A Place to Call Home: Maintaining a Social Ecology for Hometown Pride

On a Saturday in late August, more than 100 volunteers with the Sierra Club's Clean Power Lake County Campaign gathered in the city of Waukegan, just north of Chicago, to clean up the beach and demonstrate their support for a transition away from fossil fuels to a clean-energy future for the county. The beach cleanup and rally pointedly took place within site of Waukegan's 53-year-old beachfront coal-burning power plant.

For Celeste Flores of Gurnee, a recent college graduate who now works as an organizer with the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, this was her third beach cleanup since returning from college. When she left Park City, Illinois, strong family bonds kept her from going too far.

“When I was applying to colleges, my mom gave me a six-hour drive limit, so that’s where I went,” recounted Flores with a laugh about her choice to enroll Bellarmine in Louisville, Kentucky. Like many youth in rural or suburban communities, Flores had become restless in a town she felt bereft of novel social experiences. “I knew it would be different from Park City, this bubble of Mexican culture and heritage where I can only speak Spanish, that this wouldn’t be the reality everywhere else, and I wanted that exposure.”

While at Bellarmine, she was exposed to much more than cultural and linguistic differences. As a volunteer for Christian Appalachian Project helping build homes, and after graduation, as a preschool teacher, she began to see similarities, as well.

“Kentucky is very different, Louisville is very different, and I always thought that to help people, you had to go abroad,” said Flores. “I didn’t know you could find that kind of poverty in this country, a few hours’ drive into Appalachia reminded me of when I’d visit parts of Mexico.”

The neglect of communities whose futures were bound to coal industry’s interests has been devastating. Communities of people share a fundamental trait with communities of “wildlife”, such as fish and birds in Lake Michigan, in that they are defined by how we relate to each other and  our habitat. Our cohesion as a unit, whether a lakeside marsh or a small town, is never guaranteed, and must be proactively maintained lest our communities be torn apart by forces beyond our control. Whether a small town or a lakeside marsh, both have their respective ecology that must be tended to, and the social ecology of towns torn asunder by the flight of industries seeking higher profits elsewhere, whether in Appalachia or Mexico, will yield familiar cultural reactions to reinforce cohesion.

Flores encountered such similarities in the strong family and community bonds she saw in the region.

“Appalachian communities were so invested in coal because there was nothing but coal, so that when coal companies packed up and left, there was nothing else left, and there was no long-term plan for the future,” said Flores. “I ran into people my age who had thought about leaving these communities to go to college, but decided not to because it would have been seen as a betrayal of their family.”

“I know in my family when I said I was going off to college, they were like, ‘what are you doing in Kentucky? There are schools here, you’re going to miss quinceañeras, bautismos…” said Flores.

After seeing the effects economic stressors thrust upon the social ecology of communities in Appalachia by coal mines fleeing for cheaper or “cleaner” coal, she returned home to use her skills in service of her community’s social ecology. She fulfills this niche as an organizer for Beyond Coal, where organizing the Waukegan Beach Clean-Up has seen her bring her family and community along for the journey of maintaining a place they are proud to call home.

“I started bringing my family, people from my church, and they were more comfortable with the Spanish language, so I became a translator on the spot,” recalled Flores.

Contrary to common misconceptions, Flores insists the Beyond Coal Campaign’s goals are not to unleash turbulent changes and disrupt communities-- a fear tied to the claim that Beyond Coal only wants to shut down coal plants. Having witnessed in Appalachia the dire aftermath of coal companies’ exploitation, and seeing the need for thorough and methodical planning for a transition, Flores emphasizes the need for a just transition that includes everyone in the community, not just extracting companies and politicians under their patronage.

“Retiring outdated plants is not an overnight process, and what we want is a transition, a timeline for the plant’s retirement,” said Flores. “We also don’t want to just hear a timeline for retirement and then we all go home. We also need a plan for cleanup, for a just transition, and we want the communities impacted to be involved in that process.”

The communities’ involvement is crucial to mitigate the consequences of outside actors like NRG Energy, the plant’s owner, which strive to warp communities’ ecology into something like a company town. By strategically dangling some money to struggling organizations with the tacit or explicit expectation of passive acceptance, NRG can transform a community’s ecology to be friendly to it at the expense of the inhabitants.

“NRG will give donate some money to the community, like $10,000 for events like Scoop the Loop, but compare that to emergency room visits, inhalers, missed work days, and ten thousand doesn’t add up to much for individual families,” said Flores. “Or when we try to bring other groups to Clean Power Lake County,  we learn that they get donations from NRG. In my perspective, these groups do not want to speak up because of the funding they are receiving.”

That passive acceptance necessarily extends to politicians in Waukegan, but not without turning into aggressive loyalty. Though elected officials in neighboring communities have joined their constituents in publicly supporting the restoration of the health of Waukegan’s ecology by retiring the coal plant, Waukegan’s own elected officials have been less enthusiastic, for all-too-predictable reasons. Flores knows this must change by building capacity for community political mobilization.

“[NRG was] the main sponsor for the mayor’s lunch fundraiser, and we know that it is crucial to show that residents want a different future.  That is why this fall we want to host house parties in each ward to recruit local residents to talk to their aldermen and the mayor to ask for a transition taskforce plan that includes the community,” said Flores. “We’ve already presented over 2,000 signatures, but the community is still shut out from the process, any kind of planning for a future without a coal plant is being done behind closed doors.”

As the goal is to maintain healthy, cohesive communities for future generations, Flores recounts the involvement of one young activist at the most recent beach cleanup.

“Daniela Lopez, sixteen years old, got involved this year because she said it gave her hope for Waukegan,” said Flores, recounting Lopez’s speech to those at the cleanup. “Everyone talks about getting out after graduating and never come back, but Daniela said she wants to come back and wants to be proud of Waukegan.”

This is Flores’ goal, “to inspire them to know they can have a Waukegan without a coal plant.”