to “life style” choices. The second perspective, fairness in the political system, has two interpretations. Some see unequal pollution as proof of institutional racism and classism in the government, while others argue that the economy has a large role as well. While the author agrees that risk and fairness are important components of EJ, he believes that previous analyses have tended to neglect the role of production as the source of unequal pollution.

Field cites three ways in which production plays a huge role in the disproportionate distribution of pollution. First, production influences the physical location of the industry. For example, if production requires the extraction of a natural resource, the location will depend on where the resource is available. (As a side note, I found it interesting/terrible that extraction companies, such as mining companies, receive encouragement from the government in the form of tax breaks). For non-extractive industries, the situation is a bit more complex. Field provides a historical description, mentioning the invention of railroads and cars, which altered the urban landscape by allowing local companies to become national ones. The author explains that in the past, activists (and local governments) had little power to reduce pollution, so they focused on sanitation, clean drinking water, paving, building parks, etc. instead while pollution went unregulated. He provided a description of the layout of industrial cities. In a typical industrial city, a commercial core was surrounded by factories, which were surrounded by workers’ housing, with wealthy residents forming an outer ring. Thus more poor residents were located closer to the polluting factories. In addition, those who could afford it moved as far as they could from the source of the pollution, further stratifying people by wealth in relation to pollution proximity. Eventually suburbs developed and the concentric model broke down into patches of industrial and residential neighborhoods and with suburbs interspersed. However, some could not afford to move. These poor people, often minorities, still live in close proximities to these original industrial sites. In addition, factories moving elsewhere search for cheap property (and cheap labor) in communities without much power, landing them amongst the lower classes.

The second way production influences the disproportionate distribution of pollution is through the type of pollution emitted. For one, mass production economy guarantees more pollution (which is disproportionately allocated to poor and minority communities, for reasons explained above). In addition, since WWII, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of synthetic materials over natural materials and the use of new chemicals (e.g. pesticides in agriculture with a simultaneous reduction in labor).

Finally the third way production influences the disproportionate distribution of pollution is by affecting how pollution travels to vulnerable communities, often across borders. Ironically, the new environmental laws in the 1970s had a negative effect on the spread of pollution. In an attempt to abide by the new Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, industries began burying their waste, producing land pollution, usually in areas occupied by minorities and the lower classes, of course. Companies began to arise and consolidate exclusively for the purpose of industrial waste disposal. Thus companies with no physical ties to a factory could be in charge of disposing of its industrial waste, allowing the waste to be spread to other areas, states, and even countries. (In this section, I was most disturbed to read that companies can buy and sell the right to emit pollution!)

Field explains that because environmental laws are designed to control pollution rather than prevent it, industrial waste continues to end up in poor and minority regions through waste disposal corporations. In addition, the state is responsible for dealing with the pollution rather than the producers, namely industry. Field names the “common thread” of these issues to be “the failure to assert effective control over the processes of production” (p. 89).

Finally, Field asserts that current environmental policy ignores the effects of production on environmental risk in two ways. First, its focus on control rather than prevention places a larger burden on poor and minority communities. In addition, so many chemicals are being introduced that it is impossible to keep up with determining which ones are dangerous and at what levels, not to mention putting these regulations into widespread practice. Second, citizens near industry have little voice in the environmental decision-making process. From these two failures, Field’s suggestions seem obvious. First, he suggests that we move toward a system based upon pollution prevention rather than control, implying more state involvement with the means of production. Second, he calls for more citizen participation in decision-making. For this second suggestion, two things are necessary. First, citizens must have access to information about the pollution types and levels of the factories they live near. Second, citizens should have a defined role in the decision-making process, such as a community vote on economic decisions affecting the community.

Risk and Justice (Field)

In the introduction to the article, Field provides an overview of environmental risk, which he describes as local—pollution affecting real people in unique situations. He asserts that many analyses of risk focus on political control of pollution rather than the original source, economic power. We must understand how current production processes create and spread pollution. One of the primary problems is that current environmental regulations focus on control of pollution rather than prevention. In addition, citizens affected by industrial pollution should have more power in the administrative process.

More...

