On Equity and Impact in Environmental Justice Work: An Interview with OC Environmental Justice’s (OCEJ) Enrique Valencia by: Elizabeth Hanna Rubio, Newkirk Fellow 2019-20

Introductory Note

From September  2019 – September 2020, Newkirk Fellows Jennifer Renick, Jazette Johnson, and Elizabeth Hanna Rubio partnered with Orange Country Environmental Justice (OCEJ). Founded in 2016, OCEJ aims to develop grassroots leadership amongst people directly impacted by environmental racism within the ancestral homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva Nations, now known as Orange County, California. The organization firmly grounds itself in the principles of environmental justice (EJ), which incorporate, but also extend beyond environmental conservationism to contemplate how environmental impacts intersect with other modes of oppression. During their time as fellows, Renick, Johnson, and Rubio worked with OCEJ Project Director, Enrique Valencia, to develop an equitable decision-making and membership structure that will allow those most directly impacted by environmental injustice to lead the organization.

In late 2019, Rubio sat down with Valencia to discuss his thoughts on what it means to do EJ work in the context of Orange County – a historically conservative stronghold with strong ties to white supremacist movements that has nonetheless been undergoing important political changes over the past few years. In the conversation we explored how OCEJ might integrate the experiences of other organizations that have sought to create membership and decision-making structures founded in anti-oppressive and anti-racist practices.

Please note that parts of this interview have been edited out for brevity. There is an ellipsis where sections of the dialogue were set aside due to space limits.

Interview

Rubio: Being in a political landscape like OC, where there’s such vast socioeconomic inequality and differences in political views, what kind of special considerations need to be made when thinking about the composition and aims of the membership?

Valencia: I think for one, we need to be intentional about how we recruit members in terms of place. We value supporting the leadership development of the most impacted people. We actually have [access to] mapping tools [provided by CalEnviroScreen] that allow us to see where folks live. So that’s the very basic definition. The other thing we are seeing with our members is that place is important as we’re building capacity. It does require capacity to actually have staff who can build relationships with folks who live within disadvantaged communities (as defined by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment), who are often limited in their English speaking …[our membership is currently comprised of] majority folks of color who are within that millennial generation and are proficient in English and understand the climate crisis, and understand where they live in OC and want to do something about it. OC is conservative; there’s not a lot of traction with environmental justice and climate justice here. [The members think,] “I’m gonna live here for the rest of my life, so how can I be a part of something?” And that’s been a beautiful thing. But we still want to figure out how we build a membership that can accommodate different degrees of education privilege, or different generations…We want to be a space where folks can come and invest their time and their voice and shift resources to allow them to see how this organization is helping to transform their community.

Rubio: It’s interesting to hear that there are such specific tools for determining exactly who is an impacted person here. In environmental justice work, the effects are so dispersed that who is an impacted person becomes way more difficult to gauge, especially if you’re trying to intentionally have a membership or decision-making structure that responds to these disperse effects. Yes, you could see the pollution burden, but is the person who grew up here and moved elsewhere also an impacted person? Or is it someone whose parents live there? How do you start to think through those grayer areas?

Valencia: We have to start from the vision of what environmental justice is. We see ourselves as being a part of the environmental justice movement, which has its roots in movements that spurred out of the 70s on the issue of environmental racism. With that movement you saw essentially different organizations led by people of color come together in the 90s and actually take a stance against the big environmental organizations. They put out a collective vision, and that’s beautiful and radical. We see ourselves as part of that trajectory. In terms of your question specifically…environmental pollution is something that geographically can travel, and it can impact some privileged folks, and everybody. But the data tells us that it’s people of color specifically that are almost always impacted, then we have to ask, well why is that? We see that these issues are actually rooted in structural racism. So, we have to take an anti-racist approach. When new members come in, we deliberately do an orientation with them that includes a land acknowledgment and we talk specifically about environmental racism because somebody might hear the word environmental justice and say “oh ok cool! That means using reusable straws! I’ve always wanted to be part of an environmental organization!” I mean that’s fantastic, I use reusable straws and try to do my best. But that’s not the work we’re doing. We will bring reusable straws to our meetings but that’s not what our work is about. Our meetings are open, but if someone is coming in here thinking that our work is about the straws, and not environmental racism they’ll say, “ok this is not for me.” Or, they’ll say “this is for me!”

Rubio:  A lot of the [membership and decision-making] models I’ve seen from other organizations so far have been very intentional about saying “if you are not an impacted person, you cannot be a member, and we’re going to make another role for you.” What are your thoughts on having that kind of structure?

Valencia:  I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s honest. I think it’s a conversation that represents, or it symbolizes the conversations we need to be thinking about more in our day-to-day lives… Again, our work is about creating space for people most impacted to empower themselves. You can’t really do that if somebody has, say, racial privilege, or education privilege and is taking up a lot of space. At the same time, I think there’s a role for those folks.

Rubio:  What do you envision some of those roles being?

Valencia: [D]onate, right? Donate, child care, give rides, be of service to the members, talk to your family about these issues. Because there is a layer to our work that is electoral. And very often our folks don’t have the ability to vote. Go talk to your grandma or your auntie who may think differently about this issue and be an ally in that way. We haven’t done direct actions yet, but sometimes in direct actions you need people with privilege. Or just generally, people should be open to taking directions from the leadership body, who should be made up of the most impacted people. I can’t really foresee entirely what the ally roles could be, but I think folks really have to have an understanding. It’s actually more of a practice on their part of being open to partnering with impacted folks and letting them execute their leadership, and following their lead.

