In this month’s issue of California Lawyer the article Mapping Out Success highlights former Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) Race Equity Project (REP) Staff Attorney Eric Schultheis’ use of GIS maps to challenge race discrimination in education, housing and health care.

Both the California Lawyer article and Sacramento News & Review article Deep Impact by Cosmo Garvin report on the Avon and Glen Elder Neighborhood Association’s (AGENA’s) David and Goliath battle to keep billions of cubic feet of volatile natural gas from being placed under their homes. LSNC Staff Attorney Colin Bailey, lead counsel for AGENA, likens placement of the proposed gas storage site under the mostly of color Sacramento neighborhood of middle to lower-income homeowners to “living next to a nuclear facility.” AGENA, led by president Constance Slider (who is featured in the SN&R piece) and represented by LSNC and others, has staved off the gas storage siting for more than one year. GIS mapping has been essential to AGENA’s environmental justice successes as well as in preventing and mitigating cuts in local indigent health care programs in the Sacramento region. Visit LSNC’s GIS mapping page for more information about mapping resources and tutorials.