Week 1: Environmental Racism and Metro Politics

Miles, Kathleen. "Walmart Warehouse Workers Pilgrimage For 50 Miles Over 6 Days To Protest Working Conditions." Huffington Post. Posted: 09/14/2012 3:01 pm Updated: 09/15/2012 2:41 pm 
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Video Summary: "Warehouse Workers on the Strike Line"

Walmart workers in southern California began a 6 day 50 mile pilgrimage from Mira Loma to Los Angeles City Hall. The pilgrimage was led by Warehouse Workers United, "an organization committed to improving the quality of life and jobs for warehouse workers in Southern California's Inland Empire." In this video, workers discuss why they chose to march, foremost their concern with worker safety, from high heat, improper access to water, and hazardous forklift use within.

Reading: “Rethinking Environmental Racism"

Pulido, Laura. "Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90, 12–40. 2000.

In "Rethinking Environmental Racism," Pulido investigates environmental racism through a white supremacy lens. She finds that vulnerability to environmental hazards can be predicted based on three racial and spatial patterns:

1. Industrial hazards in Southern California are concentrated in central and southern Los Angeles County.
2. Race can predict one's exposure to environmental hazards even when accounting for class
3. Working class Latinos are disproportionately affected

Pulido finds that in the environmental racism literature, scholars have focused on facility siting, intentionality, and local level analysis. She critiques these approaches for being overly restrictive, separating larger social processes from local decisions, and drawing attention away from collective action which is only revealed at the regional level. 

“Moreover, the relevant social relations do not reside solely within the spatial unit under consideration” (544).

“I maintain that we can only understand these contemporary patterns by examining the historical development of urban space at the regional scale and that these processes are inherently racialized” (549).

“In particular, the emphasis on siting, intentionality, and scale have contributed to conceptualizing both racism and space as discrete objects, rather than as social relations” (564).

Discussion

In light of Pulido's findings regarding scale, what do you believe to be the significance of the WWU's march route (from the western edge of San Bernardino County to City Hall in downtown Los Angeles)? What does this suggest about the ways organizers have defined the problems associated with work hazards and solutions for approaching them?

How does the WWU's engagement with ideas of environmental safety converge or diverge with those presented in the incinerator case study presented by Pulido? What does this suggest about the connection between historical and contemporary social justice movements?

In what directions does considering Pulido's findings alongside the WWU's march push you to understand environmental justice movements? How do these considerations bear on other movements either here, locally, or within previous course readings?