Erin Gray’s interest in environmental activism started with fracking. Today, she works for Green Century Funds, a mutual fund specializing in green investing and shareholder advocacy. At Green Century, impact investing is about “trying to get companies to improve their environmental performance” explains Erin.

Green Century Funds was one of the first groups looking exclusively at green investing. Green Century has now been in the business for 30 years, and Erin has been with them for 20 of those years. This is not Erin’s first interview on green investing, and she has been an advocate for both the shareholders, and the efficacy of impact investing.

“Growing up, [the environment] was never the top priority for me or my family,” remembers Erin. She majored in Economics at Smith College before transitioning to an intensive accounting program after graduation. During a vacation in Southeast Asia, Erin witnessed the impacts of air and water pollution. The experience drove Erin to switch from accounting to green investing.

Erin believes that impact investing is effective, but the impacts can be varied. When I spoke with her, she pointed to two high profile issues that illustrate the challenges and possibilities of impact investing: fracking and McDonalds

Erin remembered 15 years ago a financial advisor asked, “What are you guys doing about fracking?” At the time, Green Century didn’t even know what fracking was. The fund didn’t invest in gas or coal, but they did have investments in natural gas. Natural gas burns cleaner than oil and coal. For that reason, it was seen as part of the solution for climate change because gas is lower in emissions than coal or oil. “For maybe 3 or 4 years we tried to work with” natural gas companies to improve their environmental performance. They focused on  environmentally friendly procedures like green capping wells and pre-drilling water testing.

Green Century doesn’t invest in natural gas anymore because, at the end of the day, natural gas companies still are major emitters. Fracking is also incredibly harmful to the environment, and natural gas, while cleaner than oil, still contributes to climate change. Green Century divested and moved to industries capable of adapting.

For Erin, this example illustrates the role of impact investing in advancing environmental goals by tracking “time-bound, concrete, measurable change”. When natural gas companies weren’t able to meet Green Century’s standards for engagement, Green Century took their investments elsewhere.

Credit to Green Century Funds

The first step to achieving improved environmental performance is reaching out to companies. “There are a variety of different responses we get when we go out to companies,” says Erin. Some welcome support and guidance. Other companies are not interested.

In those cases, the next step is often filing a shareholder resolution. This strategy signals to a company that their shareholders are interested in changing the management or policy of the company. Laughing, Erin shares that sometimes companies, after receiving the shareholder resolution, will say “oh so you were serious about that?”

Shareholder advocacy can yield unexpected results. Shareholder resolutions aren’t binding: a company has no obligation to comply with the wishes of the shareholders. But to engage with companies one must own shares in the company. Erin tilts her head and concedes that “you can sometimes make strange bedfellows” through this strategy. It might be surprising that Green Century Funds invests in McDonalds. The reason they do is to engage with McDonalds as a shareholder.

This started, Erin explains, when one of Green Century’s clients raised concerns about how McDonald’s sourced pork. McDonald’s pigs were kept in restricted gestation crates, which the  investor considered inhumane. McDonald’s agreed to change their policy for pig welfare and factory farming, but when the fund checked in on progress with McDonald’s a few years later, there was no change. So, the investor went public, shaming McDonalds for its failure to follow through on its commitment. The investor hoped that by swaying public opinion they could draw support for the cause.

This example illustrates how public shaming can be an effective tool for pushing companies to change their behavior and agree to the demands of investors. After the public pressure on McDonald’s, other companies changed their policies around cage free eggs and pork gestation crates. Companies like CVS and Walgreens reached out to nonprofit groups and the Humane Society asking “What are the policies we should be implementing?”

“There’s a lot of different strategies and techniques and partners,” Erin explains. She’s serious when expressing that “the goal was not to cause the… stock [price] to drop. It was to create political space so that laws, regulations, and policies can be put into place and implemented to be sure we address the biggest environmental concern”.

Green Century still includes McDonald’s in its stock portfolio. “No one in their right mind would say ‘Hey look at that great ESG company’… but we’re going to work with these companies and try to make them better”. The concession can be hard to swallow. “Some advisors have clients who can’t handle looking at their portfolios”, because McDonald’s is a major emitter of GHGs. Other clients are more amenable to the inclusion, holding the belief that the fund is a lot greener than most alternatives.

Green Century continues to focus on environmental issues, shifting to plastic pollution and deforestation in Southeast Asia and South America more recently. When asked if she’d ever leave she laughs and recalls that she’s the last of her graduate school friends still in the first job they got out of graduation. “[The work] is just continuing to evolve” she says. It “keeps me engaged with environmental issues that I might not otherwise have a way to work on”.

The image depicts a Wisconsin dairy farm in the winter, where outdoor work is still required amidst snow, ice, and other cold conditions. Image by Corey Coyle.