Field then provides a brief history of the environmental justice movement. The author cites Jane Addams and the Hull House activists as the first organization similar to the environmental justice movement, pointing out that environmental justice leaders are often women as well. There methods have redefined the “environment” as the place where people live, rather than objective nature untouched by humans. The mostly middle class environmental movement often used to interfere with civil rights movements by taking attention away from them, but now they are allies via the environmental justice movement, as became apparent in 1982 when both groups protested pollution dumping in a poor black community in North-Carolina. Thus environmental justice advocates have espoused the belief that “environmental concerns are not separate from other social issues” (p.71). In fact, they have found that hazardous waste disposal disproportionately affects minority and poor communities. A 1987 study found that 3/5 of African Americans and Latinos live near hazardous waste sites. Another study found that the same is true regarding air pollution. The EPA has acknowledged such findings but still claims that it does not prove that pollution among minority communities is the cause for their greater number of health problems. A particularly startling statistic is that 70% of low-income African American children have blood lead levels higher than the threshold established by the Centers for Disease Control. Clearly, something is wrong with this situation.

The author provides three theoretical perspectives to analyze this issue. The first is through risk, the second through political fairness, and the third through production. The author provides the following definition of risk: “the concept which delineates the boundary between the legitimate authority of the government to act in matters of health and safety and illegitimate interference with private property” (p.75). The goal of environmental risk is to determine the acceptable level of risk and what should be done to keep pollution within those boundaries. Therefore EJ activists must prove that minorities and poor communities receive more pollution scientifically. However, many still argue that elevated health problems in these communities are merely due to “life style” choices. The second perspective, fairness in the political system, has two interpretations. Some see unequal pollution as proof of institutional racism and classism in the government, while others argue that the economy has a large role as well. While the author agrees that risk and fairness are important components of EJ, he believes that previous analyses have tended to neglect the role of production as the source of unequal pollution.

Field cites three ways in which production plays a huge role in the disproportionate distribution of pollution. First, production influences the physical location of the industry. For example, if production requires the extraction of a natural resource, the location will depend on where the resource is available. (As a side note, I found it interesting/terrible that extraction companies, such as mining companies, receive encouragement from the government in the form of tax breaks). For non-extractive industries, the situation is a bit more complex. Field provides a historical description, mentioning the invention of railroads and cars, which altered the urban landscape by allowing local companies to become national ones. The author explains that in the past, activists (and local governments) had little power to reduce pollution, so they focused on sanitation, clean drinking water, paving, building parks, etc. instead while pollution went unregulated. He provided a description of the layout of industrial cities. In a typical industrial city, a commercial core was surrounded by factories, which were surrounded by workers’ housing, with wealthy residents forming an outer ring. Thus more poor residents were located closer to the polluting factories. In addition, those who could afford it moved as far as they could from the source of the pollution, further stratifying people by wealth in relation to pollution proximity. Eventually suburbs developed and the concentric model broke down into patches of industrial and residential neighborhoods and with suburbs interspersed. However, some could not afford to move. These poor people, often minorities, still live in close proximities to these original industrial sites. In addition, factories moving elsewhere search for cheap property (and cheap labor) in communities without much power, landing them amongst the lower classes.

The second way production influences the disproportionate distribution of pollution is through the type of pollution emitted. For one, mass production economy guarantees more pollution (which is disproportionately allocated to poor and minority communities, for reasons explained above). In addition, since WWII, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of synthetic materials over natural materials and the use of new chemicals (e.g. pesticides in agriculture with a simultaneous reduction in labor).

Finally the third way production influences the disproportionate distribution of pollution is by affecting how pollution travels to vulnerable communities, often across borders. Ironically, the new environmental laws in the 1970s had a negative effect on the spread of pollution. In an attempt to abide by the new Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, industries began burying their waste, producing land pollution, usually in areas occupied by minorities and the lower classes, of course. Companies began to arise and consolidate exclusively for the purpose of industrial waste disposal. Thus companies with no physical ties to a factory could be in charge of disposing of its industrial waste, allowing the waste to be spread to other areas, states, and even countries. (In this section, I was most disturbed to read that companies can buy and sell the right to emit pollution!)

Field explains that because environmental laws are designed to control pollution rather than prevent it, industrial waste continues to end up in poor and minority regions through waste disposal corporations. In addition, the state is responsible for dealing with the pollution rather than the producers, namely industry. Field names the “common thread” of these issues to be “the failure to assert effective control over the processes of production” (p. 89).

