Environmental Justice

Profiles in Environmental Justice

When we hear the word environment, we likely picture verdant forests, clear waters, and blue skies. We might not be as likely to picture a playground, a factory, or the water coming from our tap. Yet all of these things make up the environments we inhabit over the course of our lives. Environmental justice is a concept and a social movement that asks us to pay attention to these different environments and to empower people to have a voice in keeping their communities clean and safe. It asks us to expand how we understand what the environment is.

This book is a compilation of student research in a course on Environmental Justice at Saint Catherine University in the spring of 2016, taught by John J. Anderson, PhD. As their projects show, the scope of the environmental justice movement is broad and intersects with numerous other social movements – from environmentalism and civil rights, to feminism and the labor movement. Throughout all the projects, the theme that emerges as most central is the importance of protecting the many environments we encounter in our lives and this one planet that we call home.

Table of Contents

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire  |  Catherine Medin and Pa Kou Yang

Climate Refugees  |  Pa Vang and Maihlee Lee

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill  |  Anna Macki, Brooke Soller, and Margaret Wennerlyn

Love Canal  |  Ashley Emerson and Sarah Smeltzer

Altgeld Gardens  |  by Genie Esse and Kayla Fitzgerald

Microbeads in the Great Lakes  |  Catie Madison, Julia Le, and Faiza Mumin

Taconite Mining  |  Julia Zyla and Elicia Olson

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill  |  Katie Amundson, Leisha Cory, and Aney Vang

This page has paths: