This document is a summary of a course on media, technology, and culture. It discusses the concepts of environmental racism and how minority groups have been disproportionately affected. It provides examples of how systems in communities like the water system, food system, and prison system have been negatively impacted by environmental racism. The summary focuses on a case study of the Central Valley region in California where high levels of water contamination have been found in areas serving larger Latino populations. It also discusses the environmental justice movement which fights against the targeting of communities of color for environmentally hazardous facilities and land uses.

1. COMM 125: INTRO TO
MEDIA, TECH AND CULTURE

2. When you take a step outside of the front
door of your house, have you ever paid
attention to the area that your home is
surrounded?

3. What do you see?
Are the trees dark green and the grass
are cut and watered? Are the children
and pets running around on the
sidewalks and parks, breathing in and
out clean oxygen air? Or, is water
running from the faucets in sinks as well
as in toilets and bathtubs clean, pure
and uncontaminated?

4. These are some of the things that we
take for granted. Not everyone has
access to clean water, green healthy
trees, breathing clean air or healthy
produce and foods.

5. Can you imagine your home, a place
where you consider safe, located
near a factory? Can you imagine
drinking water that is contaminated
with harsh chemicals? Do you know
what it is like to live in a
neighborhood that does not have
access to grow their own fruits and
vegetables?

6. There are those close to us that are
living in devastating conditions you’d
expect from a developing country.
The people that live in these
conditions are predominately
minority groups, Latinos and African
Americans in particular.

7. How is this possible? There is one word that
can describe these kinds of situations…

8. Environmental Racism

9. Environmental
Racism
By Tianamarie Smith and
Sonia Perez

10. What is Environmental
Racism?
 In addition to the definition in the ―About‖ section
 Environmental racism refers to environmental
policies, practices, or directives that differentially
affect or disadvantage (whether intentionally or
unintentionally) individuals, groups, or communities
based on race or colour.
 Also reinforced, by
governmental, legal, economic, political, and
military institutions.
 Environmental racism combines with public
policies and industry practices to provide benefits
for countries.

11. Environmental Racism as
Institutionalized Racism
 Environmental racism is a form of
institutionalized discrimination.
 Wait, what is institutionalized racism?
 Institutional racism is defined as ―actions
or practices carried out by members of
dominant (racial or ethnic) groups that
have differential and negative impact on
members of subordinate (racial and
ethnic) groups‖.

12. How a Community Functions
Tiana and I believe that a community
functions with systems. Here are some
examples of systems that are core to how a
community functions:
foster care system, education system, jail
system, food system>food bank, water
system, home system and the street system
Environmental Racism has affected some
these systems as our video presents

13. FACTS
 16.7 million children under 18 in the United
States live in households where they are
unable to consistently access enough
nutritious food necessary for a healthy life.
 The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in
infant mortality. African-American infants die
at nearly twice the rate of white infants. The
infant mortality rate is closely linked to
inadequate nutrition among pregnant
women.
 62% of children rely on school meals for food
and 1 in 12 go to bed hungry.

14. Before we go into some of the systems, we
will be focusing on how these systems and
minority groups are affected by
environmental racism in the state of
California.

15. Environmental Racism in
California
Central Valley

16. Joining Forces: Prisons and ER
in California
 The young Latinos had a lot of threats to choose
from: air quality, one of the worst rated in the
country; undrinkable local water supplies; regular
pesticide poisoning; downwind drift from incinerators
and power plants; and mega-dairies with their toxic
emissions
 In the face of the toxic load across the Valley, it
came as a surprise to some of the adult
environmental justice activists that the youth
reported as the biggest threats in their communities
the ―three Ps‖: police, pollution, and prisons. The
environmental justice movement has struggled with
mainstream environmentalists over the bounds of the
term environment.

17.  Valley residents remain on the front lines
of an unprecedented prison-building
boom. The state has built twenty-two new
prisons since 1983 (including Delano
II), after building twelve over more than a
century, from 1856 to 1983. Between 1980
and 2005, California’s prison population
has grown 556 percent, from 25,000 to
164,000 prisoners.

18.  California’s so-called prison alley has been
the site of numerous environmental justice
battles. The United Farm Workers fought a
long battle against pesticides that were
sickening and, in some cases, killing their
members. Site fights in Buttonwillow (a toxic
waste dump) and Kettleman City (the
location of a toxic waste incinerator) gained
international attention.4 The proximity of
vigorous environmental justice activism to
California’s prison alley has helped activists
from both movements see the similarities in
our fights. Foremost among them has been
the statesanctioned imposition of toxic threats
on the poor, people of color, and immigrants.

19. Delano II
 June 1, 2005, marked an auspicious day in the
history of what one California official labeled
―the largest prison building project in the
history of the world.‖
 After the building of twenty-three new prisons
in just twenty years, the June 2005 date
marked the first time in two decades that
California did not have a prison in planning or
construction.
 This historic moment was, at least partially, the
result of a tenacious and multifaceted
campaign against the construction of
California’s thirty fourth — and purportedly
last — state prison: Delano II.

20. Delano II
 The Delano II story begins in
1998, when Californians
elected the Democrat Gray
Davis as governor over the
state’s Republican attorney
general Dan Lungren
 Somewhat surprisingly, the
powerful state prison guards
union, the California
Correctional Peace Officers
Association (CCPOA),
backed Davis. Consistently
the number one contributor
to state legislative races, the
CCPOA donated over $1
million to Davis.

