Julie Sze on Environmental Justice, Community Context, and Rudy Giuliani

The final entry in The World's Fair's "author meets blogger" series is a conversation between Benjamin Cohen and our own Julie Sze about the culture, politics, and history of environmental activism in New York City (the subject of her recent book, Noxious New York).  They talk about a wide range of issues, including:  air pollution, pesticide use, gendered landscapes, and racial issues of environmental protection and rights to consumption politics, water use, and global environmental justice dynamics.  The complete three part interview is now live, but here's a taste:

WF: Environmental issues are obviously political issues. But even more than the generic sense of "politics," particular politicians play particular roles in discouraging, promoting, or perhaps ignoring EJ efforts. So then, you discuss the Giuliani Administration. And Giuliani = bad. How did that equation play out in the story you tell?

JS: Mayor Giuliani was an extremely polarizing figure. His agenda was pro-corporate, pro-privatization, pro-deregulation. His hostility to communities of color was best exemplified in terms of his crime policies, but essentially his derision to environmental and siting issues as well. It was no surprise then during the last national election during Republican convention-that he repeatedly sneered at the term "community organizer" in reference to President Obama. He really hated activists of all stripes, but particularly those from politically disenfranchised communities.

WF: Let's do this: I know we already brought up environmental justice before, but could you define it in your terms for the readers? In your use and experience, does it differ from environmental racism, does it differ from, say, an anti-toxics activism that some link to Love Canal and Lois Gibbs?

JS: That is a huge question in the book. I define environmental justice as the social movement that emerged in response to the problem identification of environmental racism. Thus, it is connected, but slightly different from anti-toxics activism. Now, in the context of other work I'm doing in California, I defined the term a little bit differently. I define environmental injustice as somehow related to some category of inequality - that can be race, class, gender, citizenship and indigeneity. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this question, teach in this area, have written on it in a long review of the field and am contemplating writing a textbook - so I could go on and on!

You can read the sixteen other interviews in this series here.  We hope they decide to continue with these really interesting interviews.