been enthusiastic about the so-called complete street concept, which, instead of focusing on cars, includes spaces for pedestrian strolling, bicycle lanes, traffic calming elements, and green spaces. They frame this as good for small businesses and beneficial to everyone. However, some minority communities have protested because funding these projects attracts gentrification, where higher-priced retail businesses, restaurants, and housing drive up property tax and rents, pricing lower-income residents out of their own communities. A good idea in principle becomes a bad idea in practice if it contributes even unintentionally to segregation, displacement, and distrust. In the United States, green design (a good idea) is often pitched to a higher-income clientele (exclusionary), prompting EJ critiques of “green gentrification” (Checker, 2011; Gould & Lewis, 2017). For a full discussion of this phenomenon, please see Chapter 17 in this volume. Likewise, local food movements have been critiqued for being insular and supporting “white space” while ignoring a deeper history and diverse cultural perspectives (Mares & Peña, 2014; see also Chapter 12 in this volume). A growing body of research on “just sustainabilities” (Alkon & Agyeman, 2014; Agyeman et al., 2016) is contributing significantly to an expanding EJ frame.
Framing theory also reminds us that the EJ frame will look different depending on the depth of the diagnostic and prognostic process that produces it. A range of EJ scholars point out that today the EJ frame is more likely to reach deep into the systemic roots of inequalities like racism and sexism. As environmental racism became more prominent in the EJ frame, the frame expanded beyond seeking a remedy for a particular situation and targeted the racist logic prevalent in the U.S social structure and elsewhere—a deeper diagnosis, and a message that many white people either do not want to hear, or of which they are naïvely unaware. A highly visible example is how white bodies and bodies of people of color in particular spaces are treated differently (think Flint, Michigan, and the BLM movement). Who is privileged? Who is erased? Who is put under surveillance? Who is injured or killed? A deeper EJ frame also spotlights inequalities built into the global capitalist system and its political power; Laura Pulido and her co-authors question the effectiveness of merely “tinkering with policies” (Pulido, Kohl & Cotton, 2016, p. 12). The problem is multifaceted and includes the need for stronger democracy and confronting the deep roots of inequality embedded in the economic system. By understanding the framing process, we can discover who constructed a particular set of meanings, how this relates to social power, and how framing can support or undermine social justice. For example, “counterframes” spring up to challenge successful frames like EJ, targeting minorities and poor people as the problem, rather than the system that does violence to them.
Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future
The residents of Carver Terrace endured many institutional failures, made worse by systemic racism: the way land use was(n’t) regulated, racialized housing markets, the way science and law was practiced, and encounters with outside agencies and other interactions that framed people of color as problematic and undeserving (Čapek, 1999). What about the five EJ frame dimensions that I identified earlier—Are they still relevant? Yes, but they are part of a bigger picture (and EJ frame) with many more dimensions.
Communities continue to struggle to get accurate information (dimension 1) about the safety of their land and homes, whether the problem is fracking, tar sands oil pipelines, urban air and water pollution, runoff from massive poultry or hog operations, pesticide drift, Indigenous sovereignty rights, and much more. Due to the hostility to regulation built into capitalism, citizens often don’t get information without a fight. They hold agencies, politicians, and corporations accountable through protests, legal suits, and political action, as well as by creating alternative resources. When FUSE/CTCAG discovered that an important federal health assessment was withheld from the community, they held a press conference but also worked with the grassroots Environmental Health Network to collect their own data—a good example of what Phil Brown (1992) calls popular epidemiology (see Chapter 5 in this volume). Today, various nonprofit organizations continue to sidestep reluctant government agencies to study environmental health impacts and to share the information. Recently, researchers at the Silent Spring Institute, a public-interest nonprofit research organization, found that black hair products contain “multiple chemicals linked to cancer, asthma, infertility, and more” (Helm, Nishioka, Brody, Rudel, & Dodson, 2018). Researchers focusing on the “environmental injustice of beauty” found that employees of nail salons (predominantly Asian American and African American women) are disproportionately exposed to toxins from the products they work with (Zota & Shamasunder, 2017). EJ enters the most intimate spheres of our lives, especially where information is lacking. The European Union has stricter regulations for many everyday items, but U.S. corporations resist labeling their products and politically frame precautions as unnecessary, as if the labels themselves were toxic. Organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have stepped into the gap to provide important health information to the public, but the struggle for accurate information continues.
The problem is not just an information deficit. People want to be heard in an unbiased, respectful way (frame dimension 2). Sometimes disrespectful treatment results simply from an overworked bureaucracy, but beyond that, community residents have often felt the sting of second-class citizenship and—in places like Carver Terrace, Flint, and many others—racism. Carver Terrace residents who traveled to Dallas to get more information were locked out of the EPA regional office building and the police were called. Beginning with their lawsuit and extending through their struggle for a fair buyout price, they were assumed to be “wanting something for nothing.” The grassroots Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice provided a space where they could be respected, sending a team door to door to collect residents’ stories, and creating a public forum that included representatives of federal agencies and EJ groups, amplifying the residents’ voices in a system that didn’t want to “hear” them. More recently, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests created a space where Indigenous rights could be affirmed instead of erased from public view, despite strenuous efforts to shut down the protests. Social media, in addition to mainstream and progressive media outlets, spread the word nationally and globally, and the DAPL opposition eventually gained support from the Obama administration. The importance of such “alternative spaces” shouldn’t be underestimated, even if victory isn’t immediately within reach. For example, many conscience constituents have transformative experiences in such spaces, a reframing of personal and collective identity that inspires them to work for social change—like the Native American youth who organized ReZpect Our Water, creating a community of runners who publicized opposition to the pipeline, and organized a protest relay run from North Dakota to Washington, D.C. (Greene, 2017). At the same time, Indigenous Sami youth protested Norway’s investments in DAPL. An energized Indigenous Caucus convened at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Bonn, Germany, to strategize (Monet, 2018). Creating alternative networks and spaces is important, given that the “state” is an unreliable ally—the Trump administration turned a deaf ear to EJ and approved the pipeline. Finding a way to be truly heard remains a creative and challenging struggle, but countless groups are mobilizing for EJ at local, regional, national, and international levels.
The other EJ frame dimensions I mentioned (the right to democratically decide the future of contaminated communities, the right to compensation, and solidarity with other contaminated communities) also continue to be relevant. I would now simply say “communities,” since toxic contamination isn’t the only issue (and never was). While Carver Terrace fought for a buyout and relocation, some other EJ battles are about staying in place and claiming health, dignity, and other human rights. Flint residents, where children’s development was tragically compromised by lead contamination, had no choice but to stay in place and to call for accountability at all levels of government. By then, a more established and experienced EJ movement came to their assistance, including EJ scholars Paul Mohai (Mohai, Pellow, & Roberts, 2009) and Michael Mascarenhas (2007), who testified before the Michigan Civil Rights Commission