Finally, Field asserts that current environmental policy ignores the effects of production on environmental risk in two ways. First, its focus on control rather than prevention places a larger burden on poor and minority communities. In addition, so many chemicals are being introduced that it is impossible to keep up with determining which ones are dangerous and at what levels, not to mention putting these regulations into widespread practice. Second, citizens near industry have little voice in the environmental decision-making process. From these two failures, Field’s suggestions seem obvious. First, he suggests that we move toward a system based upon pollution prevention rather than control, implying more state involvement with the means of production. Second, he calls for more citizen participation in decision-making. For this second suggestion, two things are necessary. First, citizens must have access to information about the pollution types and levels of the factories they live near. Second, citizens should have a defined role in the decision-making process, such as a community vote on economic decisions affecting the community.

Risk And Environment

It seems as though Wynne has pointed out that environmental problems have been exacerbated by the scientific communities and the relation they have to environmental discourse. Technology has often been seen as infallible and the scientific community sees itself as an all knowing entity. The problem is that the scientific community has neglected the inquiries and concerns of the commoners as though they are unfounded.
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The other aspects are related to the grounds upon which they do this; they have a professional ego that leaves culturally relevant material such as relevant questions on safety and effectiveness of technology and innovation, these are disregarded and not to be taken seriously. This forced hierarchy causes incomplete information to be that basis for our understanding of environmental problems; the scientific community holds an ego that does not allow for outside opinion or input.

This process causes outsiders to be alienated from the process and in effect trust for the scientific community subsides. This also leads the way towards eco-skepticism; why should we trust the people that have been so wrong in the past and been so irresponsible? (Challenger, WTC). The scientific community loses any legitimacy due to the inefficiency of the past, and as a result public support for environmental change wains in a boy who cried wolf scenario.

The article proposes a change in this structure, specifically to allow for the many dynamic groups to form a coalition and have a better, multidimensional approach to environmental change. This coalition would provide relevant and diverse arguments that could be the makeup for real policy change in regards to the environment, as well as affirming the scientific community’s legitimacy in regards to environmental crises. This process would eventually lead to a more democratic diversified approach to environmental responsibility.

Wynne on Risk and Environment, and Technology

Technology has become so ingrained in our culture that discussions of society often incorporate technology's influence. That's why, after discussing grassroots environmentalism (and the complications thereof) in the last few classes, we are now shifting gears toward the discussion of risk vis-a-vis technology and the environment.
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Wynne is concerned that discourse surrounding the assessment of technology has become a 'downstream' discourse that has focused primarily on the risks and negative environmental consequences brought on by such technology. How likely is it that such a technological advance will cause harmful consequences? If such harmful consequences do occur, how serious would the impact be? Wynne does not dismiss such critiques of technology, pointing out that these risks and impacts cannot be completely controlled.

Wynne argues that such discourse omits a great deal of important 'upstream' discussion on the use of technology, including the purpose of the technology, intended benefits, and whether questions surrounding the technology can be answered. He argues that "the definitive modern focus of public discourse on the theme of risk and insecurity alone, as if this were the universal natural meaning of the public issues involved over new sciences and technologies, is a key obstacle to any democratic impetus." In other words, he says, discussion of the risk and environmental consequences of technology are hindering the development of new technologies that would - you guessed it - be more sustainable.

Risk and Enivironment as Discourses of Technology

In the article Risk and the Environment as Legitimatory Discourses of Technology, Brian Wynne discusses the concerns with the highly quantitative and reductive critique on risk assessment. Risk assessment can be known as the objective evaluations of the uncertainties and assumptions that risk promote. The evaluations and assumption that are presented are then examined and considered.
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Wynne discusses the technological discourses in which lack of full control in the technologies instrumental culture is normal and can lead to unpredictable consequences. Some of theses technological controversies include the Challenger and World Trade Center tragedies and have been seen in ambiguous way in the results and consequences developed by technology. Belief of public knowledge for policy needs to be not only true but very clear even if this results in the harsh truth (460). The environmental and risk critiques of the past years have reviewed the constitutive organizations that are known to be the guardians of the public interest when dealing with science and technology. Because of the complex relationship and interaction of humans and nature there seems to be a great deal of ambiguity and openness of meaning with the issues of technology and epistemic scientific knowledge.
The problem with risk and the environment, which tie into the culture of technology, produce essential challenges to human subjects. As a result we cannot ignore these self-reflexive public issues buried in our discourses (471). Wynne mentions that the responsibility of the SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge), is to highlight the risk and environment consequences cultures as well as to welcome democratic ingress. They criticize or at least question the reality of problems with risk and issues on the environment.
The article proposed a way of using democratic and environmental influence over science and cultural technology. Wynne suggests that as long as simple- realist cultural blinkers continue to decrease our attention on the questions of consequences, we will only keep waiting a proposal of democratic reflexive politics that will help provide technology humanly and environmentally sustaining (473).