“I came to the story of the dairy industry because it’s pretty much in your face here in Wisconsin,” UW-Madison PhD candidate, Dustin Cohan, told me over a Zoom call. 

Dustin Cohan is a fifth-year history PhD candidate at UW-Madison. He completed a master’s project on Chicanx advocacy and fights for liberation in Wisconsin during the 1970s. He is trained in immigration and labor history, an interdisciplinary field of history that studies work and workers as a means of better understanding the past. Immigration and labor history are deeply intertwined because immigrants have and continue to fill many of the most important, unprotected, and underappreciated jobs. Dustin’s work in these fields led him to his current project, studying the interactions between primarily Chicanx workers and, what he describes as, “a strangely complicated industry” — the Wisconsin dairy industry.

Now in his fifth year, Dustin is writing a dissertation centered around oral histories. He conducted interviews with Mexican dairy workers currently working in Wisconsin. Although there has been a sharp uptick in the number of  immigrant workers in Wisconsin, there are few studies of their experiences, from the government or academia. I was able to talk to Dustin about his research uncovering the experiences of undocumented immigrant workers and connecting the rise of immigrant labor to a consolidation of agricultural power in Wisconsin dairy.

Since the mid 1990’s, agricultural power in Wisconsin’s dairy industry has shifted from lots of small farms to fewer and larger industrial farms.With this consolidation, and with it the desire to produce the most for the cheapest, dairy farmers turned to immigrant workers, particularly undocumented workers, in the late 20th century. From the mid 1990’s through the early 2000’s, Dustin estimates that about 95% of immigrant workers in Wisconsin were Mexican. More recently workers have come from central America and northern South America, too. 

Dustin explains that this shift in the labor force happened in many other industries before Wisconsin dairy. “It’s just like any other story of Mexican immigrant workers coming to an industry that needs them, and they will be used as long as they’re needed.” Wisconsin farmers knew that their counterparts in California, as well as paper, factory, and furniture industries in Wisconsin, hired Mexican-American workers. When fewer Wisconsinites were willing to do the jobs dairy farmers offered, those farmers followed the lead of other industries. 

But unlike these other industries, the shift in hiring practices in Wisconsin dairy farming coincided with a change in federal immigration law. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act aimed to reserve jobs for citizens or immigrants with legal work visas. It imposed a strict process for immigrants to receive legal permanent status and imposed more regulations on employers to confirm that their workers were legally permitted to be in the country.

Dustin explained that because there were more hoops to jump through to gain legal status, the effect of the law was that more and more people coming to the country were classified as undocumented. This shift in the classifications of immigrants coincided with the rise of industrial agriculture in Wisconsin dairy. As Wisconsin dairy farms grew and industrialized, farmers needed more workers willing to work for less. Therefore, farmers became more likely to hire workers with the fewest legal protections: undocumented workers. 

The Day to Day of an Undocumented Dairy Worker

Workers do all the labor necessary to keep the farm running. Most live and work on or very near the farm. They often work long hours milking and cleaning the cows, maintaining the barns, and preparing and cleaning farm equipment. The work is fast paced, and workers feel pressure to work every day, even though the work is exhausting and dangerous. Dustin notes the irony, “there’s not a lot of documentation (no pun intended) for this thing, and there’s not a government oversight to check into these things.”

Being undocumented means workers have access to fewer legal protections and resources. Farm work is fast paced, so it is easy to get hurt. Wisconsin is a difficult place to work a job that requires year-round outdoor labor. In the freezing winter, workers are prone to air-borne illnesses, and in the humid summer, workers are at risk of heat exhaustion. Even if a farm offers a health plan–which many do not–undocumented workers often fear visiting a doctor, or going out elsewhere in public. 

The life of an undocumented workers is centered around dairy farms. Dustin explains that workers wake up and work for ten to twelve hours on the farm. Then they have to clean themselves and get some rest to wake up and do the same thing the next day. Dustin tells me that a lot of workers save up to buy a car in their first few months of working to be more mobile in such a rural environment, but the nature and timing of their work makes it hard to take advantage of that mobility. 

A Gap in Research

Information on immigrant labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is sparse. Research conducted by sociologists from UW-Madison is the best information for anyone studying immigrant labor in Wisconsin dairy. But, Dustin explains, their interviews included only a few hundred workers of the 25,000 or more migrant workers working in dairy in the state. Dustin knows how hard it is to conduct such interviews. People don’t always want to talk to him, ignoring requests for interviews. When he does visit farms, he sometimes finds people are often not happy to share their stories. This lack of information and research, however, makes his research all the more important. 

