Environmental Justice
What does it mean?
The right to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment for all. Building the power of low-income, communities of color, and other marginalized communities to challenge corporate and government practices that disproportionately expose them to toxic waste & environmental degradation.
Current Grantees: Greeleaf, The Growing Project, Eastside Growers
EXAMPLES OF CHANGE:
- 2000 – After generations of struggle in the San Luis Valley, the Land Rights Council WINS a historic landmark Supreme Court case giving back ancestral communal rights to land granted to the descendants of Mexican settlers who have lived there for generations.
- 2000 – Western Colorado Congress WINS a legislative battle by defeating a bill that would allow corporations to import radioactive waste to a designated Superfund Site in rural Western Slope, about 40 miles southwest of Grand Junction.
- 2012 – Alamosa Riverkeepers continues to organize community members to clean up the toxic mess from the worst mining disaster in Colorado. Residents in one of the poorest, rural counties in the US are reclaiming this Superfund site and restoring the river/water supply that they count on for everyday use.
- 2013 – Eastside Growers Collective cultivates 34 plots for over 212 members of the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, growing food and connections for over 90 households.