Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger by Julie Sze - Paper

About the Book

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein

We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles?

Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

About the Author

Julie Sze is Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of the Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Davis. She has authored and edited three books and numerous articles on environmental justice and inequality, culture and environment, and urban and community health and activism.

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Table of Contents

Overview

Introduction. Environmental Justice at the
Crossroads of Danger and Freedom

1. This Movement of Movements

2. Environmental Justice Encounters

3. Restoring Environmental Justice

Conclusion. American Optimism, Skepticism, and
Environmental Justice

Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography

Reviews

“Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger is a rousing primer that illuminates the movement’s core principles. It demonstrates how interconnected disparate social movements are and shows that they can coalesce into more powerful networks.”
— Foreword Reviews

"A concise and powerful description of environmental injustices in various settings across the United States and its territories."
— World Medical and Health Policy

"A good introductory text for an environmental justice course but can also make for an easy read to provide some basic understanding on environmental justice to an unfamiliar audience."
— Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences

"The book will also no doubt become essential reading for everyone—both inside and outside the academy—who wishes to participate in building a more just, equitable, and habitable world, now and into the future."
— ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"In this ‘moment of danger’ Sze’s book is a call to recognize how past, present, and future are intertwined."
— Western American Literature

“Local, front-line struggles like the ones profiled here have long embodied—and continue to propel—our collective fight for a better society. If you want to understand how, let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein, author of On Fire and This Changes Everything

“In these perilous times, when the fate of the planet hangs in the balance, the question arises: what are we to do? This book is the answer. As veteran activist and scholar Julie Sze makes clear, the environmental justice movement knows what to do because it understands the climate catastrophe as the consequence of long-term policies of racism, dispossession, class exploitation, asset-stripping, organized abandonment, and privatization. With clarity and urgency, she tells the story of a movement whose visionary politics are not merely defensive but transformative.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“Once again, Julie Sze has written a book that will redefine the field and the way we see the world. She deftly draws on the tools of American Studies—literature, theory, art, and culture—to unpack and expose the driving forces behind our socioenvironmental crises. This is a hard-hitting and inspiring meditation on restorative environmental justice and radical hope in this moment when we need them most.”—David Naguib Pellow, Dehlsen Chair of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and author of What Is Critical Environmental Justice?

“Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger offers a powerful vision of environmental justice that can guide us in this time of crisis. Drawing on recent struggles—at Standing Rock, in Flint, Michigan, in California’s Central Valley, and in places hit by catastrophic hurricanes—Sze argues that environmental justice can best be understand as a ‘structure of feeling.’ Her approach offers an urgent reconceptualization of environmental justice that draws on the early promise of the movement while addressing the precipice we are on.”—Laura Pulido, Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon

“Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger is breathtaking in its scope and ambition. The book covers climate politics, police violence, Indigenous struggles for land, and so much more. Only Julie Sze could have pulled this off. There is nothing quite like it, and there is no one writing today about environmental justice whom I would rather read.”—David Correia, author of Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico