of EJ had a wide umbrella that included many other people of color—among others, Latinos, Native Americans, and U.S. Asian and Pacific Islander communities. For example, the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP), active since the 1980s supporting the rights of communities of color in the U.S. Southwest, easily found a place under this banner. In 1990, organizers in the Native American community formed the Indigenous Environmental Network. Also in 1990, SWOP wrote a now-famous letter to the so-called Group of 10 mainstream environmental organizations (for example, the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation), which were predominantly white and male, pointing out their exclusionary structure and issues. Responding to grassroots pressure, some of the Group of 10 began to diversify their organizations and issues. In a key development in 1991, the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit met in Washington, D.C., and adopted 17 principles (Principles of Environmental Justice, 1991). This would prove to be a transformative and radical reframing of environmental justice.
Framing Theory, Social Movements, and Environmental Justice
When I first encountered framing theory, theories of social movements had become very focused on “resource mobilization,” or the so-called nuts and bolts of organizing—leadership and organizational skills, fundraising, mobilizing constituents, and the like. Although these are important, the equally significant issues of symbolic meaning and identity had taken a back seat. Noticing this gap, sociologist David Snow and his collaborators developed a theory of framing that focused on the social construction of meaning and its links to social action. They defined frames as “‘schemata of interpretation’ that enable individuals ‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ occurrences within their life space and the world at large. By rendering events or occurrences meaningful, frames function to organize experience and guide action, whether individual or collective” (Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986, p. 464). In other words, interpretive frames serve the dual purpose of constructing meaning and offering strategies for action. Just like a frame around a picture, meaningful frames highlight certain elements of reality and affect how we look at (and act in) the world. A successful frame must “resonate,” that is, it has to ring true and feel authentic to those who embrace it, individually and collectively.
Snow and Benford (1988) identified three types of “core framing tasks”: diagnostic framing (analyzing a problem and identifying its causes); prognostic framing (envisioning plans for a solution); and motivational framing (providing a motive for action). Any viable social movement, they argue, needs to perform these framing tasks to mobilize supporters. To address an injustice, we try to figure out who (or what—but there is always a “who,” as Lois Gibbs pointed out) is causing it and what we can do to change it. To actually change it, you have to believe that it’s possible and that you should take action. As Carver Terrace residents found out, this is much easier if you aren’t facing the problem alone; connecting with others provides experience, motivation, and courage to carry out all three framing tasks. You need courage when you challenge a powerful social hierarchy built around inequalities of gender, race, class, and more. Adopting a collective action frame is also often linked to a reframing of personal identity. The #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement (BLM) provide excellent examples of powerful collective action frames that are also deeply personal. The same can be said about the EJ frame.
Importantly, frames don’t just automatically “snap into place.” Social movement scholar Aldon Morris (1986) reminds us that the nonviolent protest frame, for which the civil rights movement is so well known, was initially not widely embraced by African Americans in the South, who saw being unarmed in the face of armed opponents as a potential death sentence. Successful framing is always a product of meaningful social interaction. Also, framing is not a purely rational process. Rather, an injustice frame is frequently connected to a strong sense of “moral outrage,” “a ‘hot’ cognition…that is emotionally charged” (Taylor, 2000, p. 511). A resonant frame channels emotions in a particular direction. The polarization in the United States during the Trump presidency illustrates all too well the competing frames that resonate among his supporters and opponents, amplified by social media networks.
Framing has multiple purposes: presenting issues to the public (for example, presenting climate change in a convincing way); emphasizing certain collective strategies among a movement’s own participants and supporters (for example, validating direct action protest as the best choice); and influencing the social construction (reframing) of personal identity (for example, coming to see oneself as an EJ activist).
Framing theory has greatly influenced my work. I wrote that “‘[e]nvironmen-tal justice’ can be understood as a conceptual construction, or interpretive ‘frame’ (Snow et al., 1986), fashioned simultaneously from the bottom up (local grass-roots groups discovering a pattern to their grievances) and from the top down (national organizations conveying the term to local groups)” (Čapek, 1993, p. 5). This is what I saw happening in Carver Terrace and nationwide during a time when the language of EJ was surfacing. Besides exploring the EJ frame more generally, I wanted to pay attention to the everyday experience of residents in contaminated communities and what environmental justice meant to them. Carver Terrace was a microcosm of this search for justice, with similarities to (and of course differences from) other communities. My research suggested at least five consistent EJ frame dimensions: (1) the right to accurate information; (2) the right to a prompt, respectful, and unbiased hearing; (3) the right to democratically participate in deciding the future of the contaminated community; (4) the right to compensation from those who inflicted injuries; and (5) commitment to solidarity with victims of toxic contamination in other communities. Are these dimensions still relevant? I will say a bit more about this later in the chapter, as we consider the past, present, and future of the EJ frame.
Environmental Justice for the 21st Century
The EJ frame has expanded greatly since I first wrote about it. Consider the sheer number of contemporary EJ issues. More recent technologies like hydraulic fracking create new inequities, health risks, and environmental destruction. Unequal global “mobilities” with ecological consequences include both elite tourists inhabiting mostly white, privileged spaces, and immigrants driven from their homes by deadly violence, climate change, and global “free-trade” agreements that undercut their livelihoods (Urry & Larsen, 2011). As Pat Bryant presciently stated in Carver Terrace, many people have become climate refugees in their own communities, whether in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, or in Shishmaref, Alaska, one of a growing number of vulnerable coastal communities literally going underwater due to climate impacts disproportionately caused by others. Indigenous resistance is more visible, as reflected in the Standing Rock encampments supporting the Standing Rock Sioux protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), focusing on toxic pollution but also affirming Indigenous cultural values and treaty rights. Globally, Indigenous EJ activism networks have grown, although the risks are often high. For example, human rights activist Berta Cáceres in Honduras was tragically assassinated in 2016 after organizing effective opposition to destructive dams, mining, and logging on Indigenous Lenca lands. Her daughter has carried on her work. The list of other EJ issues is long: the “dumping” of toxic electronic waste from the Global North into the Global South; EJ debates about siting national parks and nature preserves (who gets access? who/what is protected or displaced?); food justice activism (for example, “food deserts,” food sovereignty, food politics, farmworkers’ rights, genetically modified organisms, and agricultural chemicals); sustainability and green design (sustainability for whom?); and much more. Destruction of scientific data joined the list during the Trump administration, as federal agencies were directed to delete information and websites about climate change.
Given the growing list of EJ issues, what can we say about the EJ frame? The frame continues to highlight what is wrong, who is responsible, and how to fix it. Contemporary EJ research helps to explain how the framing has changed. Let’s consider sustainability. EJ scholars and activists have critiqued sustainability initiatives that unwittingly create bubbles