Dustin’s work stitches together the history of immigration law, shifts in labor, and economic consolidation in America’s dairyland. “Like a lot of other food industries in this country, it’s all about how cheap the product can be, and how cheap you can get food to American consumers.” His experience as a labor historian enables him to recognize Wisconsin dairy as just one industry in a much broader agricultural and economic system that is exploiting immigrant workers. He says that the desire to do things as cheap as possible “will continue to be the largest force affecting dairy farmers, and the people who take on the brunt of that economic decline are always gonna be the workers.”

Entrance to Shahpur Jat, one of Delhi’s many urban villages

The phrase “urban village” sounds like a juxtaposition. But in India’s capital Delhi, they’re an increasingly discussed part of the megacity’s urban landscape. In Delhi, the government purchased the agricultural land surrounding these villages for urban development, but left the residential areas untouched to preserve their cultures. That means as the city expands, it often engulfs formally rural villages. The result is an urban village — a structural reminder of the city’s rural past. 

The government of Delhi imposed completely different by-laws regarding land use and infrastructure in these urban villages for cultural preservation. They are largely unregulated and exempt from the urban planning and infrastructural requirements expected of other areas in Delhi. These residential areas are now called lal dora (red thread) lands in Delhi due to their legal and cultural separation from the rest of the megacity’s landscape. 

Ujan Ghosh has a clear perspective on the future of urban villages. “When planning city expansions or new cities, urban villages should be accounted for. They’re doing a great job for the service industry,” he explains. In his view, protecting urban villages means ensuring that they remain affordable to lower-income residents, many of whom work in Delhi’s service sector. In order to do this, these areas cannot be forced to follow the same urban planning guidelines as the rest of Delhi. 

As an architect for over 35 years, Mr Ghosh has worked on several urban expansion projects including college campuses, single-developer housing developments, and tourism facilities. He is a former President and founding member of the Institute of Urban Designers-India. Mr Ghosh currently teaches urban design at the University of Delhi’s School of Planning and Architecture, where he has taught since 1983.

His work in urban design at higher institutions has been central in shaping his perspectives on the future of Delhi’s urban landscape. “My teaching and academic work gives me the platform to discuss urban development issues,” he says smiling. He attributes his beliefs regarding urban design to one of his own professors during his time at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jon T. Lang. “He pioneered the idea of human behavior affecting design.”

Through his professional background and as a long-time resident of Delhi, Mr Ghosh has found that a lack of regulation led to the development of buildings and other infrastructure that were seemingly urban, yet do not meet the regulations required of the rest of Delhi’s urban areas. Lal dora lands now possess banks, post-offices, and other infrastructure common to other zones in Delhi, but they often lack needed sanitation infrastructure and reliable water access.

Today, lal dora lands are home to Delhi’s large population of domestic staff, construction workers, and other migrant workers from India’s rural communities. They serve as a site for small-scale manufacturing businesses. “When we need to fix our pressure cookers, where do we go?” Mr Ghosh asks, “Or when we need to tailor clothing?” It is evident that urban villages are the pulse of Delhi’s service industry. 

Imagining a ‘planned’ urban village

“[Urban villages] need to be planned, not incrementally developed.” For Mr Ghosh, this means incorporating the commercial, industrial, and residential features of lal dora lands into these new plans. Mr Ghosh stresses that Indian residents cannot hold the immediate needs of these communities to the same standards expected of higher-income areas in Delhi. Government subsidies and other intervention methods have had little success. Instead, he believes that it is important that urban planning must reflect the needs of the area’s population in an affordable and economically sustainable manner. “We have to be tolerant. They know that they can’t afford everything.” 

To do this, he believes urban villages need to be given special consideration on several counts:

Population density. This is usually controlled in Delhi’s urban areas. Only certain numbers of people are allowed to live in a house or room. These figures are determined by the size and accessibility of the space. Mr Ghosh affirms that density guidelines cannot exist the same way in lal dora lands if they hope to provide affordable housing that accounts for the area’s rising population. 

Remaining mixed-use. Most cities in India (such as Mumbai) have buildings that are ‘mixed-use,’ which incorporate both commercial and residential facilities. However, colonial Delhi developed differently. It possesses strict zoning rules, such as a central financial district, residential areas, and industrial areas that are clearly segregated. In order to preserve the residential and commercial aspects of urban villages, Mr Ghosh believes they must remain mixed-use, unlike Delhi’s other urban areas. 

Mixed-use buildings in Shahpur Jat with stores on the ground floors, and residential housing above. 

Leniency with infrastructure. In order to preserve the spatial needs of the population, Mr Ghosh believes that urban planning requirements in lal dora areas must be different from the greater city. For example, he believes that vehicular roads must remain at a minimum. “They’ll satisfy emergency requirements and some automobile access.” This need exists because urban villages do not currently meet Delhi’s urban planning requirements. If these areas hope to continue remaining financially accessible, spatial compromises are necessary. 

