When Rhonda Anderson became the first full-time environmental justice organizer in southeastern Michigan she recognized that changing the approach of a large environmental organization with little experience addressing the harm caused disproportionately on communities of color was a huge task. Twenty-two years later as she retires from the Sierra Club, Rhonda has left an amazingly strong legacy that has changed the discussion in Michigan and throughout the environmental community.
In 1996 an extraordinary convening of BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) leaders and allies in Jemez, New Mexico, laid out the fundamental principles for addressing the critical need for environmental organizations to step up their work to address environmental injustices. Half a dozen years later, the Michigan Chapter was among the first Sierra Club entities to begin to act on those principles by hiring Rhonda as our environmental justice organizer.
Rhonda brought a strong background of work as a union organizer and a deep understanding of the burden of pollution and lack of access to trees and nature on community members. She also understood that becoming part of an old, largely white environmental organization posed both a challenge and an opportunity to address these harms. Working closely with then Chapter Director Alison Horton, and moving with Alison to a national staff position after the first couple of years, Rhonda brought her skill, compassion and personal experience to organizing in the 48217 zip code and other particularly hard hit areas.
And for two decades Rhonda has empowered community members to engage in and lead the increasingly successful fight to end the unequal burden they live with in pollution and resulting health and economic impacts. She has elevated attention to environmental injustices, and is a large part of the reason the state of Michigan and the US Environmental Protection Agency have taken seriously the need to address this disparate treatment of BIPOC and low income communities. Her work has gained her recognition from many organizations, including the Sierra Club Virginia Ferguson award in 2013, the Mike McClosky Award in 2015 and the 2019 Helen & William Milliken Award from the Michigan Environmental Council.
Rhonda has made it clear that her retirement does not mean the end of her commitment of time and energy to this work. But she has more than earned the right to spend more time with her amazing family members as well as enjoying time among trees where she has found peace and inspiration. We are tremendously grateful to Rhonda for her decades of work.