Environmental Justice

Ricardo Levins Morales, American, born 1967

Environmental Justice, 2014

Levins Morales invokes The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831), riddled with oil drums and other trash in his depiction of the burdens facing marginalized communities in the U.S., specifically evoking sea level rise and water pollution as two dominating forms of environmental injustice. As water pollution remains a paramount concern across Virginia be it to marginalized communities due to the construction of natural gas pipelines, historical mercury release, or damage to the Chesapeake bay due to agricultural runoff, this image is significant amongst environmental justice and climate justice- based activist or interest groups in Virginia. Label by Frank Kennedy

Browning of America

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Salish and Kootenai Nation, born 1940

Browning of America, 2000

Reading about the struggles of indigent, marginalized communities (especially communities of color) reminded me of this piece by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, which is an aesthetic censure of America's nationwide environmental exploitation and historic neglect of underrepresented narratives. Although “browning” can be used to refer to the ecological deterioration and pollution, Smith reclaims and invigorates this term, using it to allude also to the undeniable presence of demographic diversity. Her work celebrates the histories and geographies of Indigenous peoples through pictograms and red stains that sweep across the borders of America. In conclusion, it is important to recognize that many neighborhoods that are ostensibly wealthy may hide a dark past of white flight, urban decay, and redlining. Environmental justice teaches us never to take anything at face value, and when it comes to implementing meaningful change, as these articles demonstrate, policymakers are often faced with the choice of doing what is easy versus doing what is right. Label by Tara Vasanth