From the classroom to the city

Mr Ghosh’s love and belief in the importance of urban design shone through his discussion of his work. To him, urban design is ensuring that the socio-cultural needs of a community are being met. In regard to the lal dora lands, Mr Ghosh explains that while urban planners will find out how to accommodate half a million people in a given area, urban designers will account for the population’s needs. These may include considering how commercial zones may affect residential life or accounting for public spaces that foster community. 

‘Planned’ urban villages can only be actualised in areas facing urban sprawl or in newer cities. Existing urban villages have more of an upwards battle as, although the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has released numerous plans for developing lal dora lands, Mr Ghosh believes that besides improving access to energy and putting in sewage treatment, there is not much that can be done. Nor does he believe that lal dora lands are top priority for the DDA. 

Instead he looks to a future that will be defined by urban sprawl and growing urban populations. “We need to find a self-sustainable idea for the urban poor.”

“As an architect, I teach lots of things that I don’t practice,” he says with a chuckle. But by providing an academic space to discuss how to mitigate the future of urban development with his students, combined with his professional expertise in rural-to-urban architectural development, Mr Ghosh’s work is critical to India’s future. 

“It’s not just a river,” it is an economy and culture for 70 million people in Southeast Asia. That is how Courtney Weatherby sees the Mekong River. Over the Mekong’s 2,610 miles, it has many different things: culture, tourist attractions, and drinking water.

Over the Mekong’s 2,610 miles, it is also a fishery, source of hydroelectricity, and irrigation for agricultural products. While the Mekong may seem far away to most people, it is a major source of freshwater fish globally. It is also an important regional source of hydroelectricity. The consequences of developing dams on the Mekong will be felt globally.

Map of Mekong River Basin

“It was actually an academic paper” that jump started Courtney Weatherby’s interest, she explained with a chuckle. Courtney was studying abroad in Beijing in the 2010s while China’s environmental record “was hitting the fan.” It prompted a period of intense discussion about China’s impact on climate change and pollution. Courtney now works as a Research Analyst and Deputy Director at the Washington D.C. based Stimson Center. The center hosts the Mekong Policy Project, which analyzes the geopolitical situation in the Mekong. Courtney and her colleagues are working to raise awareness of the dam impacts regionally and globally and assess policy solutions.

Impacts and Interests of Development

In 1995, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) was developed to support sustainable river development by Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, but not Myanmar or China which are not members. The Commission reviews development projects to assess benefits and concerns. The Commission positions the Mekong region well according to Courtney. Yet, of the three dams it has reviewed, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of review. Experts like Courtney fear that the Commission’s commitment to quality is fading over time, which poses a threat to the river and the communities that depend on it. 

China controls the faucet of the dam as the country at the head of the river, but Laos is manipulating water levels and pressure through their 16 dams. Over her career, Courtney watched the conversation shift from where each country sits along the river, to how each country’s development projects impacts.

Laos has recently seen the consequences of a lack of information provided to communities and improper development. In July 2018, the Xe Pian Xe-Namnoy dam in Laos near the Sekong River, one of the most important Mekong River tributaries, collapsed. The ensuing flood killed 49 people and caused long-term property damage for 7,000 people. The dam was rebuilt, but the government advised villagers not to return for fear the dam would break again. Despite its poor track record, Laos continued to develop new dams on the Mekong River. 

The Mekong River could power 23 million homes based on the dams’ energy production. The Mekong River provides 70% of Laos’s energy, including energy exports, and significant energy for other countries along the river. Laos is slowly becoming the “battery of Southeast Asia,” by exporting hydropower to other countries.

Development on the Mekong is riddled with irony. A new dam in Laos will impact Thailand, which is just downstream, but that has not stopped the developer, which is Thai owned, from building it. These investments raise concerns about hydro-diplomacy, and the muddled interests of each country. 

But what Courtney made clear is that hydro-diplomacy depends both on positioning along the river and each country’s impact, not just one. 

Costs of Dams Versus the Benefit

According to Courtney, the Mekong is a global common good because it is “the world’s most productive freshwater fishery.”

But that may change as many fish species are gone and remaining fish are harder to find because of the dams. Most of the fish disappeared after the Xayaburi dam in Laos began operating in 2019. Fishers are concerned that there will be no fish in the future, rendering their jobs obsolete. Yet, Courtney has still found fish from the Mekong river in American grocery stores.

