Vietnam War Movement—demonstrated how collective action could change our lives for the
better. Since the quiet death of the women’s movement, there has been no earnest and sustained
national effort to change the lives of the poor and downtrodden, the unemployed, or the
uninsured. The new face of political activism is either narrowly constructed and localized, or
broadly constructed and diffuse. Examples of the former are the protests of students in California
and Washington against state initiatives to eliminate affirmative action.
is the anti-globalization movement. Action for social justice is not dead, but transformed by
shifting political incentives and values.
This chapter is gleaned from a larger project designed to understand the dynamics of
contemporary social movements through an examination of the environmental justice movement,
which I define as a collection of particularized and local movements located primarily in urban
centers throughout the nation. Led primarily by women of color, this movement seeks policy
redress for unjust distribution of toxic waste sites and industries with toxic emissions. A number
of studies have found evidence that locally undesirable land uses (LULUs) are disproportionately
located in poor and minority communities (Bowen, et. al, 1995; Boer, et.al, 1997; Ringquist
1997; Stretesky and Lynch, 1999; Davidson and Anderton 2000). One study showed that ethnic
minorities were 47 percent more likely than whites to live near a toxic waste facility (Ember
1994). An informal collective of localized movements make up the body of the environmental
justice (EJ) movement. In urban settings, African-American women and Latinas serve as
grassroots leaders and mobilizers.
The EJ movement, as it stands today, is a movement in latency. Local activists continue
to struggle in their communities, but the national momentum the movement achieved in the late
1980s and early 1990s has waned. There have been successes at the local level, and the
movement has drawn attention to the threat of toxins through successful EJ campaigns in
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Convention