This is a moment. A decisive moment in history presenting huge, existential crises that have caused an upheaval in what we thought was normal, what we overlooked, what we ignored and what seems most important.
In the environmental community, we have been staring down climate change, advocating endlessly for policy change and sounding the alarm that we are out of time. We’ve been fighting assaults from profit-hungry developers and a national administration that wants to sacrifice the natural world for every bit of financial gain that can be squeezed out of it, regardless of the impacts on local communities or the ecosystems. Then Covid-19 came and showed us just how vulnerable we really are, exposing our hubris in the face of nature. And then the tragedies of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd broke the other great façade of complacency.
For some of us this was nothing new. For many others, it stopped us in our tracks. We took a deep breath and contemplated how we got here. Some of us started listening a little harder, and some of us started writing about the intrinsic link between the environmental work we do and the racial and social injustices that saturate our communities and exist all over the world.
This moment is upon us all, finally shaking us awake with screaming urgency. This moment is calling for action in so many different ways. For those of us who have been focused on the plight of the environment, we must listen and respond in a way that addresses the larger message of justice.
Sierra Club’s mission is to promote environmental conservation—preserving the spaces we love to explore and appreciate. Our founder, John Muir, was an enthusiastic naturalist, who raised awareness of the importance of protecting the outdoors from a recreation and ecological point of view.
Today, 128 years later, the systemic racism from all those years ago still exists. People of color do not have equal access to the outdoors that Muir was working so hard to protect. Communities of color, including Native Americans, have been subjected to harsh living environments and exploitation for centuries. Today, this exploitation includes industrial development in disadvantaged communities that pollutes the air and increases noise and truck traffic, oil spills that foul waterways, lack of access to open space or recreational facilities, to name just a few atrocities.
And as we are hearing a very loud call to action to shift the course of deeply embedded racist practices throughout the United States, in government, business and social structures, Sierra Club is taking a hard look at its own practices and asking how, as an organization, it can do better to be inclusive and elevate the voices of people of color.
The issue of environmental justice — that impoverished communities of color bear the brunt of environmental degradation and have less access to clean air, clean water, food security, affordable housing, adequate public transportation and open space — is very much alive in Redwood Chapter. Issues ranging from failed ballot measures to improve affordable housing and public transit, to proposals to build factories and push polluting industry into low-income neighborhoods, to incursions into open space and greenbelts continue to plague our region.
When we confront issues of environmental justice, it’s not always apparent that what we are fighting is racism and generations of inequality, but, as the Black Lives Matter movement has been saying, this has been 400 years in the making—and the intensity of inequality becomes exponential when you include the genocide and exploitation of Native Americans throughout that same time.
Environmental justice is about bringing equity to all communities, and promoting equal access to healthy, livable and vibrant communities for all people—regardless of their economic standing, race or immigration status.
Lack of Access to Open Space in Solano County
A few months following the serendipitous withdrawal of a “green” cement plant proposed for a low-income neighborhood in South Vallejo, which Sierra Club rigorously opposed, residents were stunned when the city rescinded access to the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve, a popular destination for outdoors recreation in an area that doesn’t have much access to open space.
Vallejo’s population of about 120,000 has a very diverse racial make-up (only 30 percent white according to the 2010 census data) and is considered one of the last affordable places to live in the greater Bay Area. According to a mid-2019 a report by The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments, even some current Vallejo residents are getting priced out of the Bay Area altogether. In addition to rising housing costs in Vallejo, residents also have limited access to open space and parks.
In September 2019, the City of Vallejo closed the 215-acre Mare Island Preserve—a park home to extensive hiking trails and what many believe to be the best birdwatching in all of Northern California. The Preserve was maintained by volunteers and has become the center of controversy over access and management to local open space and recreation areas.
Sierra Club Solano Group Chair Joe Feller was angered by the decision to close the Preserve and the removal of longtime volunteer Myrna Hayes who ran the operation. He worked with volunteers to confront city officials and inform the public about the injustice.
“I can tell you what environmental injustice looks like, because I see it here every day,” Feller said.
After eight months of closure, on May 29 the Preserve re-opened with limited hours two days a week. In the meantime, according to Feller, the city had cut down dozens of trees and destroyed fencing around the adjoining historic graveyard.
Adjacent to the Preserve, Feller said they closed a recreation area that supported athletic activities for low-income residents. There are rumors that developers are preparing—with the city’s blessing—Mare Island for significant residential development. As access shrinks on Mare Island, Solano County is still without a parks district. It is the only county that touches the San Francisco Bay that does not have its own parks district, and because of this, access to open space has been stifled.
A ballot initiative to create a county parks district has been repeatedly delayed because of political and administrative reasons.
“This community needs more access to nature,” Feller said, “but it will take a lot of education for voters to understand that being outdoors benefits their health and well-being.”
Feller added that Sierra Club Solano Group wholeheartedly supports a county parks district and that while the Solano Land Trust has acquired large amounts of open space, that organization lacks the resources to maintain it properly.