The Mekong River at Luang Prabang, Laos

These fisheries are essential to the economic welfare of communities, but they are under threat. The profits from energy production on the river go almost exclusively to the government and developer, but the profits from fishing go to the communities along the river who catch the fish and prepare it. Even if the economic benefits are local, they add up to a significant contribution to many nation’s GDPs. Fish products from the Mekong make up about 12% of Cambodian, 7% of Laotian, 3.1% of Thai, and 1.8% of Vietnamese GDPs. With diminishing fish populations, the GDPs are expected to fall and communities will need to find new industries. 

An Upstream Battle for Solutions

The Mekong Dam Monitor, the Stimson Center project Courtney works on, began as a way to promote transparency by using available dam activity reports, satellite technologies, and downstream sensing to piece together a picture of river activity. Because it uses almost real time data, it allows for data-driven conversations and negotiations within the region and MRC about dam development and water usage. 

While the Commission and Courtney’s work both focus on data transparency, they are bound to different expectations. The Commission reports diligently on what member countries allow it to disclose, meanwhile Courtney’s work started from an interest in unreported Mekong River activities that continue to be secretive. China and other countries view dam activity as a state secret. To get around that, non-governmental organizations like the Stimson Center have started to create independent data sets. While China’s residents were growing concerned over environmental impact during her study abroad, Courtney stressed how little concern there seemed to be for the international impacts of China’s activities and inhibiting transparency.

The gap between the technical experts and the communities that need to act on that information isolates the different interest groups. China’s data availability is one of the biggest hurdles to accessibility. There have been “significant steps by China, still insufficient steps, but significant steps forward” to make data more accessible, but projects like the Mekong Dam Monitor continue to be necessary. 

Courtney excitedly told me how the project began as a monitor to oversee dam activity, but has since also grown to include early warnings for communities. Now, when river levels on the Mekong are projected to rise or fall by half a meter, the monitor issues community alerts to enable community action such as moving livestock, preparing crops, and changing fishing itineraries. 

Global Connections

The lack of data transparency has exacerbated tensions because there is no evidence to validate concerns about river level changes and the impact of downstream fishing, agriculture, and livelihoods. Lower basin countries continue to regularly criticize and blame Chinese hydropower development for its downstream impacts. China maintains that its development has a negligible impact on the river itself. As China and Laos, and other countries, continue to develop the river, tensions continue to build.

“The Mekong region is in better hands than many other transboundary river basins” Courtney said half optimistically. Water can be a powerful source of geopolitical tensions. The work of Courtney and the Stimson Center offers a model for other international natural resources under threat from persistent development. What becomes apparent is that transparency and cooperation are essential to good governance. 

Dudley/Brook site flier. Image courtesy of Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative

A vacant lot on Brook Avenue and Dudley Street in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, MA, is scheduled for redevelopment. Recently, the lot has been a site of drug activity and gun violence. In some parts of Boston, vacant lots like the one on Brook Avenue/Dudley Street are likely to become high-end condos. But that is not what will happen here.

Satellite view of Dudley/Brook site. Image courtesy of City of Boston

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), a community-run non-profit organization in Roxbury, is spearheading the redevelopment of the Dudley/Brook lot. DSNI was formed in 1984 to give Roxbury residents control of development and address issues in their community. At the time, more than 20 percent of the land in Roxbury was undeveloped and at risk of becoming upscale hotels and offices. Today, DSNI has helped create 98 permanently affordable homes, in addition to urban farm sites, parks and open spaces throughout Roxbury. The Dudley/Brook lot is DSNI’s latest project in their ongoing campaign to empower Roxbury residents by expanding access to public services and resources.

I first learned about the DSNI in an article by Yes! magazine. The article described DSNI as the first community-run organization in the U.S. granted the power of “eminent domain” – the power to acquire private land for public use. This power allowed DSNI to advise the city on how to redevelop vacant lots like the Dudley/Brook lot. As a Roxbury resident myself, I was completely moved hearing the remarkable work DSNI has been doing. 

I learned about the Dudley/Brook lot when I attended DSNI’s community meeting on October 18th, 2022. There I met Minnie McMahon, who is a DSNI community organizer. She explained that development without displacement is a big challenge DSNI and other community-based organizations face. “How do we invest in a community with houses, businesses, and parks – all that good stuff without gentrifying?”

McMahon has always been interested in the questions of power and decision-making systems. McMahon went to graduate school at Tufts University for Urban Planning and Public Policy. There, McMahon spent a lot of time organizing and became interested in community land trusts, non-profit organizations that secure land on behalf of a community. In 2018, McMahon started working as the Programs and Operations Manager at Dudley Neighbors Incorporated, a community land trust embedded within DSNI. Then, in 2021, McMahon moved over to DSNI’s Community Organizing team. 