Rubio: I’m sure you’ve been in spaces that, through community agreements, are trying to [recognize] the ways our interactions everyday are inlaid with different privileges and structures. What are some of your ideas about the way a decision-making or membership structure can be designed to institutionalize these efforts to subvert power?

Valencia: …You’re always going to see privilege and oppression. How do you support folks to take that space unapologetically? I think that’s a lifetime learning practice we all struggle with. Because as people who are oppressed we have to…sometimes it’s just exhausting. We’re just tired! How do we support people on the individual level to see their voice and power and also collectively, how do we show up for each other? And I think in terms of us designing meetings in a certain way… There are practices that I’m still learning. I don’t have all the answers. I would be curious to see how members themselves want the space to be created… this organization has to be flexible enough to adapt and we’re trying to figure out how to set intentional practices and less rigid pronouncements. Like when I started organizing…we didn’t say gender pronouns in spaces… so, we can’t foresee what the next generation, or what your son’s generation, is going to call for! They’re going to look at us and be like “you’re behind the times!” And I think that often happens with movements and organizations, they tend to sunset. How do we not become those old people who are like “this is how you do it!” And instead say, “yeah, it’s your turn to lead, how can I support?” And if they’re like “we don’t need you,” then I need to say “ok, I’ll go do something else.” People always say that as an organizer, your goal is to organize yourself out of a job. That’s when you know that you’re successful. When you’ve helped to create that capacity for people to keep fighting.

Rubio:  I also wanted to ask about organizational culture and how numbers-oriented organizing work (i.e. organizing work defined by how much money you can amass in grants or how many people you can get to show up to a rally) can often lend to this very masculinist culture. And I don’t just literally mean male-identified people, I mean like this attitude of like “let’s stay up all night and keep canvassing!” But actually, as a mother, I can’t do that kind of organizing work and stay up all night. The gendered aspects are a whole other conversation. But a lot of the organizations that we’ve been looking at have said that people tend to stay involved with the [organization] when they feel personal connections. There’s this tension between wanting to respect people’s time and personal boundaries, but also wanting them to feel personally invested with the [organization]

Valencia:…There’s a lot in organizing that’s even centered on war tactics. Campaign strategy, target, and I think those are elements of it. I also think what we’re also seeing through stories of organizers that have been burnt out or folks who have been marginalized as organizers and activists, there’s still a lot of healing work we need to do. There needs to be a balance that we need to figure out, even the way we structure our staff organizations. You traditionally have an Executive Director and then directors. But could we have a co-director model? Could there be a co-op? Could that similar structure exist among the membership too? I think those are some initial thoughts on that question. But again, I’m biased, I’m privileged because I do identify as a male, and so there are aspects that I don’t see. But, it’s super important to have that conversation, and invite dialogue, and sometimes that means stepping back and letting others lead.

ENDING NOTE

In late 2019, Liz Rubio conducted this interview transcribed and synthesized the text, which Valencia then affirmed and edited. Throughout the 2019-2020 academic year, Newkirk Fellows continued to work with Valencia and the OCEJ staff, membership, and advisory board to build and integrate Valencia’s observations and those of several other members towards developing a set of principles to guide OCEJ’s membership structure and decision-making practices. These principles focus on a) how technology can facilitate democratization of decision-making/membership structures, b) how, from a community psychology perspective, people develop a sense of belonging and sustained commitment to community organizations, and c) how OCEJ can integrate anti-oppressive and anti-racist praxis in developing leadership. To learn more about the final product of this collaboration between OCEJ and 2019-2020 Newkirk Fellow, watch their final presentation here.

In December 2020, Enrique Valencia completed his time as Project Director with OCEJ. The Research Justice Shop continues to partner with OCEJ where Patricia Flores is the Project Director. To learn more about OCEJ, how to become a member, or to support in other ways, please visit their website at https://www.ocej.org/.

Referenced Resources

“An Equity Profile of Orange County.” Orange County, California: PolicyLink and USC Dornsife Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, 2019. https://www.ocgrantmakers.org/resources/orange-county-equity-report/.

California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. “CalEnviroScreen 3.0.” CA.gov, June 25, 2018. https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30.

Lawrence, Keith, and Terry Keleher. “Structural Racism.” Presented at the Race and Public Policy Conference, 2004. https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/Definitions-of%20Racism.pdf.

Nagourney, Adam, and Robert Gebeloff. “In Orange County, A Republican Fortress Turns Democratic.” The New York Times. December 31, 2018, sec. A.

Nepon, Ezra Berkley, Elana Redfield, and Dean Spade. “From the Bottom Up: Strategies and Practice for Membership-Based Organizations.” New York: Sylvia Rivera Law Project, 2013.

Smith, Andrea. “Introduction.” In The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Second., 1–20. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

“The Principles of Environmental Justice (EJ).” Washington, D.C.: First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, October 27, 1991. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/EJ/Reports_Linked_Pages/EJ_principles.pdf.

Elizabeth Hanna Rubio was a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She was a 2019-2020 Newkirk Fellow. You can engage her on social media @LizHannaRubio. For more information regarding the NCbRI please visit the website or contact  researchjustice@uci.edu.