Defying gravity: environmental justice rises in California’s capital city

ABSTRACT

Sacramento, California’s capital city has not, until recently, had the kind of cohesive and effective environmental justice (EJ) movement as seen in several other regions around the state or country. However, in the past 15 years, a variety of new forms of EJ organising are producing a vibrant if uneven movement. This article examines how and why this transformation has occurred and what challenges the movement has faced and which persist. I propose that the rise of the EJ movement in Sacramento can be traced to an explicit articulation of an EJ master frame, the development of an increasingly dense network of EJ-oriented organisations, the mobilisation of a grassroots base of residents, and several state-led EJ policy initiatives that have created openings for community mobilisation. The article begins by presenting a theoretical framework to understand the formation and development of social movements. This is followed by an overview of local environmental injustices and a series of focused case studies of key EJ struggles in the region. Finally, it closes with a discussion of the dynamic rise of the Sacramento EJ movement and further questions to track its continued development.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental justice
• social movements
• framing
• community organising
• Sacramento
• California

Acknowledgments

I express my deep appreciation for the many environmental justice activists who have shared their inspiring stories and collaborated in action research projects with me over the years. The Coalition on Regional Equity was a crucial partner in the early phases of this work. Thanks are also due to the California Wellness Foundation which provided generous support to the UC Davis Centre for Regional Change and its amazing staff and students for the original report from which this article is partially drawn.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by California Wellness Foundation.