Urban Health and Society: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practice - Part 6 pot

39 ASIAN IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE ORGANIZING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND HOUSING IN THE BAY AREA In Oakland, California, an environmental justice initiative illustrates how academic,

and other respiratory diseases Despite legislation (Local Law 40) requiring the

Department of Sanitation to issue siting regulations for these facilities, they had failed

to do so In 1993, regulations were proposed but never passed; in 1997, the city was

ordered by a court to issue regulations; in 1998, they issued weak regulations that

would have no effect on the concentration of sites; these were unsuccessfully contested

in court by OWN, but Sanitation was forced by political pressure from community

organizers to tighten up on enforcement 36

Although this was clearly a land - use issue, the Department of City Planning never addressed the location and concentration of waste facilities in the city They could have

proposed using the city ’ s “ fair share ” rules, which were to ensure that no

neighbor-hood had more than its fair share of certain facilities Although these rules, established

in the City ’ s Charter, apply only to certain publicly owned facilities, the planners never

evoked the principle or instituted efforts to apply them to all facilities serving a public

function Instead, they deferred to the Sanitation Department and missed an important

opportunity to work across departments The Department of Health instead recognized

the critical importance of asthma and began an initiative that included research,

education, and prevention; it targeted intervention in neighborhoods with high

concen-trations of childhood asthma cases Three neighborhood - based health initiatives in

affected areas went beyond traditional regulatory measures and promoted more

com-prehensive approaches that, in collaboration with community - based advocacy groups,

identifi ed elements in the built environment that tended to trigger asthma crises

However, the Department of Sanitation did not engage the health professionals, and

they were not obligated to do so by the City The City Planning Department was also

not involved and did not make any changes to zoning regulations that would have

restricted waste facilities, and they did not support community - based planning efforts

that addressed unhealthy conditions in a comprehensive way 3

The OWN/Consumers Union solid waste management plan 37 is based on three principles that the Department of Sanitation had resisted adopting:

1 Retrofi t the existing marine waste transfer stations, which are underutilized

but relatively evenly spread throughout the city, to handle both domestic and commercial waste streams and substitute barges for polluting tractor - trailers

2 Fully support recycling

3 Enact measures to prevent and reduce waste

The marine - based transfer stations would export most garbage by barge; the city would take responsibility for the large portion of commercial waste (over half the

total); and the impact would be distributed more equitably throughout the city OWN ’ s

strategy was based on the understanding (which came out of their political

organiz-ing), that to resolve each individual neighborhood ’ s problems there had to be a just

plan for the citywide waste stream This was a direct refutation of the charge often

lev-eled against them by traditional city planners that community - based organizing and

planning were necessarily based on the exclusionary Not in My Backyard (NIMBY)

32 Environmental Justice Praxis

sentiments that would prevent any rational siting of public facilities (this argument

failed to acknowledge that the city never had a comprehensive plan for siting such

facilities) The charges of NIMBYism against OWN activists were also contradicted

by the OWN plan itself, which required some neighborhoods with environmental

jus-tice claims to accept expanded and modernized marine transfer stations

OWN activists demonstrated and lobbied elected offi cials and met with the mayor and his aides In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city was

plan-ning to retrofi t its existing marine waste transfer stations The city essentially adopted

the principles of OWN ’ s solid waste plan This decision was a historic moment for the

environmental justice movement and the activist - led, community - based planning

movement The OWN plan made sense to the mayor ’ s offi ce because it would cut

costs and remove a potential obstacle to gentrifi cation in waterfront neighborhoods

they were targeting for new housing development It strengthened the hand of

commu-nity groups angling for a greater say in land - use planning so that a better environment

would not be accompanied by gentrifi cation and displacement City Hall followed

the principles of growth and effi ciency while OWN emphasized equity, but the two

came together in a tactical compromise According to environmental justice activist

