Chris Kromm wrote:
>James Heartfield is able to blather such nonsense -- with other LBOers
>wagging their heads in approval -- because they haven't spent any time in
>the trenches with the environmental justice movement, lead by working class
>African Americans and Latinos, especially in the South.
-Well of course. The environmental justice movement is an excellent -thing. But that's not mainstream environmentalism - the kind -practiced by big DC-based organizations and the philanthropists who -fund them (centered around the Rockefeller crowd). Big Green really -doesn't care about working class people of any color, unless they -crowd into the national parks and create unseemly spectacles.
Wow, Doug, just spouting contempt for all sorts of people who organize day-in and day-out for progressive and union causes today.
The "Big Green" groups - note the same rightwing cadence of equivalance used to make Big Labor seem comparable to the power of their corporate adversaries - have not dealt as well with environmental justice issues as they could, although some have done a lot better in recent years. But anyone in the trenches of environmental justice work knows they depend on research and advocacy of the main environmental groups, even when the EJ groups go beyond them to apply the principles to working class communities.
And it is "Big Green" that supports mass transit spending that overwhelmingly serves working class folks, while the Heartfield's of the Left celebrate a car culture that undercuts decent mass transit as an alternative.
The Sierra Club voted down a rightwing anti-immigrant measure a number of years ago, specifically rejecting the "carrying capacity" idea that the best way to protect the environment was to fence it off from poor people of color.
How about a little nuance before you create such blanket statements?
-- Nathan Newman