Red Green Politics

The interview with Judi Bari discusses the collaborative efforts between EF! and workers in addressing the issues related to logging industries and the communities that depend on it. Bari describes communities that were controlled or created by large corporations and the economies that are based primarily on logging. In the 1970’s urban “hippies” came in and began to influence small groups and there began a movement that weakend the communty foundations. This practice went against the social/cultural groups within the communities and created a “bipolar social situation”, playing "hippie against logger" (2). Unlike many of the environmental groups that were popular at the time Earth First! appear to go about addressing the logging industry in an alternative way, responsibly. Being a small grass roots operation (at the time) they used alternative non-violent means to protect the forests. They also did something the bigger environmental movements failed to address, the people who would be devastated if their livelihood was taken away. More...
They (EF!) concentrated on the practice of clear cutting and proposed alternative ways to harvest timber in a more long term management process. In the active efforts to stop logging the folks of EF! had the opportunity to meet face to face with the workers, separated the workers from the production. They found some workers did not agree with that the way the big corporations conducted business, it was at the risk of the worker and the land. EF! created relationships with loggers and millers, it was a risky alliance but it helped impact not only logging but also working conditions in the mills. In doing this it helped address the problems that were created economically by the clear cutting process and the rights of the workers. Logging was the focus but it brought light to others issues that plagued the industry.

Judi Bari bared a lot of the weight of creating a movement that was blurred the line between the environmental and social movements. Being framed for bombing herself was an example of how corporations/capitalism influences government structure; we still see examples of that. What EF! created was a movement that targeted not only industry but also labor inequalities. Creating ways for the worker to confront problem within their own venue may open up avenues in addressing environmental issues, “The potential for bringing out change is greater if the radical ideas are held by the workers” (29).

Earth First! in Northern California: Interview with Judi Bari

In an interview with Judi Bari, leader of Earth First!, Doug Bevington and the activist discuss the work she has done with the organization, her struggles with local logging companies, and other related topics.
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The interview begins with Bari's description of the region in which her organization is located. She explains that the area is "impoverished," which has resulted in the scaling down of police and areas becoming "virtually lawless." She then goes on to name the big logging companies in the region--Louisiana Pacific, Georgia Pacific, and Maxxam-- and explains the problems associated with each. She points out that a locally-owned company, Pacific Lumber, which boasted the reputation of "hav[ing] the best of what is left in the world" as well as having "the closest thing to sustainable logging practices" was unfortunately taken over by one of the big name companies (p. 2).

Next Bari discusses environmental groups in the region, noting that Earth First! and the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) are the most prominent. EPIC deals with filing lawsuits on timber harvest plans and Earth First! is in charge of "defining the issues and also does the direct action, the logging blockades" (p. 4). Bari also points out that there is little influence by national groups, and that the movement is a "very locally-based, grassroots" one (p. 4).

When asked about agreement and conflict concerning the coalition with timber workers, Bari explains that the interests of the environmentalists who wish to protect the forests and the interests of the workers coincide because "both forests and the workers are exploited by out-of-town corporations" but that there is conflict where envormentalists who believe there should be no logging come in. Bari talks about how large environmental groups are "primarily urban, priveleged people" and the workers are a rural, less priveleged class and that it's exactly this difference that timber companies try to exploit to make the environmental movement seem like it's filled with uppity urban people who have no concern for the rural people. However, by educating the groups on either side of the conflict--the workers and the environmentalists--and making sure the each party's concerns are expressed and addressed, Earth First! has been successful in buidling alliances with the timber workers (p. 5-7).

Bari next comments on the threats and lawsuits received by Earth First! as the coalition became stronger. She talks about threats on her life, including a near-fatal bombing incident and receiving a picture of herself with a scope and crosshairs on her face. The corporations were trying anything and everything to stop the work of Earth First! (p. 13).