Eddie Bautista, the plan was resisted by the city ’ s Department of Sanitation, whose job

seemed to be defi ned as only “ taking out the trash ” 36

Advocacy Planning and Environmental Justice

Eddie Bautista was OWN ’ s lead organizer for most of its history and worked for the

nonprofi t New York Lawyers for the Public Interest He became one of the city ’ s

lead-ing experts on solid waste management and a central fi gure in the development and

advancement of OWN ’ s plan and then the city ’ s SWMP Bautista got involved as

an advocate for the neighborhoods that were saturated with waste transfer stations and

became a leader in the city ’ s environmental justice movement He had grown up in

Red Hook, one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods affected by waste transfer stations

After the city adopted the principles of the OWN - backed solid waste plan, Bautista

became an aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and went on to assist in development of

the city ’ s fi rst long - term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030 38

What led Bautista and OWN toward a comprehensive, citywide approach? First, according to Bautista, was the realization that the city ’ s experts were always setting

the agenda, and to get involved in the discussion, OWN had to have an alternative

OWN hired the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a Washington, D.C – based

non-profi t, to help fi nd that alternative However, according to Bautista, “ one of the

prob-lems was that their experience was mostly in recycling, and that wasn ’ t our priority

After a lot of discussion, we realized that what was missing in the traditional approach

taken by the environmental movement, which emphasized recycling and waste

reduc-tion, was the infrastructure piece ” (personal interview by Angotti, June 19, 2006) At

a bidder ’ s conference, an OWN member overheard a contractor propose that the

city ’ s existing marine - based transfer stations be retrofi tted and in some cases expanded

to handle the waste from the land - based transfer stations that were concentrated

in residential and mixed use neighborhoods This struck OWN ’ s leadership as a

pos-sible citywide solution

OWN ’ s plan fi lled a vacuum left by the city ’ s own technical experts in its various departments But there was another impetus leading the activists to think more globally:

solidarity Bautista recounts how activists from different neighborhoods met at City

Council hearings and other public events, developed ties, and supported each other:

“ There is a powerful emotional need for solidarity We were all in the same boat ”

(personal interview by Angotti, June 19, 2006) According to Bautista, it was a

politi-cal necessity The mayor and City Council govern on a citywide basis and are

there-fore more receptive to arguments about citywide policy OWN activists also anticipated

that the city would end up reshaping its solid waste policy, but based on their

experi-ences at the grass roots, they had little confi dence that their neighborhoods would be

treated fairly Bautista stated, “ We knew that if the city was going to do a citywide

strategy, some neighborhoods would get hit ” In other words, principles of equity

across the board would be sacrifi ced to keep waste out of the wealthier neighborhoods,

a truly NIMBY outcome (Even after the City Council passed the new SWMP,

politi-cal leaders in Manhattan ’ s Upper East Side, arguably the wealthiest neighborhood in

the world, continued to oppose the plan.)

During the OWN campaign, Bautista entered the program in urban planning at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and received a master ’ s degree Bautista said that he

gravi-tated to planning because “ so much of our urban life is connected ” He says he learned

from the battles fought by Jane Jacobs, and from advocacy planning, but also learned how

Robert Moses, the city ’ s master builder, “ was able to get as much as he could ”

Through-out the campaign, he worked closely with urban planners, engineers, and public health

professionals, including the coauthor of the OWN plan, Barbara Warren

Tom Angotti fi rst met Bautista when Angotti was a senior planner with the Department of City Planning in the early 1990s and worked on a community

generated plan for Red Hook, a low - income waterfront neighborhood that had

suc-cessfully fought off two proposed sewage sludge treatment facilities and shut down

several private waste transfer stations After playing a critical role in the

environmen-tal justice campaign in Red Hook, Bautista collaborated in the development of the

community plan After Angotti left City Planning, he became professor and chair

at the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment He then

joined OWN, representing Planners Network, a group of advocacy planners founded

in 1975, and advised OWN in a court - endorsed mediation with the Department of

Sanitation that was geared toward creating siting regulations for waste facilities