At the DSNI meeting on October 18th, although I had never interacted with DSNI before, McMahon welcomed me with open arms. She facilitated the meeting and eagerly invited participants to share their thoughts. Some questions raised at the meeting included: How do we make sure we have enough information on what the community wants? How do we engage people’s different opinions on how the Dudley/Brook lot should be used?

McMahon told me that this is something DSNI is constantly thinking about. It involves earnest attempts to do outreach – in a variety of ways – to get the community’s inputs. For the Dudley/Brook project, DSNI organized block events throughout the year where they told community members about the lot and gathered residents’ opinions through surveys. 

McMahon explains that this process often takes years. For example, in creating permanent affordable housing, DSNI first gets input from the community on what type of housing is needed. DSNI then tells the city what the community wants. The city drafts and sends out a “request for proposals,” a request for developers to build the housing. Developers respond with their proposals. The city then selects the developer and DSNI leases them the land. 

To McMahon, being a community organizer means “facilitating people coming together in learning, developing campaigns and relationships, and bringing together resources to do what they want to do.”

This work is not easy. With more people becoming active on social media, McMahon mentions that DSNI struggles to meet people’s varying needs. “Some people are like ‘what’s a computer?’ and some people are like ‘what’s a paper flier?’ There is such a range on how we get all the information.”

COVID has exacerbated DSNI’s challenges with outreach. “COVID definitely has made an impact,” McMahon explains, “People are more online now and isolated and are not joining groups in the same way.” DSNI recently hired a full-time communications person, who they hope will fill in this gap.

As part of their outreach efforts, DSNI plans to integrate art to diversify the voices represented in their projects. McMahon emphasizes, “All ways of thinking, various identities, race, culture, class, we need all of this, and this is important.” Currently, the DSNI uses a quota system to promote racial and ethnic diversity on their community board, which includes African American, White, Cape Verdean, and Latinx members. McMahon acknowledges that this may not represent the whole community and that DSNI is considering restructuring the board.

For the Dudley/Brook project, DSNI is working on how to best illustrate the community’s hopes for the lot. Some ideas shared by residents included a community center, open space, and affordable housing. The next step would be to draft a request for proposals. To do this, DSNI will compile the top two suggestions into a vision statement. 

“There is always going to be disagreement about how something is going to be used,” McMahon points out, “And that’s exactly our work, trying to figure that out with people and do good processes as best as we can, and take feedback and criticism to do a better job the next time.”

As McMahon states, DSNI’s work is ongoing. “There are basic things we know, like wanting to use social media and knocking on doors. Can we do this in multiple languages, not just in one language? Can we make sure we’re doing multiple opportunities to engage, not just one event? Can we be clear about the process, so we can also keep it moving forward?”

Picture this.  It’s a chilly February night. You and your partner are out for a stroll around a New England neighborhood, headed towards a sugar shack to make your own maple syrup. When you get there, you’re greeted by the warm atmosphere of local farmers, the smells of their maple syrup infused whisky floating through the air. This is the story of how Christine Schell first came across the wonderful organization of the Natick Community Organic Farm – a beautiful local community that boasts education as their greatest crop!

The farm is nestled down a humble side street next to a school. At 4pm when I arrived at the farm, I felt the buzz of post-school energy before I even saw the children running around. I arrived a few extra minutes early to look around and take it all in. I began walking down a path (pictured above), and proceeded into an area filled with picnic tables – farmhouse on the right, fields on the left. 

Unlike the vast, never-ending fields that come to mind when most people picture “farmland”, this atmosphere was homey, almost cozy in a way – different from the image of endless fields that often define American agriculture . Just nearby a group of children huddled together under a tree. You could instantly tell by walking in that this was a space built to cultivate both the crops and the community.

During my visit, I sat  down at one of the picnic tables to talk with the Interim Assistant Farm Director, Christine, to get a better sense of the work they do for the community. What first appeared to me as  unstructured play was actually a collection of carefully curated after-school programs.

The farm is deeply entrenched in the community. Its programs began in the early 1980’s, and still offers many of the same programs today. These range  from volunteer opportunities and robust summer programs to high school age work programs and more.  There are opportunities for all ages, from infants to high schoolers

What I saw when I entered the farm was a bunch of kids happily enjoying the farm’s atmosphere – the school year programs that families sign their kids up for were in full swing. The youngest kids can be involved in the forest gnome program, which is based off of a successful German/Danish school in the woods model. From small children just beginning to experience the world around them, to highschoolers on track to continue agricultural work in the future, the farm offers a multigenerational environment, and the environmental learning opportunities are abundant for each age level.  