When discussing why the big timber companies have little interest in sustainable forestry, Bari suggests that because the companies (specifically Louisianna Pacific) are so large and own forests all over, they aren't concerned with long-term investment in the region where Bari works. According to the activist, these companies can sell the land after they have used it and move on to exploit other forests.

Towards the end of the interview, Bevington discusses with Bari her opinion of what it will take to have a sustainable relationship with the forests. She explains that what is needed is Revolutionary Ecology. We need to find a way to stop destroying the Earth and that way must exclude exploiting lower classes (p. 27).

Judi Bari and Earth First!

The CNS interview with Judi Bari focuses on the efforts her group, Earth First!, to slow and eventually eliminate the clear-cutting of old growth redwood forests in Northern California. This strategy was multi-faceted and multi-leveled, in that the group sought to achieve goals through direct action and legal action while engaging and enlisting environmentalists and loggers. The group was a grassroots organization, operating almost entirely exclusive of large environmental groups like the Sierra Club.
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Bari herself had “seen the light” while working as a commercial carpenter building “Yuppie houses” out of old growth redwood. Starting Earth First! from the finished product end of the business, she was hearing primarily the complaints of the environmentalists, who she said held the loggers themselves in contempt despite the fact that the loggers had been trying to fight clear-cutting for years.

While it is the interest of the big environmental groups to purchase and preserve wilderness areas, the loggers’ interests were their own economic well-being. Logging as a profession was multi-generational and often the only means of employment in the sparsely populated counties where Bari worked. She makes the point that unionizing millworkers and loggers at the time of her activism would have been useless, as the big corporations who were doing the clear-cutting would simply abandon their operations. While this surely would have satisfied those solely interested in the environment, Bari understood that workers certainly would never organize only to lose their jobs.

Her solution was to propose a legal push for sustainable foresting and the enforcement of existing legislation (The Forest Practices Act). Meanwhile, activists engaged in direct actions, such as occupying trees and chaining themselves to logging equipment. This latter proved effective as it then gave the activists a chance to engage the loggers directly. Also, after the group publicly renounced tree-spiking (a direct action with potentially fatal consequences for millworkers), the coalition of activists and workers grew.

After winning several court battles, the corporations (together with their always-willing accomplices, the FBI) coordinated a counter-attack. Using the unconstitutional practice of COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Protocol), the FBI and the corporations’ PR firms attempted to break up Earth First! from within. Forged letters were sent to various media outlets, and from member to member, in an attempt to create rifts within the group. The FBI and the PR firms also attempted to paint the group as a terrorist organization, despite its record of non-violence.

The efforts of the FBI and the corporations culminated in the attempted assassination of Bari and colleague Daryl Cherney. The FBI then arrested and charged the victims with being blown up by their own bomb, despite photographic evidence that the bomb had been hidden beneath the driver’s seat and had been triggered by the motion of the car. Bari and Cherney sued the FBI for civil rights violations. Bari, however, never fully recovered from the attack. She did some writing and spoken-word performances in 1994 and 1995, but developed breast cancer and died in 1997. Cherney and Bari’s estate won the court case against the FBI and succeeded in getting Congress to investigate the FBI’s methods in regards to environmental activist groups.

Philosophically, Bari shared with this author her opinion of one notion that has plagued the movement for decades. As she put it, “Unfortunately, the language of the theoreticians is often so dense that you have to wade through it with hip boots. It's actually kind of funny the way academic Marxists talk about the working class in language that is designed to exclude working people from the conversation.” (p. 27) She goes on to mention the same John Bellamy Foster that we’ve spent so much time trashing, in that he blames working people for being too ignorant to analyze class analysis. Of course, the working class is quite often victimized by establishment propaganda. However, academics are also often victimized by their own certainty in their positions, without ever having been “in the (expletive)”. Bari points out that her efforts led to her own assassination attempt. She also mentions loggers that stood up to the corporations and were subsequently blacklisted, and often ostracized from their own families.

Clearly, movements like Earth First! have the potential to be the most successful, given their different levels of analysis, recruiting and action. However, real social change is going to raise alarms among very powerful people who have no qualms about murdering to keep their power. A “soft” transition is obviously more likely than outright Marxist revolution, but it will not come without cost or casualties.