Feller said residents and leaders look at parks as “icing on the cake” rather than a necessity and an “essential part of living in the United States.”
“We need staff devoted specifically to allow that space to be used by people and wildlife and to provide recreational and outdoor opportunities, especially to our citizens who don’t have the wherewithal to go up to the Sierras for a week. We think it’s critical for our local people who may be economically challenged to have a low-cost resource they can access.”
Affordable Housing in Santa Rosa
Vallejo may be one of the most affordable cities in the Bay Area, but it is still financially out of reach for many people. This affordability problem echoes throughout the Redwood Chapter region, especially in Napa and Sonoma counties, which have struggled with affordable housing shortages for years.
After the devastating fires of October 2017 in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties, affordable housing became even more scarce.
Redwood Chapter’s Sonoma Group supported a rent control ballot measure in June 2017 for the city of Santa Rosa; however, it failed at the polls. The measure would have created more housing security for the many people who found themselves at the mercy of price-gouging landlords following the fires.
Not only did the loss of 4,700 homes in the region—3,000 in Santa Rosa alone—amount to a choke hold on the already squeezed housing market, many landlords were able to lease homes to well-insured fire victims at premium rates. The results were unprecedented rent increases and inflated home prices.
In spite of Santa Rosa’s ordinance to restrict rent gouging, average rents rose quickly. By November 2017, according to a UC Davis report, median rents in Napa County had increased by $2.25 a square foot, meaning a 1,300-square foot house would rent for more than $2,900 a month. In Sonoma County, median rents rose to a median $2.40 a square foot or more than $3,000 a month for a 1,300-square foot house.
In response, many people left the area to find cheaper housing. For some, that wasn’t an option, and the high cost of housing is a statewide problem.
Sierra Club California’s director, Kathryn Phillips, wrote in 2018 that Sierra Club has long been active in housing and growth issues, supporting infill development, public transit and affordable housing to create resilient and diverse communities.
“Building enough affordable housing for California’s families and workers is one of the most important challenges facing California. State and local officials and elected officials need to work together to spur development of affordable and infill housing while upholding tenants’ rights, reducing emissions and protecting wildlands,” said Phillips, “It’s possible to achieve these goals, but it will require collaboration.”
Following the 2017 fires, Redwood Chapter joined with an alliance of community organizations, the Another World is Possible Coalition, to establish the Just and Resilient Future Fund (JRFF). The goals of the fund were twofold: First, provide immediate funding for the most vulnerable fire victims, and second, (perhaps uniquely) support longer term projects that build more healthy and resilient communities to better prepare us for future disasters.
Implementation of the first goal was kicked off with a $50,000 grant to the Farmers’ Alliance— Community Alliance with Family Farmers’ program to assist family farmers who suffered losses in the fire and $25,000 to the Undocufund, which provides assistance to undocumented workers who are often excluded from traditional relief programs. Half of the funds allocated to Undocufund helped pay for a much-needed case worker to manage individual grants.
In Fall 2019, national Sierra Club updated its Infill Development Policy to help cities and towns address the housing and climate crises, calling on leaders to focus on developing compact, walkable communities with a jobs-housing balance that reduces day-to-day carbon footprint while providing affordable housing and better quality of life. The updated policy emphasizes the importance of locating living-wage jobs close to affordable housing, while advocating for mixed-use developments, which support small businesses such as diverse food markets and neighborhood cafes. Such developments must not reinforce existing racial, ethnic and class segregation, and people from all social classes and backgrounds should be involved in planning them.
Chapter leaders continue to strive for environmental justice by advocating for infill development, more efficient, affordable and expanded public transportation and opposing highway expansion that encourages commuting by car.
Steve Birdlebough, the chapter’s transportation chair and chair of the statewide committee on transportation and sustainable communities, said, “Infill developments are good for the environment and promote environmental justice. It is a desirable alternative to more costly development in the outlying areas. More affordable living space can be located in walkable city centers around public transit and close to services. A greater sense of community develops when every errand doesn’t require a trip in a car. Also, the cost of living is generally lower for people who live in walkable neighborhoods where people can drive less.”
Birdlebough added that while infill development takes a long time to implement, “we are beginning to get a bit more momentum. There are lots of places where you now see rows of housing rather than sprawling developments in the outlying areas.
Greed for Oil on the Backs of the Vulnerable
In mid-2018, Sierra Club Sonoma Group got involved in a gas station dispute in Petaluma where Safeway wanted to build a 16-pump gas station in a working-class neighborhood off South McDowell Boulevard. A grassroots group of neighbors discovered the proposal late in the game, seeing that Safeway was about to slip this project through the planning process without doing any real environmental review, such as an Environmental Impact Report.
Neighbors overwhelmingly oppose this project for a multitude of reasons, including the proximity to a school, playing fields and an existing gas station.
