Power Politics: Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles

8. Sudden Death

158 Chapter 8 Sudden Death Before mid-December, CBE andYouth-EJ’s primary effort was to publicize the plan to build a power plant—explain its health dangers and explain Sunlaw’s choice of site as part of a larger pattern of environmental racism—and to discover whether there was significant community opposition to the plant. By the time South Gate High students led the march to the city council, it was clear that community opposition did indeed exist and that a grassroots movement was taking shape. By this time too, a locally based anti-Robles movement had also emerged, if not in the streets then in the kinds of confrontations that the students witnessed at city hall. Thus, by mid-January, South Gate was the scene of two grassroots movements: one against the power plant and the other against Albert Robles. The opponents of each movement had not in any way constructed social movements. Robles and his supporters manipulated voters more than they educated or mobilized them. Sunlaw was the central player in the pro-plant campaign. It had allies aplenty but not much in the way of outspoken, active campaigners inside South Gate. Such support for the power plant as existed in South Gate was catalyzed by anti-Robles sentiment. Both on-the-ground movements won their respective battles: the anti-plant movement in 2001 and the anti-Robles movement two years later. In this chapter I put the power plant movement in the foreground and analyze the activities of both sides in the six weeks leading up to the city election and power plant referendum of March 6, 2001. I examine what the environmental justice campaign looked like and the factors that helped it to succeed. I also consider what success looks like for a social justice campaign. Is winning everything? Doing the right things (in the sense of messages, organizing strategies, and tactics) is a Sudden Death 159 necessary but not a sufficient condition for social movements to win specific battles. Much also depends on what the opposition does: here, Sunlaw and the pro-plant activities of the anti-Robles movement. Much too depends on wild cards, on the unpredicted and serendipitous ways that larger social circumstances affect a social movement. Albert Robles was one of those wild cards. The racial discourses and silences and how they played out at the interface of the two movements was still another. Some wild cards are just that—lucky or unlucky happenings that may play a big role but do not give us a general understanding of factors that make for social movement success or failure. Sunlaw’s announcement that if the people of South Gate did not want the plant, they wouldn’t build it was one of those; Albert Robles was another. Other wild cards that influence the outcome of a particular struggle also give us a deeper understanding about dynamics of success and failure of social movements more broadly.The silences and speaking about race was one of those. The Environmental Justice Campaign Thus far, both the students and CBE had been developing a grassroots approach to their outreach and activism. By January, environmental justice activists discovered they had solid community support, and the campaign was developing real momentum. As they worked to create an organizing and education plan for the next phase of the campaign, they discovered that the political playing field was already structured for them in less than ideal ways, not least of which was the advisory city referendum on the power plant scheduled for less than two months away.The first decision activists needed to make was how much, if any, emphasis to place on the referendum. Then, in light of that decision, they needed to figure out the next stages of their grassroots campaign. A Strategic Decision Even though CBE could see that a real community-based movement was developing outward from students at South Gate High, there was still the question of where to put its strategic focus.The CEC had the power to stop or green light the plant, but its meetings had thus far proved a chilly climate for community participation. And Sunlaw was reachable mainly through those meetings. Roy Abadi kept pressing CBE to get more involved in the referendum, but the organization was understandably uneasy about jumping into South Gate electoral politics. P o w e r P o l...