Picture an environmentalist. For many Americans, that prompts an image of someone who’s white, well-educated, and in the middle class. Now picture the Bronx. The Bronx is a community where new urban environmentalists have risen up and are changing the landscape in the Bronx, redefining what “greening” is to include environmental, social, and economic justice. In the mix of this activism is Sustainable South Bronx, a green collar jobs training program that looks at not only how one “greens” urban communities, but the people within that community also.
These South Bronx black and brown environmentalists are fighting entrenched racist public policies that has plagued their community with air and water toxicity that has led the Bronx to have some of the worst asthma and health outcome rates in the country. It has included redlining and disinvestment which helped lead to urban decay. This was in addition to the federal government’s war on drugs that led to mass incarceration instead of addiction assistance, and environmental injustice that dumped toxic sites into their community.
Too often urban communities are painted in the media as having no agency for their own change and are left out of the processes that determine the future of their community. Sustainable South Bronx rebuffs that stereotype and offers a solution – it shows a community fighting for itself at every level, through the love they have for one another, the love for the people who enter their doors, and the love of their community. And winning. This is what it means to truly “green” a community.