Sonoma Group executive committee member Richard Sachen, a Petaluma resident, said this is the wrong project at the wrong time. “With the urgent call to cut greenhouse gas emissions, building new gas stations is simply an irresponsible move. More important, the toxic fumes and leaks the gas stations emit into the environment are linked to cancer, asthma and emphysema. This is an unnecessary evil. It’s like building a gas lamp factory after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.”
A group of activists arose from this Petaluma fight, and is now trying to stop all new gas station construction in Sonoma County.
Sonoma Group members Jenny Blaker and Woody Hastings launched the Coalition Opposing New Gas Stations (CONGAS), a coalition of residents from all over the county that is currently fighting four active proposals, including one in Rincon Valley in Santa Rosa, where a 7/Eleven wants to expand and evict residents from a home on the property.
Fossil fuels and their products are a textbook example of exploitation and destruction of vulnerable communities worldwide.
Hastings said the environmental justice work around CONGAS’s efforts stem from the belief that everyone should have the right to live free from pollutants and toxins spread into the environment—especially vulnerable communities—by corporations that don’t care about anything but the profit margin.
“In every drop that comes out of a gasoline dispenser, there is a trail of devastation for communities and the environment around the world that leads all the way back to the point of extraction of the crude oil from the ground,” Hastings said. “Low-income communities of color in the United States and around the world, ‘frontline communities,’ are poisoned by effluent and emissions from these operations; low-income communities along rail and roadways are threatened by the hazard of oil and gas transportation; similar historically disadvantaged communities of color near refineries and gas processing facilities, ‘fenceline communities,’ face respiratory disorders, cancer, and death rates much higher than the national average. This is why we fight to stop the construction of new gasoline stations.”
Highway 37, SMART and Commuters
When you talk about equity, you have to look at the way people work, if and how they commute and what that looks like.
Many low-income workers, including numerous people of color, endure long and difficult commutes.
In the Bay Area, these commutes also tend to be expensive.
Redwood Chapter has been working on a number of initiatives to improve public transit service, with the goals of improving quality of life for local residents, reducing vehicle miles traveled and making transportation options more equitable.
As the shortest route between affordable housing in Vallejo and jobs in Marin and Sonoma counties, State Route 37 has seen steady increases in traffic. The highway is now quite congested during rush hours, and the situation has drawn attention from policy makers in Solano, Napa, Sonoma and Marin counties.
The highway has flooded several times in recent winters, and with climate change making sea-level rise inevitable, repeated flooding is also certain to occur.
The Chapter’s transportation chair, Steve Birdlebough, has been working diligently along with Tony Norris from Napa Group, Joe Green-Heffren from Solano Group and Nancy Okada from the Bay Chapter to assure that the multi-county plan to upgrade the road doesn’t induce more driving.Taking into account the plight of workers, Birdlebough and other environmental activists have worked to include a carpool lane in the plan, as well as advocated for improved public transportation to run the route via buses and van pools, with trains to run beside the highway.
Elevating the highway is expected to cost $4 or $5 billion, and some of that cost would likely be met with a bridge toll that would disproportionately affect low-income workers who travel the road to go to work. Birdlebough said options have been floated to make the tolls a sliding scale based on income or provide other offsets for low-income workers.
Rail service has long been touted as a way to get people out of their cars during their work commutes.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) has provided options for decades, but that service does not reach the Redwood Chapter’s region. Yet, with the creation of the SMART system, the North Bay was provided reliable and comfortable connection to central Marin County, where commuters can catch ferry service into San Francisco or hop on a bus that will travel all over the region.
Recent expansion of the SMART route linked the San Rafael transit center to the Larkspur ferry terminal for a seamless connection. But after a ballot measure was voted down last November to maintain sales tax funding for the rail service, the SMART board of directors has been scrambling to figure out how to continue to provide a high level of service and follow through with its plans to expand northward into Healdsburg and Cloverdale.
Beore COVID-19 hit, the SMART service was widely popular, with standing-room-only crowds during commute hours. But critics have cited that the train’s high fares excludes a wide swath of the population and caters to older, weathier people (mostly white).Affordability has been a subject of much debate, and the SMART board has pledged to look into how to make fares more accessible.
Since the pandemic began, SMART has been operating with just 10 percent of its ridership. “It’s been coming back slowly,” Birdlebough said.
Forging the Link and Doing the Work
The Black Lives Matter movement has amplified the scourge of racism in our communities and across the country. In a recent Sierra Magazine article, Director of Strategic Partnerships Hop Hopkins writes that the environmental movement cannot continue to ignore racial inequality if we want to make progress.
“You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism. We’re in this global environmental mess because we have declared parts of our planet to be disposable. The watersheds where we frack the earth to extract gas are considered disposable.”
While all of the Sierra Club grapples with ways to shed its implicit racial bias and stand in true solidarity with communities of color, Redwood Chapter leaders are looking beyond aligning our environmental goals with social justice to discover how our blind spots have led to such racial and class disparity in inclusion, access and activism among our ranks.
Our work on environmental justice issues will continue to evolve into a new vigor in the fight against the social and racial inequalities that impede Sierra Club’s mission to enjoy, explore and protect the planet. j