Toxic Communities: First Meeting
This summer, we’re reading and discussing Dorceta Taylor’s book Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. This book is available in print (we recommend supporting Black-owned bookstores, for example here or here). It’s also available via JSTOR as pdfs if you log in through the UMass library. Please see our blog page for updates on prompts and discussion summaries!
For our first meeting, we’re reading the following chapters: the Introduction and Chapter 1 (Toxic Exposure: Landmark Cases in the South and the Rise of Environmental Justice Activism).
To help guide your reading and our discussion, please think about the following prompts:
- Reflect on how similar cases may play out in the Northeast, or other areas that you have personal connection to
- How do environmental movements — past and present — fail to address issues of race and other human dimensions?
We look forward to starting our summer discussions!