For children who grew up with the programs and develop a deep love for farm work, there are apprenticeships and work opportunities they can participate in as high schoolers. According to Christine, the farm’s goal is to cultivate the involvement of young families in the hopes that they will grow up through these programs. In doing that, they ensure that the children develop a reverence and an understanding of the natural world around them.

I was also interested in what brought Christine into the world of environmental education. Although she is passionate about her work in environmental education now, her original career interests lay elsewhere. She worked for two decades teaching English in high school and working as an arts administrator before moving to  the farm, where she develops  curriculum and teaches about agriculture and environmental science.

When Christine discovered that sugar shack on that cold February night, she was stumbling upon something that would shape the lives of her and her family for decades to come. Her initial involvement with many family and education programs has grown into a much more intimately experience with the educational mission of the farm. It is clear from Christine’s experience working with the farm that all the ‘small stuff’ – variations within outdoor curriculums, the connections made by the kids, and different aspects of the farm’s ecosystems – has substantial impact. The sum of the small parts is what allows people like Christine to help kids see themselves as a part of the natural world – and with any luck, develop the kind of care and compassion for it that this world needs.

When Sharon Lavigne buried two of her closest friends over the course of one weekend, she knew exactly where the blame lay. For her community in St. James Parish, Louisiana, these deaths–and their cause–was nothing new. In fact, Lavigne knows 30 people that have died in the past 5 years, most from cancer or respiratory diseases. The culprit? Air pollution. 

This air pollution comes from smoke stacks from over 200 chemical companies and fossil fuel refineries that span the 85-mile community running along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. In this distance that takes about an hour and a half to drive, 25% of U.S petrochemical production is made. This same 85-mile stretch has cancer rates twice as high as the rest of the country, which is why it’s been morbidly called “Cancer Alley.” Lavigne has talked about how these fumes burn her skin and eyes, a reality for many like her living in this dense hub of chemical plants and fossil fuel refineries.

Cancer Alley is also majority Black, with higher percentages of Black residents in areas zoned for industrial development.  Take for example, St. James District 5 where over 90% of residents are African American. District 5 was rezoned in 2014 to allow for even more industrial development next to residential spaces. Immediately after this new zoning change, the St. James Highschool in District 5, where Lavigne worked for almost 40 years as a special education teacher, was shut down to make way for a new plastics factory owned and operated by Yuhang Chemical Inc,  a subsidiary of Koch Industries.  This new factory–before Lavigne successfully campaigned to halt its construction–was  projected to be one of the largest in the world, releasing the most carbon dioxide out of all oil and gas related projects in the US, and doubling air pollution in the area. 

Lavigne’s story and that of Cancer Alley, although shocking, is not unique. It is just one example of a phenomenon as old as America itself: environmental racism.

Although it may be easy to put environmental issues and racism in two distinct circles, they are actually experienced simultaneously for many in the U.S., existing within the same overlapping space of the Venn diagram. As a result of racism and white supremacy, those most vulnerable groups are Black and Brown communities. 

When thinking of solutions to any societal problem, it’s important we understand its full scope. In this case, it’s understanding that it’s impossible to separate race, environment and health, which all merge together in the same toxic soup. In other words, anti-racism work is health care advocacy is climate protection. Our advocacy needs to address each aspect, or it is incomplete and inadequate. 

This overlap of racism and pollution is not lost on Lavigne. “The same land that held people captive through slavery is now holding people captive through this environmental injustice and devastation” said Lavigne in a recent interview with Rolling Stone Magazine. “They pollute us with these plants, like we’re not human beings, like we’re not even people. They’re killing us.”

And it’s not just St. James Parish. People of color are exposed to more air pollution than their white counterparts across the U.S., with Latinx communities breathing up to 75% more pollution than their white counterparts. This can cause and accelerate the onset of health problems such as heart attacks, miscarriages, and yes, cancer. 

It doesn’t stop there. The single strongest factor in predicting where a toxic-waste dump will be sited is not geography or geology as one might assume but rather race. Two-thirds of Black and Latinx communities in America live in an area with at least one toxic-waste site. This means, if you live in a predominantly Black or Latinx community, the odds are you are living near a toxic-waste facility. 

These are not simple coincidences or “slip-ups.” Tom Goldtooth, a Native American activist and director of the Indigenous Environmental network puts it plainly, “The system ain’t broke. It was built to be this way.” 

For example, the Cerrell report, a report for the California Waste Management Board on where to place garbage incinerators, specifically suggested placing incinerators in poor, rural, communities of color. That incinerators are built in communities of color is a reality rooted in deliberate policy decisions. 

We owe it to ourselves and communities like St. James Parish to address the overlap of racial and environmental issues in its entirety. 

