Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This is a book about cooperation. In this spirit, I owe many thanks to those who shared their stories and opinions about how blue-green coalitions come together and the challenges in making them work. I am especially grateful for the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow’s openness and acceptance of my work, as well as their help in getting me started learning about blue-green coalitions. Similarly, I thank the members of the New Jersey Work Environment Council and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition who generously answered my questions and allowed me to attend their meetings and events. Their accounts of the dynamics of working in a cross-movement coalition are the backbone of this book. In particular I thank Lee Ketelson,Joel Tickner,Tolle Graham,Ted Comick,and Stephen Gauthier of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow; Rick Engler and Jim Young of the New Jersey Work Environment Council; and Ted Smith and Mandy Hawes of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. These few individuals are among the many environmental and labor activists, their families and fellow activists, whose hard work makes these blue-green coalitions possible. This book would have not been possible without the extraordinary assistance and inspiration of Phil Brown at Brown University. Rachel Morello-Frosch at the University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick Heller of Brown’s sociology department provided invaluable guidance. I am grateful to my all my friends and colleagues at Brown who provided viii Acknowledgments a supportive community with constructive feedback and suggestions. In particular, I would like to thank Aaron and Alison Katz, Maryhelen D’Ottavi, Matthias Vom Hau, Holly Reed, Rebecca Altman, Daniel Schensul , Laura Senier, and Oslec Villegas. My friends and colleagues in the Environmental Leadership Program’s 2005 national fellowship class also provided support, motivation, and guidance in the completion of this project. My thanks go to the leaders and staff there, Paul Sabin, Kimberley Roberts, Errol Mazursky, and Cerise Bridges, as well as to my classmates. I also appreciate the support of all the good people at Cornell University Press, especially that of Fran Benson. Katy Meigs also provided invaluable editing and assistance throughout the editorial process. The research for this book was funded by several grants from the National Science Foundation. A grant from the Program in Social Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology freed up my time while I was at Brown to conduct most of this research. Additional support from the National Science Foundation Program in Sociology provided for my travel expenses so that I could listen and learn from members of the three coalitions. An Activity Fund grant from the Environmental Leadership Program provided funding for a leadership summit that I helped to organize in Boston to assist the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow in labor recruitment. My deepest thanks go to friends and family who sustained me during the process of writing this book. My parents Sandy and Lynn spent many encouraging hours providing support. My wife Jenelle Chraft, through her friendship, understanding, and love, has helped make possible my academic success. Blue-Green Coalitions This page intentionally left blank. ...