(no agreement was reached) He also became Eddie Bautista ’ s thesis advisor Angotti ’ s

role followed closely that of the advocacy planner and is one illustration of how

urban planners can step out of their assigned roles to support efforts that are aimed

at improving environmental health It is also an example of how learning and

34 Environmental Justice Praxis

knowledge in academic, professional, and community arenas is a complicated

pro-cess in which all teach and all learn from one another, as opposed to a top-down and

hierarchial approach 39

ASIAN IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE ORGANIZING FOR

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND HOUSING IN THE BAY AREA

In Oakland, California, an environmental justice initiative illustrates how academic,

social, and political forces interact to move practice toward new holistic and

interdis-ciplinary approaches This example is where a community - based organization, Asian

Pacifi c Environmental Network (APEN), works to promote environmental justice,

community development, and democracy in low - income Asian immigrant, refugee,

and Asian American communities in the Bay Area APEN was an important leader in

the founding of the environmental justice movement, and their innovative programs

and campaigns have been recognized nationally Although the specifi c issues APEN

focuses on are different from OWN, the holistic approach to urban public health and

community development is similar It emphasizes developing democracy (i.e.,

“ speaking for ourselves, ” a key tenet of the environmental justice movement) and

developing local leadership through the language and framework of environmental

justice, specifi cally around issues of housing, displacement, gentrifi cation, and

ten-ants ’ rights

Two ongoing campaigns in Oakland and Richmond demonstrate the complexity

of APEN ’ s approach to environmental justice in disenfranchised Asian immigrant and

refugee communities The fi rst, called the Laotian Organizing Project (LOP), is based

in Richmond, an extremely poor, primarily industrial city populated by African

Americans and Laotians The Laotian community in Contra Costa County lives in one

of the most toxic regions in the nation Surrounded by more than 350 industrial sites

and toxic hazards, the people ’ s home, school, and work environments are exposed to

dangerous levels of lead, pesticides, and other chemicals on a daily basis One of the

LOP ’ s early organizing successes was the implementation of a multilingual warning

system when accidental toxic releases occurred Before LOP began organizing on this

issue, the warning system was only in English, which most of the Laotian community

did not speak 40

The community ’ s problems have multidimensional roots, and this has led APEN

to multidimensional organizing Because most families in the Laotian community are

renters who tend to have less political power than homeowners, organizing on tenant

issues was important LOP ’ s more than 300 active members have focused on the

prob-lem of weak housing standards, including endemic probprob-lems with mold and lead paint

and weak health - based housing regulations and lack of enforcement LOP launched a

campaign to adopt a “ just cause ” ordinance similar to those in other Bay Area cities

The campaign argues that “ everyone has a basic right to continue to live in their

com-munities ” LOP ’ s newest front is fi ghting displacement and winning protections for

tenants against unfair evictions LOP ’ s focus on housing justice strongly affi rms a

basic principle of environmental justice: “ fi ghting for basic rights to protect our

com-munities where we live, work and play ” 4 1

Vivian Chang, then-Executive Director of APEN, explained her view that the environment does not just mean pollution exposure (personal interview by Sze, August

5, 2006) For example, many Laotians grow their own food in their gardens (a practice

they brought with them upon coming to the United States, journeys that were a result

of U.S interventions in Southeast Asia) Their view is that when tenants are evicted,

these gardens and spaces that provide food as well as psychological connection to the

land are also destroyed Thus, environmental justice for Laotians also means

commu-nity food security and access to environmental “ goods ” (e.g., gardens and open spaces)

APEN also advocated for an enforcement board to deal with code violations and

evic-tions in Richmond

APEN ’ s other organizing arm, Power in Asians Organizing (PAO), is focused on organizing Asian ethnic communities in the city of Oakland, including large numbers

of Vietnamese, Chinese, Laotians, Cambodians, and Filipinos Like LOP, PAO ’ s core

group of community resident/activists focused on safe and affordable housing through

their Housing Justice Campaign PAO, with two other organizations, worked for three

years to secure affordable housing at Oak to Ninth, a large housing project of 3,100

residential units located in the heart of PAO ’ s organizing area The land, a sixty - four

acre contaminated parcel on the waterfront, was originally proposed as 100 percent

luxury condominiums (in a community where the average family is considered “ very

