This episode is about a phrase that was born right here in North Carolina, and about what happens when we ask who actually gets protected. Environmental justice sits where environmental law and social justice meet, and it's less about whether pollution happens than about who ends up living next to it. Hosts Maggie and Sonya sit down with Chandra T. Taylor-Sawyer, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center and leader of its Environmental Justice Initiative, for a conversation twenty years in the making.

Chandra takes us through what's changed since the start of the environmental justice movement and what hasn't, why "resilience" might be the single word that best explains who survives environmental harm and who doesn't, and the legal mechanics behind proving discrimination under civil rights law, including why the difference between intent and impact matters so much in court. It's a conversation about power, about what it would take for private industry to just be better neighbors, and about why Chandra, twenty years into this fight, still calls herself hopeful.

About our guest:
Chandra T. Taylor-Sawyer is a senior attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center's Chapel Hill office, where she leads the Environmental Justice Initiative and focuses on water quality and environmental justice issues. She has worked at SELC since 2006, leading efforts in North Carolina to force cleanups at contaminated industrial sites, fight water pollution, and shape landfill and transit policy, including a 2007 overhaul of North Carolina's Solid Waste Management Act to protect lower-wealth communities and communities of color from disproportionate harm. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and sits on the board of the North Carolina Justice Center. A native of Kinston, North Carolina, Chandra earned both her undergraduate and law degrees from UNC. Learn more: selc.org/staff/chandra-taylor

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis. Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Music by Tim Sheahan | Everyday Knife Fight | Chapel Hill, NC

Produced by Sara Hofman | McNeely Web Design | Raleigh, NC

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps our audience find us.