Authored by Sofia Sarabia, The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

The notion that poor people and people of color bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and other environmental hazards is not new. Hundreds of studies looking at a wide range of environmental dangers such as pesticide poisoning, air pollution, contaminated drinking water, lead poisoning, proximity to toxic waste and other environmentally hazardous sites have confirmed it. But you don’t have to read hundreds of studies, you can simply visit the farm worker communities in the Central Valley, or the low income, primarily African American communities surrounding power plants in the east bay, or you can look at the poor communities of color in your area to see for yourself.

The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) has been very successful in working with communities to protect their health and environment. Our success can be attributed to our approach to each issue and each community. CRPE’s first priority in any campaign is to give the community collectively, and its residents individually, more power and personal capacity than they had before. Obviously addressing the environmental hazard is important, but if the community wasn’t empowered, it would be vulnerable to the next hazard. However, if community residents are armed with knowledge and a sense of power in the decisions affecting their community, then they are better able to take control of the health and environment in which they live.

CRPE believes that the lawyers should not be in charge of campaigns but serve as tools for the community. This “on tap, not on top model,” allows the communities to control how to deal with an issue, further developing the community’s capacity. Our organizers work in our Valley client communities to build community groups. We as lawyers come in once the community has decided it is the best course of action. If I could give one piece of advice to advocates working on these issues, based on my experience with CRPE, it would be to really listen to the community and allow them to guide the course of action. What we may think as outsiders to a community is the best outcome, may not be what is best for the residents of that community.

CPRE is an environmental justice advocacy organization that works with poor people and people of color across the U.S. fighting environmental hazards, with a particular focus on California’s San Joaquin Valley. CRPE began its life as a project of California Rural Legal Assistance and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in 1989, serving as a mini-backup center for legal services offices, offering technical and legal assistance for the environmental justice movement. CRPE became an independent non-profit in 2002. This October will mark CRPE’s 20th anniversary. Since its inception, CRPE has grown to a staff of eight attorneys and four organizers, with offices in San Francisco and Delano, and continues to grow. While CRPE continues to provide support to legal services attorneys, today CRPE primarily provides organizing, technical, and legal assistance directly to grassroots groups in low income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately burdened by pollution and environmental threats.