An Analysis Of Grassroots Groups' Strategies In The Environmental Justice Movement

Environmental Justice Movement (EJM) was initiated by people of color, predominantly African-Americans under the leadership of grassroots groups with the purpose of changing people of color's disadvantageous environmental situation. It began in 1982 with the outcry of Warren County in North Carolina.Ever since the beginning of EJM, grassroots groups, on behalf of the massive people of color who are suffering disproportionate environmental burdens, actively engaged themselves in probing for the best way to address the problem of environmental injustice. Litigation strategy, awareness-raising strategy and community empowerment strategy are the three major strategies they utilized. However, the 1994 and 2007 reports released by The United Church of Christ showed that people of color's environmental situation did not experience significant change during the past three decades. The reason why EJM attracts so much attention yet generates so few concrete results is that by putting too much reliance on litigation and awareness-raising strategies, grassroots groups lose their initiative in EJM and the victims of environmental injustice—people of color are not involved in it. Only when grassroots groups grasp the initiative in EJM and the massive people of color be engaged in the movement can EJM be directed in the right orientation and can environmental justice be finally gained.By analyzing and comparing the three major strategies utilized by grassroots groups in EJM, community empowerment is found to set grassroots groups on the right track to realize environmental justice because only this strategy manages to involve and mobilize the internal force of EJM—people of color in the movement that is designed to change their disadvantageous environmental situation.