low income, ” i.e., under $ 35,000/year) Through their campaign, PAO also helped to

negotiate 300 entry - level construction career - path placements for Oakland residents,

with real penalties for noncompliance Lastly, $ 1.65 million will be dedicated to

train-ing programs to support immigrants and those formerly incarcerated to get a start in

the building trades

What is perhaps as signifi cant as the concrete goals achieved in both campaigns is that through their direct organizing APEN is taking steps to improve public

participa-tion and engagement with urban development and community health in historically

and culturally disenfranchised immigrant and refugee populations in complex urban

environments LOP ’ s organizing focuses simultaneously on health, environment, and

housing rather than separating and narrowly defi ning these problems and solutions

LOP ’ s ability to connect these domains, while increasing community engagement, can

lead to more dynamic and effective solutions for the multidimensional community and

health problems faced by urban low - income communities of color The vision is

dynamic and refl ective of the environmental and public health conditions of real - world

communities, individuals, and families For example, as PAO suggested in their press

release in response to the Oak to Ninth negotiations, “ As a result of this and other

com-munity benefi ts campaigns, Oakland ’ s elected offi cials are seriously grappling with

policies like Inclusionary Zoning that can make sure that developers pay their fair

share in Oakland ” (Inclusionary zoning generally requires that a portion of new

hous-ing units be available to people with low and moderate incomes; some inclusionary

zoning ordinances allow developers to develop more market - rate units if they include

36 Environmental Justice Praxis

affordable units.) Like the OWN campaign, APEN focuses on how to use the language

of fair share and environmental justice to develop more equitable housing, land use,

health, and community economic development policies

Does postgraduate education with an interdisciplinary focus matter, as it did to Eddie Bautista of OWN? It may in the case of Vivian Chang, who states that her

per-sonal experience with collaboration across the activist/academic divide shaped her

political and practical vision Chang previously worked as an organizer with Asian

Immigrant Workers Advocates on their garment worker justice campaign, after which

she worked briefl y with the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA)

on their cumulative risk project At Cal/EPA, she learned the importance of having an

insider- outsider strategy to successfully implement positive policy change for

envi-ronmental justice (as Angotti also learned) That is, to be effective, envienvi-ronmental

justice activism and policy development needed to have both intermediaries and allies

within public agencies and movement pressure from outside the agencies, specifi cally

from community - based organizations After those experiences, Chang attended the

University of California at Los Angeles and received a masters in urban planning For

Chang, graduate education offered both a theoretical framework for interpreting

regional economies and industries (e.g., the garment industry in Oakland) as well as

pragmatic tools (GIS mapping and how to research particular industries and

corpora-tions) According to Chang, “ graduate, academic, and professional training helped me

develop smarter activist and organizing campaigns (such as living wage campaigns), ”

because this training helped her understand the dominant discourses and frameworks

for policy development

Chang believes that her personal work and academic experiences work synergisti-cally, leading to innovative approaches to improving community development and

public health in low - income Asian immigrant and refugee populations in Bay Area

cities, specifi cally through the language and framework of the environmental justice

movement One of the key questions she grapples with in APEN ’ s programmatic

work is: “ What does a public health approach to urban development look like? ” In

part, the answer depends on whether a particular development project or existing

policy (whether land use, economic development, housing, environmental, or public

health) promotes or negatively impacts community health and improves democracy,

what environmental justice scholars call “ participatory justice ”

APEN strategically uses research as an organizing tool To document environmen-tal justice problems, APEN and four other environmenenvironmen-tal justice groups released

“ Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up: Environmental Justice in

California ” 42 The 2003 report begins by outlining the “ environmental justice crisis ”

in California (pollution, toxic waste, working conditions, environmental health risks,

poor housing, and inequitable land uses) It then defi nes “ environmental justice

approaches to creating healthy communities ” and the different strategies that

environ-mental justice organizations have adopted to remediate the problems

There are, however, notable gaps between the organizing - related research APEN has undertaken (as in the Health Impact Assessment Projects) and academic research in

this development project For instance, there was a health impact assessment (HIA) of

the project performed by the University of California at Berkeley Health Impact Group

