 | Power Politics: Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles Subjects: Environmental justice -- California -- South Gate; Student movements -- California -- South Gate; Hispanic American high school students -- California -- South Gate -- Political activity; Sunlaw Energy Partners (Firm); South Gate (Calif.) -- Environmental; In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages, a group of environmental justice activists blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. Why did they choose this battle? And how did the largely high school student activists come to prevail in the face of statewide political opinion? Power Politics is a rich and readable study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that pitted good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and in doing so unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues. Power Politics' activists stood at the forefront of a movement that is building broad-based environmental coalitions and placing social justice at the heart of a new and robust vision. Karen Brodkin is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Making Democracy Matter: Identity and Activism in Los Angeles and How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America (both Rutgers University Press). |
