Environmental
and Economic Justice campaigns are an outgrowth of this nation’s troubled racial and economic past and
present. Just as ending slavery in the second half of the 19th Century did not end discrimination,
the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the second half of the 20th Century did not end racism
and Economic Darwinism.
Environmental Justice became an issue when nongovernmental and governmental organizations became aware of something minority communities
had known for years. Cheap land attracts businesses needing a lot of square footage at a low
price, like large manufacturing and heavy industry. Cheap land also attracts poor people looking
for an inexpensive place to live. The result is a deadly combination of pollution and people with no other
place to go. The fact that the highest percentage of the nation’s poor per capita are also people of
color concentrated the impacts of this situation further. Pictured here are residents
of San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point Community and Whistleblowers in a demonstration against the Navy’s
withholding of information about radiological contamination in front of the Hunters Point Shipyard in June 2001.
We at Arc Ecology are proud to say, we didn’t have to wait for the birth of the Environmental
Justice movement in the 1990’s to begin our efforts to address this situation. Founded by long
term Civil Rights, Economic and Social Justice activists, Arc Ecology has a long standing commitment to
this issue.
Although Arc Ecology’s
campaigns benefit all people, over the last twenty years we’ve focused on those communities
now called Environmental Justice Communities. We provide political, organizing, scientific and economic
resources to empower people in the decision-making impacting their futures. Arc Ecology doesn’t speak
on behalf of Environmental Justice or Economic Justice Communities. We see our job as helping
communities assert their own voices. Our projects have forced the Navy to provide environmental cleanup
and support contracts to minority owned businesses and have provided the
technical resources to help identify health hazards and economic opportunity.
Arc Ecology is involved in several projects to restore and enhance habitats and ecosystems in the San Francisco
Bay Area. Two of our most active work has been on these two projects:
Yosemite Slough
Yosemite Slough is the watershed surrounding San Francisco’s south shore. Nearly 1,500 acres of shoreline and
uplands compose the South Basin area. Under a contract with the State of California, Arc Ecology is coordinating
a multi-faceted project planning the restoration of Slough/ Watershed. Arc Ecology’s
project partners include: the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates,
Literacy for Environmental Justice, the Golden Gate Chapter of the Audubon
Society, the Clean Water Fund, the State of California and the San Francisco Department
of Public Works. The restored shoreline of Yosemite Slough will become a crescent park
providing an important recreational green-space for the surrounding
environmental justice community as well as an ongoing ecological education
program for community youth.
Save San Pablo Baylands
A sponsored project of Arc Ecology, SSPB is working to include 1,500 acres of the former Mare
Island Naval Shipyard within the 30,000 acre Pacific Fly Way National Refuge. SSPB coordinates
the annual Pacific Fly Festival, Northern San Francisco Bay’s largest environmental
event, providing interpretive nature walks and educational displays covering a wide
range of refuge issues.