In the Name of Solidarity: The Politics of Representation and Articulation in Support of the Labrador Innu

There is a large (but somewhat connected) difference in going about the politics of representation and those of articulation. Representation, or identity politics are the more stagnant, one-image-fits-all, and indignation-when-things-change views. Articulation (including subject-position) politics are more flexible, collective-yet-distinct, and understanding-when-things-change views. Both are useful in some ways and limiting in others, though I see representation as more short term effects, and articulation as more long term.
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The politics of representation has confused the movement of the Innu First Nation of Labrador to keep land rights and self-government. Local support is lacking due to “racism and other frictions” (probably competition for resources is one of those frictions) and “requires tangible personal connection.” Stronger support comes from non-Innu southern Canadians, Americans, and Europeans who have picked up the Dances with Wolves card where all Innu are stewards of a pristine land, unchanging, and generally generic. Authentic (whatever that means, stuff changes all the time). The plus side is that these politics are quite convincing and quickly grab widespread attention, and can help with moral authority and ecological legitimacy. The flip side is that representation limits options, like “Native loggers” sounding like an oxymoron rather than a sustainable practice.

The politics of articulation carry the less familiar (at least to me) definition of “a joint, or flexible connection” where emphasis on subject-positions (environmentalist, Innu rights activist, etc.) creates support not based on inherent meanings or established identities, but rather on adjustable positions. This works on several levels. 1) With articulation, all positions are “authentic,” where the validity of the concern is the strong point. 2) Working “for mutual understanding between actors” rather than saving a symbol means the Innu can be opposed to irresponsible development (not all development). 3) Local support is more possible, like the common rival of NATO planes when they downsized some of their employees. 4) Articulation “is fundamentally coalition politics” where groups find a common ground to work from. This is reforming society in a way that works for everyone. And, 5) Contingency is ok. This allows meaning to change, and each subject-position to engage their “support as negotiation”. One example was that if the Innu were to exploit the land same as NATO planes and the mining companies, some subject- positions would drop their support. However, if someone drops out, someone else will probably come in. This also “demands a keen respect for the other’s perspective”, which is difficult because people don’t always agree on everything (I think this is a reason I find it difficult to affiliate with a political party). Thus, the politics of articulation brings solidarity in specific issues.

In the Name of Solidarity

This article discusses the Innu community in Labrador. These people are struggling to stick to their way of life because of the modernization of everything around them. Much of their lands have been taken and they have been converted to Catholicism. The government has forced them to school their children, and live an increasingly sedentary life. They must also deal with low flying military aircraft, increased logging and recreational fishing and hunting, and hydroelectric developments. Because of their struggles and their attempts to fight NATO and the aircraft testing over their lands, the Innu have been gaining a lot of support from many other groups.
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Thus far, the supporters of the Innu struggle have been employing “representational politics.” The supporters try to represent the struggle by referencing popular cultural narratives. This form of politics basically entails people on the outside of the situation trying to talk for other people, “in their voice.” This is not an effective way of speaking up for a cause. It is important for people to bring to light the struggles and issues, but do so without attempting to speak for them.
An alternative solution brought forth for this issue is “articulation politics.” It is important to show the issues through direct personal encounters. To just show pictures in the media of generic “Native” people does not accomplish a personal reaction from people. They need to connect with the story before wanting to help. This connection can only happen by using real stories with real faces and names. There are still problems with this form of politics. It does not get as much direct attention to use real stories, because they are not as “sensational” as the generic stories and pictures that were chosen specifically for their heart-wrenching nature. In the end, perhaps the best way to raise awareness is to find a middle ground between the two styles.

“Living is for Everyone” is Giovanna Di Chiro’s account of her research trip along the US-Mexico border to explore the social and environmental impacts of NAFTA, its neoliberal policies and the subsequent transnational community responses. On her journey, Chiro follows activist transnational community activist Theresa Leal who regularly travels from Nogales, Arizona to Nogales, Sonora studying the relationship between the industrial pollution and deteriorating health of people in the surrounding community.
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As part of an economic development strategy in the mid 1960s, Nogales, Sonora was transformed to house a hundred maquiladoras. In these factories, commodities such as cell phones and clothing are produced by the women who are in constant contact with hazardous materials and toxic waste, inside and outside of the facilities. The toxic waste contaminates the Santa Cruz River, a watershed that extends from Nogales, Sonora to Phoenix, Arizona. This has a cross-national effect on the health of people who live in the areas surrounding the river and experience the same ecological health defects. These problems are transferred as the south to north flow carries pollutants into the homes and bodies of Arizona residents. Theresa Leal has worked hard to form a working coalition composed of local residents and various environmental organizations against the actions of the corporations at fault to hold them accountable and responsible for change. She educates local residents about the environmental and health impacts of maquilarodas and engages in binational health studies that blend science with local observation.

