Environmental Justice Through Civic Engagement at a Local and State Level: Part 1

This is the first in a two-part series on environmental justice and local civic engagement. Next, we’ll talk with the founders and coordinators of Swap Meet Justice/Justicia Tianguera about what it takes to stay civically engaged while navigating the path to citizenship, and how those barriers can limit participation in decisions that shape a community’s air quality, water quality, and health.

Civic engagement is essential in any political climate to ensure that community values and priorities are reflected in policy. Meaningful change at the local, state, and even federal levels has often been driven by communities speaking out and staying involved, whether through public comment, voting, or participating in peaceful protests. Enacting change around environmental injustices is no different. 

Drawing on previous lessons from our Clean Economy Coalition of Color (CECC) roundtable series, we know that communities have achieved many meaningful improvements by staying united and civically engaged in various ways.

Civic engagement can take many forms: participating in community discussions, speaking with local or state officials, writing about issues that affect your neighborhood, and voting. Every person has a role to play in advancing their priorities and urgency around environmental injustices, and every person’s role is impactful, whether they are voting, bringing snacks to a community meeting, or phone banking about local issues.

Residents who work, study, or live near pollution sources are experts in how these conditions affect their lives. They deserve a seat at the table, particularly when decisions are made that affect their own communities.

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing a local and state Environmental Justice (EJ) Policy Advocate, Aurora Rugerio, who is deeply committed to supporting communities through both local and statewide EJ policy efforts.

As part of the grassroots organization Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), Aurora engages youth and young adults in local environmental justice efforts, helping cultivate the next generation of EJ leaders. In her role, she works closely with state EJ coalitions, bridges policy work with community youth & YA leaders to support key advocacy strategies.

CAUSE also leads toxic tours so that others will understand and observe environmental injustices and empower community members with the knowledge needed to drive meaningful change. We talked about the importance of being civically engaged and how it contributes to driving change, especially in environmental justice communities. The topics we discussed, and her answers, are included below.

On Work and Local Issues

1. Can you describe your role and the work you do in environmental justice advocacy?

“My name is Aurora, I’m a Policy Advocate with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, also known as CAUSE. CAUSE supports the community through policy advocacy and organizing for environmental justice at the local and state level. One of our main priorities is making sure community members in Oxnard, especially in South Oxnard,  feel empowered to advocate for themselves, advocate for their communities,and the right to have clean air, a clean environment and access to the beach. We host toxic tours where we inform community members – youth, young adults, and adults -about what is happening in South Oxnard as it relates to environmental injustices and toxic industry that has taken over South Oxnard and created what a lot of youth call ‘a toxic soup.’So there’s  different ingredients in the ‘toxic soup’ and the ingredients represent the different industries that are located in South Oxnard that cut our lives short, pollute our air, pollute our environment and block our access to Ormond Beach. A lot of youth,  a lot of community members in South Oxnard either don’t know of Ormond Beach or have never been to Ormond Beach because of the amount of industry that is located there that make it unfriendly.” (Listen to hear more) 

2.What are some of the most pressing environmental justice issues currently affecting your community at the local or state level?

“There’s a myriad  of environmental issues impacting South Oxnard residents. One of our most active campaigns at the moment, where youth and young adults are joining forces and advocating, [is] to make sure that the Ormond Beach Generating Station or the Ormond Beach power plant is decommissioned or shut down on time, and most importantly, that this power plant is deconstructed and dismantled so that we can have access to the beach. There have] been so many state agencies that have decision-making keys for this power plant. Our most current effort has been focused on the California State Land Commission. The Commission had the opportunity to vote on whether or not they wanted to extend the lease for the Ormond Beach power plant ocean water conduits or pipes; So what this means is when the power plant is required to turn on by the state,  it uses the pipes to suck in ocean water, cool ocean water, to the plant to cool operations and then once the equipment is cooled, the hot water is released back into the ocean…Youth have been advocating strongly in opposition of this lease being extended… (Listen to hear more)

