『The Environmental Justice Lab』のカバーアート

The Environmental Justice Lab

The Environmental Justice Lab

著者： Lesley Joseph
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概要
 Since the dawn of human history, the fight for environmental justice has always been a fight. Water wars between the people of Israel and herdsmen of Gerar in the book of Genesis, Chapter 26. The resistance of Native Americans to the pillaging of their land and resources at the founding of the United States of America. The refusal to allow a hazardous landfill to be built in the Warren County, a predominantly Black community in North Carolina, giving birth to the modern-day environmental justice movement. The struggle for clean water in places like Flint, MI and Newark, NJ and Jackson, MS. The struggle is real and the fight is on-going. And I'm here for it.

My name is Dr. Lesley Joseph, a professor, an environmental engineer, and a fighter for environmental justice in our present day. Every other Tuesday, on this podcast, I explore issues related to environmental justice and the ways in which communities of color are impacted. Each episode will discuss a important environmental justice issue or situation and what we can do to fight for change. Let's learn, grow, and fight for a better world together!

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.Copyright Lesley Joseph 政治・政府 政治学 科学
エピソード
  • "Communities must be brought in and bought in" - The 7th Principle of Environmental Justice

    "Communities must be brought in and bought in" - The 7th Principle of Environmental Justice
    2026/10/06
    “Fair treatment and meaningful involvement.”

    That’s how the EPA defines environmental justice. Sounds good on paper. But here’s the question that I'm asking in this episode: What does meaningful involvement actually mean when a community is still told what’s coming, not asked?


    In this seventh installment of our walk through the Principles of Environmental Justice, we take on Principle 7: “Environmental justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement, and evaluation.”


    Keyword? "Right." Not courtesy. Not a listening session. Not a public comment period that ends with a polite nod and a pre-written decision. A right.


    In this episode, I break down the five stages where communities must sit as equal partners — and what it looks like when they’re shut out of every one:

    • Needs assessment — Do we even need this? Convince us. If you can’t, don’t build it.




    • Planning — Where does it go, and who bears the burden?


    • Implementation — Who works there? Who monitors? Who benefits, and who just lives next to it?


    • Enforcement — When something spills, who specifically steps in? Names, please.


    • Evaluation — Water, air, soil, traffic, the school down the street. Who’s checking, and are they checking equally?




      This episode calls out the language corporations love — “community engagement,” “outreach” — for what it often is: PR that shields decision-makers from actual partnership. It names the pattern that every generation of this fight has had to face — industrial plants in the '70s, landfills and hazardous waste in the '80s, textiles in the '90s. And today? Data centers. Hyperscale, hundred-thousand-megawatt data centers — arriving with slick presentations and no invitation.


      But here’s the part that matters: communities are pushing back. Moratoriums. Permits denied. Local officials who do answer to the people who vote them in. Because the tech moguls may not care about environmental justice — but the people who need your vote will.


      And as this episode reminds us: the injustice always lands in the same places. Black and brown communities. Indigenous nations whose pipelines and rivers were never safe from the government’s reach. Rural towns. Low-income neighborhoods. The old part of town that “used to be nice.” The wealthy uptown and the coastal community by the water? They don’t have to worry about it.


      Remember, if your voice had no meaning to the people making the decisions — you are not experiencing environmental justice. You’re experiencing environmental injustice. Possibly environmental racism. Possibly environmental apartheid. An apology is not justice. A meeting is not partnership. Equal partnership is the floor, not the ceiling.


      Check out this episdoe and then ask yourself — and your neighbors — the only question that matters: Were you involved at every level? Was environmental justice truly served?



    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.

    Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support

    Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
    "No Sacrifice Zones" on Substack: @lesleyjoseph
    Instagram: @envjusticelab
    YouTube: @envjusticelab
    Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
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    30 分
  • "No One Is Coming to Save Us": Drs. Wilson and Ali on the Past, Present, and Future of EJ

    "No One Is Coming to Save Us": Drs. Wilson and Ali on the Past, Present, and Future of EJ
    2026/09/30
    What does environmental justice look like when you stop waiting for permission?


