1 The Significance of Warren County
2 Regulating Toxic Chemicals, PCBs, and Hazardous Waste
3 The Collective Action Frame of "Not in My Backyard"
4 Constructing Environmental Racism
5 The Environmental Justice Movement
Warren County Revisited
Epilogue
Notes
Index
First
Paperback Edition Subtitle: Warren County, PCBs,
and the Origins of Environmental Justice Author:
Eileen McGurty Subject:Enviroment,
History Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4678-2 Pages:
326 pages Publication Date: September 2009
Praise for the Transforming Environmentalism:
"In sharp and
penetrating prose, McGurty recounts the central role of Warren County,
North Carolina, in the rise of the environmental justice struggle. She
lifts the discussion above the class versus race debate and exposes the
movement's progression from a fledgling local battle to a national
movement that has influenced public policy."-Craig E. Colten, Carl O.
Sauer Professor of Geography, Louisiana State University
"Transforming
Environmentalism is an expertly written and engaging analysis of
one of the seminal events in environmental history, public policy, and
political protest. It constitutes an important contribution to the
environmental justice literature and should be considered mandatory
reading for scholars, students, and activists alike committed to
understanding the fundamental role of citizen activism in making
American be what America should be."-Environmental
History, April 2009 Description:
Contemporary
public policy circles are quick to acknowledge that environmental
factors contribute to ill health and pose a particular threat to poor
and minority communities. But public officials rarely examined the
distribution of environmental hazards such as polluted air and
contaminated water. In the 1980s, as toxic waste facilities
proliferated, the environmental justice movement demanded that
impoverished communities no longer be burdened by excessive
environmental risks.
In Transforming Environmentalism,
Eileen McGurty explores a moment central to the emergence of the
environmental justice movement. In 1978, residents of predominantly
African American Warren County, North Carolina, were horrified to learn
that the state planned to build a landfill in their county to hold
forty thousand cubic yards of soil that was contaminated with PCBs from
illegal dumping. They responded to the state's plans with a four-year
resistance, ending in a month of protests with over 500 arrests from
civil disobedience and disruptive actions.
McGurty traces the evolving approaches that residents took to contest
"environmental racism" in their community and shows how activism in
Warren County spurred greater political debate and became a model for
communities across the nation. Transforming Environmentalism explores
how the specific circumstances of the Warren County events shaped the
formation of the environmental justice movement and influenced
contemporary environmentalism.
About the Author:
Eileen McGurty is a senior lecturer and associate
chair of the graduate program in environmental sciences and
policy at Johns Hopkins University.
