Leveraging Environmental, Social, and Economic Justice at Chattanooga Creek

ABSTRACT

This article describes neighborhood-based resilience and action among African American residents, to promote environmental cleanup and to reverse economic oppression, in a neighborhood bordering the most polluted waterway in the southeastern United States. This community-university partnered research explored how environmental contamination problems eventually served as a rallying cause for economic development and empowerment for the neighborhood. Based on review of neighborhood archives and newspaper articles, examination of reports from environmental regulatory authorities, and interviews with neighborhood residents and others, we identify environmental problems, barriers, and action on grievances that stem from environmental and economic conditions. A community collective action framework is used to depict the process by which community members have become increasingly sophisticated in leveraging local, state, and federal resources for environmental cleanup and neighborhood development.

Key Words:

• Community-university partnership
• environmental justice
• collective action
• neighborhood
• case study