Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 7

Healthy Bodies: one of the principles at Rolling Hills Preparatory School, seated atop a hill overlooking the Los Angeles Refinery in Wilmington (adjacent to Long Beach). Healthy bodies? Visible rising above the school buses in the distance, the clouds of smoke are hard to miss. And their harm is hardly invisible; their maker is invincible.

             At first I smiled at the juxtaposition of the Healthy Bodies pillar with the smoke from the plant behind it. Then, the gravity of the situation choked me like fumes. Who has the right to pollute the air? Everyone and no one, according to the ideals of the environmental justice movement. We must collaborate to fix this national issue.

Los Angeles Refinery

                 In Wilmington's history, there have been various cases in which people have filed to shut down toxic waste facilities. The article found at http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-14/news/cb-2812_1_hazardous-waste was published in 1985 and details IT Corp.'s denied appeal of orders to shut down its second Wilmington hazardous-waste facility. The city of Los Angeles upheld the decision to close it down. Nevertheless, there exists today a massive 300-acre refinery on West Anaheim St, an unmistakable symbol of industry...and harmful toxins. It was after reading this article that I decided to drive down to the refinery in Wilmington to observe a community that must see and hear it--and breathe it--every day. The Wilmington/Carson region of Los Angeles has the highest concentration of refineries in the state according to examiner.com, exemplified by the map below found at http://earthjustice.org/blog/2011-april/tr-ash-talk-mapping-environmental-injustice. The map shows the large cluster of toxic release facilities near the harbor and the high percentage of peoples of color in the same areas, visually confirming David Harvey's concerns; poor communities are disproportionately exposed to toxic wastes, leading to a largely futile debate on environmental ethics due to varying viewpoints regarding "social relations, power imbalances, beliefs, and institutions that underlie the environmental problem" (Harvey 1).

                 The next map from simplymap.com highlights the Wilmington area, where the Los Angeles Refinery is located, illustrating the dramatic differences in income. According to the Census Bureau, the highest percent of households with an income less than $15,000 are within the Wilmington area. Further west, away from the majority of facilities, the incomes become increasingly higher. This data does not necessarily indicate an intentional discrimination against minorities through the placement of hazardous waste sites in minority areas. Instead, it underlines economic, political, or social issues that may be an indirect cause of racism, but that are not themselves issues of race. For example, minority neighborhoods tend to have a less resistant social fabric, not strengthened by education or substantial incomes, allowing industrial facilities to develop without major roadblocks because the community does not have resources to mobilize against it. Again, it is not necessary an individual act of malice, but a product of societal structure.

                  Moreover, it demonstrates the power of money emphasized in Harvey's article. The standard view of environmental management popular before the ongoing environmental justice movement kept concerns for environmental justice "subservient to concerns for economic efficiency, continuous growth, and capital accumulation" (Harvey 4). In contrast, the environmental justice movement promotes a moral economy; collective responsibility, and the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self‐determination. According to Harvey, this “environmentalism of the poor” is lacking in practical action and organization. Still, there are examples of coherent organization, including the El Pueblo community group in Kettleman City who fought to prevent an incinerator from being constructed in their low-income city. As discussed above, Wilmington too has organized to close toxic waste facilities. An example of a permit can be found here: http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/HazardousWaste/Projects/upload/ConocoPhillipsW_dPCPermit.pdf.
            Environmental racism, while seemingly linked directly to differences in skin color, is better explained as structural racism in which a system of social structure produces cumulative, durable, often class or race-based inequalities. It includes a combination of individual practices, social institutions that work interactively to some people's advantage--and other's disadvantage--in patterned ways. These patterns can be observed on both maps.

View of the Refinery from Rolling Hills Preparatory

           I was reminded of Harvey's discussion of "Not-in-my-backyard" upon observing the proximity of the school to the refinery. The plant overwhelmed the landscape, defining the area with its un-lively yet productive jungle of pipes, smoke stacks, barrels, whooz-its, and whatz-its. It appeared as if the school was in the facility's backyard, not the other way around. Reflecting the struggle for empowerment, recognition, and respect, the shift in the US from "Not-in-my-back-yard" to "Not-in-Anyone's-Back-Yard" indicates a new perspective on differences within and amongst societies; Harvey claims that traditional approaches to environmental management are giving way to new rhetoric that must be supported by mobilization. While minorities neither deserve health hazards nor an unpleasant landscape, other portions of the Los Angeles population are neither deserving nor willing to move the the facilities into their own backyards. Los Angeles is one large refinery, producing segregation by the barrel  Still, as Harvey notes, diversity and geographical difference are not without the "necessary homogenities of global market integrations." It is unlikely that a certain quality of life will ever be universal, but is it possible to significantly lessen the gap?
            Before driving to the residential area on the other side of the refinery, I stopped at gas station. As I sat in the car, I observed the people entering the Subway and the place for Loans pictured below. During lunchtime, more customers entered to potentially receive a loan than entered Subway, and not one person was Caucasian. In fact, I did not see a white person for the entire duration of my trip to Wilmington. Many people seemed to be seeking a "steady income" as advertised on the poster, which is concurrent with the data gained from the map.

 A man on the corner of the street also held a sign that read "Cash Advance" and pointed this way, suggesting that the need for stability and sufficient income in this working-class community is not secret, but prevalent. The problem of hazardous material being placed in working-class communities is not local, but national. 

          For Harvey and other Marxian thinkers, Wilmington is a key place of difference because it is along income lines and the difference between it and its neighboring communities is reducible to class difference. In Wilmington, I drove past a large number of trucks with workers inside. I began to wonder: why do people continue to work and live here? The obvious answer would be that their job is here. Still, I wonder if Harvey's concerns--how do you keep the workers you are exploiting alive and reproducing?--can at least be partially demonstrated by Wilmington's geography. There is an expansive park just north of the refinery, a school to the west, and residential areas surrounding it. For a Marxian, the school exists to create factory workers, and the park is to increase labor by increasing people's happiness, which translates to increased satisfaction with wages. While I do not agree fully with the Marxian point of view, I do agree that there must be something to encourage productivity in a less-than-ideal environment. Political power seems to play a very potent role in the geography of cities. The difference between Wilmington and surrounding communities again confirms the idea that cities consist of smaller isolated worlds.

              

 Like the elementary school, the residential area was in the refinery's backyard. The modest houses seemed out of place, but shouldn't a jungle of metal seem out of place? Stepping outside the car, I listened to the factory roar, gurgle, sizzle, and hum. I breathed in as it breathed out. It did not stop to breathe in. There was no moment of quiet or rest. How could something so vital to production and future consumption be so unnatural? A crow flew in front of me, cawing.  Its voice was barely heard over the grumble of the plant. I hope that the voices of these people are heard clearly, if they have something to say.

           Traveling to this region demonstrated to me the role economics, political power, and race play not only in the location of toxic facilities, but in urban segregation as well.