Noxious New York: the Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice
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MD DALIM #871492 10/20/06 BLUE GREEN YELLOW Urban and Industrial Environments Series editor: Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College Maureen Smith, The U.S. Paper Industry and Sustainable Production: An Argument for Restructuring Keith Pezzoli, Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Mexico City Sarah Hammond Creighton, Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions Jan Mazurek, Making Microchips: Policy, Globalization, and Economic Restructuring in the Semiconductor Industry William A. Shutkin, The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century Richard Hofrichter, ed., Reclaiming the Environmental Debate: The Politics of Health in a Toxic Culture Robert Gottlieb, Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change Kenneth Geiser, Materials Matter: Toward a Sustainable Materials Policy Thomas D. Beamish, Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City David Naguib Pellow, Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago Julian Agyeman, Robert D. Bullard, and Bob Evans, eds., Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World Barbara L. Allen, Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor Disputes Dara O’Rourke, Community-Driven Regulation: Balancing Development and the Environment in Vietnam Brian K. Obach, Labor and the Environmental Movement: The Quest for Common Ground Peggy F. Barlett and Geoffrey W. Chase, eds., Sustainability on Campus: Stories and Strategies for Change Steve Lerner, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor Jason Corburn, Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice Peggy F. Barlett, ed., Urban Place: Reconnecting with the Natural World David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle, eds., Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement Eran Ben-Joseph, The Code of the City: Standards and the Hidden Language of Place Making Nancy J. Myers and Carolyn Raffensperger, eds., Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy Kelly Sims Gallagher, China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development Kerry H. Whiteside, Precautionary Politics: Principle and Practice in Confronting Environmental Risk Ronald Sandler and Phaedra C. Pezzullo, eds., Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice Noxious New York Urban and Industrial Environments Series editor: Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College For a complete list of books published in this series, please see the back of the book. Noxious New York The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice Julie Sze The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and printed and bound in the United States of America. Printed on recycled paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sze, Julie. Noxious New York : the racial politics of urban health and environmental justice / Julie Sze. p. cm.—(Urban and industrial environments) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10: 0-262-19554-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-262-19554-6 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-262-69342-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-262-69342-4 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Environmental justice—New York (State)—New York. 2. Urban health—New York (State)—New York. 3. Minorities—Health aspects—New York (State)—New York. I. Title. GE235.N7S94 2006 614.4′27471—dc22 2006049437 10987654321 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger 1 1 What’s Old Is New: Public Health and Planning as Historical Antecedents to New York City’s Environmental Justice Activism 27 2 New York City Environmental Justice Campaigns: Stigma, Blight, and the Politics of Race and Pollution 49 3 Childhood Asthma in New York City: The Politics of Gender, Race, and Recognition 91 4 The Racial Geography of New York City Garbage: Local and Global Trash Politics 109 5 Power to the People? Deregulation and Environmental Justice Energy Activism 143 6 The Promise and the Peril or, Can Community-Based Environmental Justice Initiatives Reintegrate Planning and Public Health in the Urban Environment? 177 Conclusion: What We Can Learn from New York City Environmental Justice Activism 207 Notes 213 References 245 Index 269 Acknowledgments New York City is a place I love well. I love the energy and density and the constant stimulation, on the subways and the streets. It’s a place my parents came to in the United States not knowing English and with few resources, and made lives for themselves and our family. It’s a difficult and exciting place to live. Like so many others before me, New York City both fascinates and frustrates me, and it is the place that I have spent years researching, writing, and thinking about. New York City is also a profoundly personal and geographic space for me. On my way from work from Brooklyn to Harlem, I rode my bicycle through many different neighborhoods. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge, with the World Trade Center looming in the distance, through Chinatown where I grew up, through the edge of the Village, where I went to school, up Madison Avenue where the Metropolitan Transit Authority and corporate head- quarters of many Fortune 500 companies are located, through to Central Park, which I rode straight through to Harlem, where I worked next door to the Apollo Theatre. In this book, I will take you through four neighborhoods in New York City. These are not the glamorous or glittering sections of the city, although they have been focal points of recent gentrification and intense land use development and real estate speculation. This is the gritty, pol- luted New York City, where asthma rates and lead poisoning rates are high. These are the places, mostly working-class and minority spaces, where despite a grim physical landscape of despair, community activism flourishes. This book is shaped by time as well as space. I was supposed to defend this project as a dissertation proposal on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center attacks happened. For days afterward when I rode viii Acknowledgments my bike, I felt my lungs constricting from the air pollution from the vast environmental damage of the disaster. For weeks and months, I won- dered why my project mattered at all when the world seemed so bur- dened. I can not claim to answer that particular question, but my book ends with another event: I defended this project as a dissertation when I was eight months pregnant. Sofia was kicking excitedly throughout the defense as my committee members asked a series of difficult and chal- lenging questions. When we emerged from the meeting, held on a hot day in August 2003, we found that massive blackouts had darkened New York City, the rest of the Northeast, and the Midwest. Given that part of this book is on energy deregulation and its effects, the irony was not lost on all who were present. In other words, energy policy became real. This book, researched and written before Sofia was born, is dedicated to her as a testament to the hopes that we can create a world with more justice for all. I am heavily indebted to many people. First and foremost are the many activists who shared their struggles and their stories with me. These include Peggy Shepard, Cecil Corbin-Mark, Swati Prakash, Eddie Bautista, Carlos Padilla, Elizabeth Yeampierre, Marion Feinberg, Joe Perez, Frances Sturnim, Luis Garden-Acosta, Yolanda Garcia, and Mike Ewall in particular. I’m continually inspired by the work of California and national envi- ronmental justice organizers from Communities from a Better Environ- ment, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Environmental Health Coalition, PODER, and Jose Bravo at Just Transition. Others whose work and com- mitment to environmental justice helped me along the way include: Michel Gelobter, Lily Lee, Torri Estrada, Na’Taki Osborne, Max Wein- traub, Omar Freilla, Emily Chan, Diana Pei Wu, Leslie Lowe, Angela Park, Michele DePass, Tom Angotti, and Eva Hanhardt. My friends and colleagues from the Environmental Leadership Program also helped create and sustain a sense of a national intellectual and environmental community, especially to the class of 2002, (with extra special shout outs to: Max Weintraub, Matt Klingle, Kim Todd and Margo Tamez). Many environmental justice scholars have helped to support and encourage my work along the way, including Sheila Foster, Robert Bullard, Luke Cole, Michael Dorsey, Raquel Morello-Frosch, Rachel Stein, Lisa Park, and Joni Adamson. Acknowledgments ix I thank my committee members from New York University: Andrew Ross, Arlene Davila, Jack Tchen, Troy Duster, and Harvey Molotch. In particular, my chair, Andrew Ross, was a close reader and editor. His productivity, political commitment, and range and depth of knowledge are inspiring and intimidating. Thanks to other faculty at NYU, espe- cially Lisa Duggan, and Robin Nagle who took us to Fresh Kills where I got to smell, taste, and feel what mounds of garbage actually mean. I also want to thank particular staff members, Alyssa Hepburn, Madala Hilaire, and John and the other security guards in the building for their daily conversation.