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5 “City Dwellers Are in the Greatest Danger” Urban Environmentalism in the 1970s T he first Earth Day was America’s largest-ever one-day protest. In cities and towns across the country, twenty million people turned out to show their concern for health of the planet. In St. Louis, however, the theme of the Metropolitan Black Survival Committee’s presentation was not how humans were harming the earth, but how pollution and other environmental problems were harming the black poor. The committee, organized by Wilbur Thomas, performed “Black Survival: A Collage of Skits” twice on Earth Day. While most of the skits were educational, the final soliloquy, given by a young man, was political and confrontational: Our rich white brothers aren’t concerned about poor people being unemployed , they don’t care about the lousy schools. Or cops who whop the heads of the poor, and they don’t care about the expressways that displaced our neighborhoods and the problems of pollution they bring in. As a matter of fact, they never cared at all about the problems until they started calling them environmental problems and saw that the mess in the food, water and air wasn’t just killing poor folk but was killing them too.1 Although the skits might differ from stereotypical images of Earth Day and early environmentalists—hippies, men and women in gas masks—it was not unusual. As Adam Rome has argued, Earth Day was extraordinarily diverse, with protests and rallies attracting Americans from broad political, racial, and socioeconomic spectrums.2 There were also a number of events that discussed 138 Chapter 5 poverty, jobs, civil rights, and social justice. In Chicago, African American union leader Charles Hayes addressed the hazards that “working people, black people and poor people have known about. . . . [T]his includes the rats which attack their children, the lead in the peeling paints, which poison their babies, the decrepit housing conditions, the inadequate nutrition, the lack of green space.”3 George Wiley, the director of the National Welfare Rights Organization, spoke to a crowd at Harvard on Earth Day “as a person who is black, as a person who has been actively involved in organizing poor people for social and economic justice in this country over the last several years.” Wiley challenged his listeners to think about how environmental control affects poor people. “You must not embark on programs to curb economic growth without placing a priority on maintaining income, so that the poorest people won’t simply be further depressed in their condition but will have a share, and be able to live decently.”4 Arturo Sandoval, one of Earth Day’s national organizers, claimed “Viva la Raza” next to a sewage plant in Albuquerque, claiming that “La Raza,” the people , was not just Chicanos but all those who want to “humanize the technology that we have created . . . so that we can reap its benefits.”5 These three speeches, plus the St. Louis skits, were published in Earth Day—the Beginning, a collection of texts from Earth Day events around the country, compiled by the staff of Environmental Action (EA), the event’s national organizers. The inclusion of four pieces that addressed environmental inequality, race, poverty, and social justice is partially reflective of EA’s staff and political orientation. Many of them had experience in the civil rights and antiwar movements, all had left-leaning political views, and they had an interest in creating and portraying Earth Day as an inclusive and radical event. The inclusive perspective is reflective of environmentalism’s protean character. Throughout the 1970s, different groups and individuals argued and jockeyed for influence, attempting to define what appeared to be a powerful new social and political force. The role of poor, working-class and urban Americans was an important part of this conversation. Although some environmentalists were indifferent to urban and minority concerns, others realized that the problems of poverty and racism needed to be incorporated into the environmental agenda. In addition, on a practical level, these groups were an important part of the left/liberal/Democratic political coalition and thus needed to be assuaged to enact environmental legislation and regulations. Although they were sympathetic to the movement, white working-class and urban African American groups approached these issues from a perspective that challenged the assumptions of many environmentalists. These conversations occurred over the course of the decade, culminating in a number of efforts to make urban blacks a significant part of the environmental coalition...

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