21. Environmental Impact (for jails)
 While legal challenges carry the danger that organizers will
lose resources and energy if the issue is defined too
narrowly as a legal one for which the remedy is in the
hands of lawyers and courts, the Delano campaign
successfully undertook an environmental strategy that used
litigation, while not relying on it.
 As the activist lawyers Luke Cole and Sheila Foster point
out, ―while legal action brings much needed attention to
environmental justice struggles, legal strategies rarely
address what is, in essence, a larger political and structural
problem.‖Recognizing the limits of litigation as a solution to
social problems, organizers nonetheless successfully made
litigation one strategy in a larger, multifaceted campaign.
 WILL TIE INTO GANG ACTIVITY AND ANY RELATIONS TO
GANGS

22.  The value of environmental law lies largely in the fact that it
requires a full public disclosure of the real costs society will
pay for building, in the opportunity litigation can provide for
public education and organization, and in the possibility it
offers for residents to voice their concerns. Environmental
law provides that all who might be affected by a project
have a right to demand that the negative effects be made
public before project approval, and, if possible, that the
developer mitigate those negative effects.
 As we continue to investigate and compile studies about
the negative effects of prisons, examining the wide range
of people harmed by prisons, we have a substantive
campaign to unify opposition to mass imprisonment. These
opportunities melded with the Delano campaign’s central
premise: if the public knows the damage wrought by
prisons, people will organize to stop its realization.

23. Water System-Research in Nitrate Contaminated Water in the
San Joaquin Valley
 Background: Research on drinking water in the United States has rarely examined
disproportionate exposures to contaminants faced by low-income and minority
communities. This study analyzes the relationship between nitrate concentrations in
community water systems (CWSs) and the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic
characteristics of customers.
 Objectives: We hypothesized that CWSs in California’s San Joaquin Valley that serve
a higher proportion of minority or residents of lower socioeconomic status have
higher nitrate levels and that these disparities are greater among smaller drinking
water systems.
 Methods: We used water quality monitoring data sets (1999–2001) to estimate nitrate
levels in CWSs, and source location and census block group data to estimate
customer demographics. Our linear regression model included 327 CWSs and
reported robust standard errors clustered at the CWS level. Our adjusted model
controlled for demographics and water system characteristics and stratified by CWS
size.
 Results: Percent Latino was associated with a 0.04-mg nitrate-ion (NO3)/L increase in
a CWS’s estimated NO3 concentration [95% confidence interval (CI), –0.08 to
0.16], and rate of home ownership was associated with a 0.16-mg NO3/L decrease
(95% CI, –0.32 to 0.002). Among smaller systems, the percentage of Latinos and of
homeownership was associated with an estimated increase of 0.44 mg NO3/L (95%
CI, 0.03–0.84) and a decrease of 0.15 mg NO3/L (95% CI, –0.64 to 0.33), respectively.
 Conclusions: Our findings suggest that in smaller water systems, CWSs serving larger
percentages of Latinos and renters receive drinking water with higher nitrate levels.
This suggests an environmental inequity in drinking water quality.

25. Environmental Justice Movt.
 The environmental justice movement fights racial
and class discrimination in environmental policy
making, the selective enforcement of
environmental laws, and the targeting of
communities of color and poor communities for
environmentally disastrous land uses, such as toxic
waste disposal sites. Communities of color and
poor communities bear an unequal and unfair
number of environmentally destructive land
uses, land uses that take from the community but
do not give back to it. The environmental justice
movement seeks to end environmental and
economic injustices by eliminating the location of
environmentally toxic facilities anywhere.

26. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
ORGANIZATIONS
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Oakland)
Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Resource Center (San Francisco)
Borneo Project, The (Berkeley)
Californians for Pesticide Reform (San Francisco)
Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (Santa Cruz)
Center for Creative Land Recyling (San Francisco)
Center for Environmental Health (Oakland)
Center for Health, Environment and Justice
Communities for a Better Environment (Oakland)
CorpWatch (San Francisco)
Crissy Field Center (San Francisco)
DataCenter (Oakland)
Energy Justice Network
Environment and Human Health, Inc.
Environmental Health News
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (Oakland)
Environmental Justice Resource Center
Environmental Law Foundation (Oakland)
Environmental Research Foundation
Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (San Francisco)
Friends of Alemany Farm
Generating Renewable Ideas for Development Alternatives (Oakland)
Global Community Monitor (El Cerrito)
Global Justice Ecology Project (West Coast Desk) (Berkeley)
Greenaction (San Francisco)

27. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
ORGANIZATIONS
HOMEY (San Francisco)
Impact Fund, The (Berkeley)
In These Times
Indigenous Environmental Network
International Indian Treaty Council (San Francisco)
Literacy for Environmental Justice (San Francisco)
National Religious Partnership for the Environment
Pacific Institute (Oakland)
People Organized to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (San Francisco)
People United for a Better Life in Oakland (Oakland)
Pesticide Action Network North America (San Francisco)
Prometheus: A Social Justice Law Firm
San Francisco Department of the Environment (San Francisco)
Susan Ives Communications
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network
Urban Habitat (Oakland)
Video Activist Network, The (San Francisco)
Western States Legal Foundation (Oakland)
Youth United for Community Action (East Palo Alto)

28. The world is not fair. We, and you, are
not that naïve to fail to see that.

29. Home is next door, next city, next
state, and all the states together as
one USA.

30. We’re only as strong as our weakest
link, so we must work together.

31. “There is some good in
this world worth fighting
for.” J.R.R. Tolkien