    In this episode, I sit down with two titans of the movement — Dr. Sacoby Wilson (University of Maryland, founder of the Center for Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health) and Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali (Executive Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation, founding member of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice). Together they trace the full EJ arc: from the communities who stood outside the EPA and demanded environmental equity in the late '80s, to the long fight to embed the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice into the federal government, to the reversals of the present moment.


    The conversation is unflinching. Dr. Ali lays it out with the line that anchors the whole episode: “No one is coming to save us.” Environmental justice, he insists, begins and ends in community — and if the voice of community isn’t framing the possibilities, you get “the crumbs from the table.” Dr. Wilson pushes further, calling for a plan that can’t be dismantled by whoever takes office next: a 50-year, 2076 vision of ecotopias, food, energy, and water sovereignty, and self-determination rooted in the fifth principle of environmental justice.


    They also make space for grief and joy in the same breath — honoring the dead who cannot cry out for justice, and celebrating the beauty and treasures inside the communities that must be protected. And they name the stakes plainly: Mossville, Cancer Alley, Institute, West Virginia — places dealing with the same toxic chemical exposures as the 9/11 first responders.


    It closes with a charge from Dr. Ali’s abuela: “You have power unless you give it away.”


    This isn’t a conversation about waiting for Washington. It’s a conversation about building the government — and the world — that the people deserve.

    Resources:
    Center for Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health (CEEJH)

    National Wildlife Federation - Mustafa Santiago Ali




    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.

    Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support

    Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
    "No Sacrifice Zones" on Substack: @lesleyjoseph
    Instagram: @envjusticelab
    YouTube: @envjusticelab
    Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
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    40 分
  • A "Rude Awakening" at Hunters Point: Environmental Racism in the heart of Progressive America

    A "Rude Awakening" at Hunters Point: Environmental Racism in the heart of Progressive America
    2026/09/22
    Hunters Point Naval Shipyard sits on 638 acres of San Francisco waterfront. It was listed as a Superfund site in 1989. And 37 years later, plutonium has been detected in the air and soil — and still, nothing has been cleaned up.

    This week on the Environmental Justice Lab, I am joined by award-winning broadcaster Sabrina Jacobs, host of A Rude Awakening on 94.1 KPFA in Berkeley, to unpack one of the most egregious environmental justice failures in the country — and why it keeps happening in a historically Black neighborhood that happens to sit on some of the most valuable real estate in America.

    We trace the shipyard’s history from its 1870 origins as a commercial dry dock through Navy ownership, World War II radioactive testing, and deactivation — and into the decades of alleged fraud, secrecy, and delay that followed. The Navy’s contractor, Tetra Tech, was found to have falsified soil sample data, missing plutonium contamination. When an air sample turned up plutonium in November 2024, the Navy sat on the results for 11 months. Meanwhile, developers are already building luxury condos on cleaned-up parcels — while legacy residents, who moved to Bayview Hunters Point during the Second Great Migration, are left living beside contamination with no answers and no accountability.

    We dig into Proposition P — the 2000 ballot measure that called for full cleanup and was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and a list of police associations — and ask why the burden of cleaning up a mess the federal government created fell on the City of San Francisco. They discuss what gaslighting does to a community’s psyche, what it means to demand restoration rather than mere remediation, and why the fact that this is San Francisco — the supposed heart of American environmentalism — tells us everything about environmental racism.

    Sabrina closes with the lesson she wants every organizer to carry: never give up. Because every movement that ever won was built on fire, steadfastness, consistency, tenacity — and a deep love and respect for oneself and for others.

    Resources:
    The Gaslighting of San Francisco at the Hunters Point Shipyard - Greg Schwartz
    Lawsuit Filed Over Radioactive Waste at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard - Green Action

    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.

    Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support

    Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
    "No Sacrifice Zones" on Substack: @lesleyjoseph
    Instagram: @envjusticelab
    YouTube: @envjusticelab
    Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
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    58 分
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