In the 1990s Theresa and her team joined forces with Living is for Everyone (LIFE), a binational community-based organization founded by latino residents of Nogales, Arizona who, after experiencing wide-spread disease, launched health studies that convinced them the pollution coming from Nogales, Sonora was the source of their sickness. These studies received national media attention and Theresa agrees that both governments began to pay more attention to the rising health and environmental problems, but that is where it stops. They are aware of the consequences, but NAFTA provides no protections or provisions for environmental clean-up. And so their fight continues, building cross-border community alliances and using an extroverted sense of place to connect the local to the global, hoping that one day their persistence will overpower the most powerful.

It is not an easy fight as environmental management and regulation officials are merely illusionary protectors. It is not about shutting down the factories, Theresa says, because they will just relocate and do the same thing to another community and their people will be left without jobs. That is why the coalition seeks to build nontraditional partnerships between the community and corporations to discover environmentally friendly alternatives. It is not enough to simply accept the hazards of industry as ‘part of the job’, the technology for sustainable solutions exists but is denied because efficiency does not profit unless it is in the case of the production process and not the actual profit. Their motives are shaped by their connection to the community and their ‘global sense of place’. The land, the water and air is theirs and it is being destroyed at the cost of the health of their children and their families. They have the right to be protected and not exploited.

Living Is for Everyone

Giovanna Di Chiro's article "Living Is for Everyone" is an account of a 'toxic tour' that the author and environmental activists, including Teresa Leal, take of the Ambos Nogales region. Di Chiro examines the work of Teal throughout the article, and focuses on the tour's border crossings to "narrate a history of community health and environmental action in a transnational context" (112).
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With Leal as the guide, the tour begins with the group crossing the U.S.-Mexico border from Nogales, Arizona into Nogales, Sonora. At this point in the article, Di Chiro briefly explains Leal's practices, saying that she is not only an environmental activist but also a cultural historian, women's right advocate, and a social activist who has devoted many years to" improving the environmental conditions endangering the health of her family, community, and native land" (114). Di Chiro points out that Leal's passion for environmental justice extends far beyond her own "local environment" and encompasses a larger 'community', and that this "community-environment concept defines a new ecosystem," one that will be further presented in Di Chiro's article.

Di Chiro goes on to talk about the Santa Cruz River, which, to the Tohon O'odhman people, has become known as hik-dan, or a parched "cut in the earth," due to overpumping and the dumping of toxic chemicals and untreated sewage. Also discussed is the Nogales Wash, a dry tributary, which has become a dumping site for garbage and other waste. Di Chiro notes that she learned that the protection of these water sources is at the heart of the fight for environmental justice in the Ambos Nogales (116).

Next the author discusses Nagoles, Sonora's city industrial park district with 100 facilities which began to pop up in the '60s as "an economic development strategy to encourage foreign investment and create jobs to bolster Mexico's flagging economy" (116). Due to lax enviornmental restrictions, the industrial parks have played a huge role in the poor health of residents, workers, and the environment. One activist group known as Comadres ("comothers") works to empower women to fight for improved living and working conditions. Di Chiro writes of various accounts of these poor conditions including women who's mental states are affected by working around glue in a factory, and a woman who lost two children to cancer because of radiation exposure.

The tour continued on to an old landfill, something Di Chiro notes that Leal chose as "a site of action" because of the health and environmental dangers associated with it. Because children were often found scavenging the dump, Leal set up a drop-in center called Mi Nueva Casa, that offered things like food, drug treatment, and literacy classes to the kids (122). In addition to this, Leal also worked with activists to monitor water sources near the dump. Poor regulatory practices lead to the dumping of waste outside of the site's fences and into nearby lagoons and washes.

Di Chiro ends her article by reiterating that water protection is the key to improving environmental conditions and that this is not just an issue for those living in arid landscapes, but a "larger-than-local water politics that spans borders of all kinds--national, racial, gendered, economic, linguistic, ecological, technological, spiritual, and epistemic" (129).