"Like Nixon Coming to China": Finding Common Ground in a Multi-Ethnic Coalition for Environmental Justice

This article uses ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate how a multi-ethnic group of activists in Brooklyn, New York, formed a coalition for environmental justice in thhborhood. Until the late 1980s local activists had organized in separate and antagonistic movements, competing over access to housing, schools, and police protection. However, as they increasingly realized that the environment was an urban concern, and was subject to discrimination, activists added it to their organizing agendas. In so doing, activists began to construct an expansive environmental narrative that cast all minorities in the neighborhood as united in the face of disproportionately high pollution rates. Activists thus found that they could enhance their environmental struggles by creating environmental identities that superseded rigidly defined identities based on ethnicity. Through organizing for environmental justice, activists redefined the meaning and significance of ethnic differences. [ethnicity, environmental justice, social movements, urban United States]