3. Who in your community is most impacted by these environmental issues, and why?

“Environmental issues, [with no surprise], tend to impact immigrants [and] communities of color – Black, Brown, Indigenous communities. Communities of color in South Oxnard– we see this time and time again, not only here but in other areas of the country where our communities are seen as disposable. [This is] why we see so much industry in our backyards,why we see so much pollution in our neighborhoods. But enough is enough. Our community deserves to have a clean environment, deserves to have a future– a healthy future, where our health is not being used as a price. Industries can no longer continue to make profit off of our health and  off of our access to green spaces.” (Listen to hear more)

4. How does policy (local, state, or federal) influence the environmental conditions in your community?

“The policy at the local, state, and federal level influences a lot in what we see in our backyards and what we see in our environment. Like [I] mentioned earlier our efforts have been heavily focused at the state level in making sure that the Ormond beach generating station is shut down for good. This power plant was built in the [late] 60’s and the technology from back then is  not matching the demand that we’re seeing now.  So a  lot of our efforts [have] been focused on [answering] “how do we ensure that not only are we mobilizing and bringing in people power, but we create long-lasting change and policies that will put people over profit?” and to hold polluters accountable for the real cost of the damages that they do not only do the environment but to our health.  A lot of policies in the past have not considered those invisible, or not obvious costs to our health, to our environment and it’s time that we bring more environmental justice principles and a more environmental justice lens to these policies…” (Listen to hear more)

On Civic Participation and Support Systems

5. How important is civic engagement, especially voting, in driving change around environmental justice issues?

“Being civically engaged can vary from person to person. I  think traditionally, when we hear of civic engagement, we sometimes limit ourselves to thinking [only of] “November 4th Election Day,making sure I vote.” But something we have been doing at CAUSE Action, our C4 organization, is making sure that we diversify what it means to be civically engaged. We also explore those conversations through our C3, our CAUSE non-profit, where being civically engaged means showing up to city council meetings, making sure that you are checking the agenda, and seeing what is happening in our local government, what is being decided, and reflecting: ‘Is our community being looped in to these conversations and has [our] community been given the opportunity to give feedback? To give input on what is happening in our neighborhood?” (Listen to hear more)

6. What challenges do immigrant or marginalized communities face in participating in civic processes that could impact environmental policy?

“Some of the challenges that immigrant or marginalized communities face in participating in the civic process, in particularly with environmental policies is meeting accessibility.Something that we come up [against]  in our advocacy work around the power plants and the different state agencies is that there is still so much work to do around language accessibility, making sure  that there’s interpreters at meetings and that all the information from agendas to attachments are all translated. We see time and time again that materials are not [automatically] being translated to a language that is mostly used in the city or the areas in which decision- making bodies are making decisions for.  This is one of the small but also very impactful challenges that could really determine how communities show up [during local ] meeting[s] and impacts how communities voice concerns…” (Listen to hear more)      

7. Civic engagement is diverse and looks different for everyone. 

“I know we talked about civic engagement, but…  back to the piece of  how diverse civic engagement can be – that really speaks to the work that we do with our two organizations, with our C4 CAUSE Action and then with our C3 CAUSE. I think even though they are different, there’s still that unity and that alignment of “we want to make sure that we are able to be active in the elections.” That way, we can be able to guarantee that policies…that are gonna drive change in our community and center environmental justice communities like South Oxnard.” (Listen to hear more)  

Takeaways

While there are environmental injustices happening in many communities across the nation, organizations like CAUSE continue to encourage civic engagement across all age groups. CAUSE facilitates this through its various adult, youth, and young adult committees, each of which provides avenues for meaningful participation and leadership. The organization also collaborates with initiatives such as Swap Meet Justice, an event that brings together multiple community groups and local elected representatives at the safe and accessible location that is the local weekend swap meet. There, attorneys from a range of fields (immigration, criminal defense, employment, housing, debt, and more) gather to provide direct legal assistance, with the help of youth and other community volunteers, demonstrating that help is available and collaboration across related providers can turbo-charge people’s civic engagement. 

Sustaining this culture of civic engagement requires continued emphasis on experts and service providers working directly on-site in the community, demonstrating in real time the sort of assistance they can provide, making assistance and opportunities to advance clean, healthy, and just environmental conditions concrete and specific. By expanding policy awareness and access to decision-making spaces, communities can further strengthen their collective capacity to advocate for environmental justice.  

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