For many organizations, concerted coalition building is already underway. The Movement For Black Lives (M4BL), a group of 50+ organizations including Black Lives Matter (BLM), operates on a platform that calls for divestment from fossil fuels. Organizations like the National Hispanic Medical Association, Health Care Without Harm and Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments have called on Congress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to clean power in order to “improve public health [and] help dismantle systemic racism.” 

Lavigne runs an organization herself, RISE St. James, a grassroots organization that intertwines racial justice with environmental justice and fights to keep new industrial development out of the area. Her efforts are supported by national environmental organizations like the Sierra Club. RISE has also participated in the Global Climate strike, demanding global action to protect our climate.

The efforts of these organizations embody a fundamental idea in grassroots organizing: we are stronger when we work together.  A unified, targeted fight makes us all the more powerful and impactful. If we can’t separate racism and the environment into distinct experiences, why do we separate our advocacy? 

I couldn’t detect Vaughan Woodruff’s Maine accent–perhaps because I grew up in Maine myself or perhaps because of the highway noises crackling over the phone. But he speaks of central Maine with such fondness that there’s little doubt where his heart lies. 

Vaughan was kind enough to squeeze in our interview during a Friday evening drive from a solar installation site in Brunswick back to his home in Pittsfield, ME.

Solar energy has been booming in Maine for the past few years. Since 2019, installation  of solar generation in Maine has grown tenfold per year, and since 2015, the cost of installation has fallen 11%. 

Vaughan has been deeply committed to making sure this boom is benefiting more than just wealthy coastal areas. In addition to starting InSource Renewables in 2008, Vaughan has become one of the Maine solar industry’s foremost social justice champions, focusing his business on serving rural and economically struggling communities and dedicating valuable time to training the next generation of Maine energy workers. 

Vaughan grew up in Pittsfield—an old mill town in central Maine—and identifies with its struggles. “If I’m going to raise my kids here, there better be a town for them to be connected with,” Vaughan said of his decision to base his company locally. Maine’s aging population, lack of solar experts, and small workforce make the challenges of running a solar company in a sparsely populated and poorer part of Maine especially acute.

Investing in community has been a central part of Vaughan’s business philosophy. In 2016, InSource became a worker-owned cooperative and was awarded B Corp certification, a designation that shows the company is focused on balancing “purpose and profit.” To Vaughan, this means empowering his employees and involving them in the decision-making process. 

“I’m a very wary capitalist,” he said. “Solar companies make their money by selling the hours of their laborers. Responsibility and reward need to go together.” 

In early 2021, Vaughan decided to merge his company with ReVision Energy because of mounting challenges posed by the pandemic. But he made sure his new partner was compatible with his employees-first model. 

There are many renewable energy companies in Maine and when I asked about competition, Vaughan laughed. “Solar competes for customers day in and day out,” he said, but “in order for our industry to grow the pie, it’s taken tremendous collaboration.”

By “collaboration” he means the unending hours volunteering on various committees to push for better solar policy. He said he spends twenty to thirty percent of his time working on policy issues–a nearly unmanageable burden for a small business owner and still a significant stretch now that he works for ReVision. 

Paid positions would exist for policy work in a more mature market–one with bigger businesses and greater depth of trained employees. Instead, the day-to-day running of companies, educating communities about why solar is important, and fighting for policies fall mainly on the shoulders of local solar entrepreneurs like Vaughan. Fortunately, other organizations including the Environmental Policy Coalition often work with solar leaders on policy and education issues. But Vaughan feels they only provide limited support and can hold conflicting interests. 

And there is a lot of work to be done to improve the policy landscape for solar in Maine. The two biggest tasks on Maine’s renewable energy front are creating more consumer-owned utilities and updating the grid. 

Consumer-owned utilities would help take down CMP, Maine’s biggest energy provider which Vaughan describes as “imperialistic,” and provide lower rates, higher reliability, and a faster shift to renewables for Mainers. “There’s a lot of momentum right now to shift from utility-owned to consumer-owned utilities,” Vaughan said. Instead of benefiting shareholders, utilities would focus on benefiting consumers.  

Updating the grid could prove harder. “What we need to figure out as a society is grid planning,” he said. To successfully transition to a renewable-based system we need a grid that can handle the two-way traffic of small- and large-scale solar and wind projects. Private industry currently carries the burden of updating the grid, but government on both the state and federal level needs to step up its involvement to hasten the process. More progressive states, Vaughan explained, are already successfully organizing this shift on the state level. 

Near the end of our interview I expressed gratitude for his optimism and the tireless energy he pours into his work. But he wanted to end our conversation on a different note.  

“I have deep pessimism in the world that we’re leaving for the next generation,” he explained. “If you engage in this work there’s a lot of hardship. But the work must go on. We have no choice.”

Solar Project in Pittsfield, Maine