Power Politics
Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles
Rutgers University Press
In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages, a group of environmental justice activists blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. Why did they choose this battle? And how did the largely high school student activists come to prevail in the face of statewide political opinion?
Power Politics is a rich and readable study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that pitted good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and in doing so unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues. Power Politics' activists stood at the forefront of a movement that is building broad-based environmental coalitions and placing social justice at the heart of a new and robust vision.
Highly original in conception and scopeàBrodkin demonstrates her consummate skills as a researcher in excavating the cityàand does so with verve.
Karen Brodkin is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Making Democracy Matter: Identity and Activism in Los Angeles and How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America (both Rutgers University Press).
Introduction
1. South Gate Transitions
2. Environmental Justice
3. Creating an Environmental Justice Campaign
4. Sunlaw's New Pollution Control Technology
5. The Perfect Storm
6. Finding Traction at South Gate High School
7. Going Public
8. Sudden Death
1. South Gate Transitions
2. Environmental Justice
3. Creating an Environmental Justice Campaign
4. Sunlaw's New Pollution Control Technology
5. The Perfect Storm
6. Finding Traction at South Gate High School
7. Going Public
8. Sudden Death