(UCBHIG), 43 a nonpartisan, independent group of graduate students and faculty

partic-ipating in a seminar on health impact assessment The HIA differs from the traditional

environmental impact assessment because it is voluntary but complements analysis

required under law; evaluates environmental, social, and economic effects using the lens

of human health; and estimates benefi ts as well as adverse consequences On the issue of

social equity (poverty, stereotypes, segregation, inequalities), the HIA reports no

infor-mation Although this report is quite extensive and is an example of graduate - level,

applied training and education in public health related to a land - use and urban planning

project, this lack of information on social equity is both disappointing and revealing of

the limitations of much academic research, especially given the high profi le of the

activ-ism by groups like APEN

CONCLUSION

Opportunities for interdisciplinary urban research and education in academic

institu-tions continue to be challenging and diffi cult In the professions, specialization and not

interdisciplinary collaboration continues to be of value to practitioners and employers

And government policy tends to focus on individual programs and agencies to solve

specifi c issues and problems without necessarily looking at the whole picture Holistic

approaches are preached and promised by many, but they are often hard to come by in

practice Grand theories may promise effi cient and equitable solutions to chronic urban

health problems, but in practice, equitable solutions that address differences of race

and class are often compromised

Environmental justice praxis can help address these issues Through environmen-tal justice praxis, practitioners use technical knowledge that moves among urban

planning, public health, and other disciplines, and they incorporate professional

exper-tise to achieve broad goals of social and environmental justice in communities long

disenfranchised by race and class In doing so, environmental justice praxis embodies

and represents the best possibilities for holistic urban health research and practice In

crossing disciplinary and organizational barriers, environmental justice practitioners

are making both public health and urban policy better, particularly in helping to

advance such concepts as cumulative impact and the precautionary principle Although

more orthodox approaches to comprehensive societywide problems often result in

rela-tively greater health risks for low - income communities of color, environmental justice

praxis can help ensure that “ nobody ’ s backyard ” becomes a health risk

This path is not without challenges, especially because existing divisions and categories are entrenched in both academic training and policy contexts But

environ-mental justice activists tend to understand that the problems faced by low - income and

urban communities of color are relentless and that existing modes of practice are not

working This reality paradoxically creates better conditions for more dynamic and

interdisciplinary urban health and environmental research and policy Our real - world

38 Environmental Justice Praxis

examples from New York and California, coming directly out of the environmental

justice movement, show just how and why improved interdisciplinary approaches may

help to remediate the worst examples of social injustice (and their health and

environ-mental impacts) at community, city, and regional levels Ultimately, interdisciplinary

urban health is a framework that mirrors much of what is already happening “ on the

ground ” as identifi ed by environmental justice practitioners

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 How did the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods (OWN) and the New

York City government differ in how they viewed the problem of waste disposal

in the city? How might these differences infl uence the questions researchers would ask?

2 How are the strategies used to achieve improved health and social outcomes and

to promote environmental justice in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area similar and how are they different?

3 What roles can social movements play in urban health research and practice?

What are the limits of their role? How do they contribute to an interdisciplinary perspective?

4 What are the similarities and differences between the professions of public

health and urban planning?

SUMMARY

In this chapter we have explored how

inter-dis ciplinary environmental justice pra xis

can help to reintegrate and reimagine the

fi elds of public health and urban

plann-ing We draw on two case studies of

envi-ronmental activism: the development of

a comprehensive citywide solid waste

management plan in New York City and

the promotion of environmental justice,

community development and

participa-tory demo cracy among low-income Asian

immigrant and Asian American

communi-ties in the San Francisco Bay Area In both

cases, activists employed an environmental

justice framework in seeking to understand community health and environmental prob-lems and to advocate for solutions through community organizing They adopted a broad a defi nition of community health and reimagined urban development, the built environment, and public health in broad, holistic terms Lessons learned include the importance of understanding the relation-ship between social justice movements and the production of know ledge and under-standing the occasionally fraught and con-tested relationships between communities and academic institutions

NOTES

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40 Environmental Justice Praxis

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