Environmental justice history is best framed as converging tributaries

Evidence

Rather than an incident-focused history of the movement, however, we think it more useful to think metaphorically of the movement as a river, fed over time by many tributaries. No one tributary made the river the force that it is today; indeed, it is difficult to point to the headwaters, since so many tributaries have nourished the movement. Particular events can be seen as high-water marks (or perhaps, to push the metaphor, exciting rapids) in each stream, or the main river. With this idea in mind, we discuss here some of the most important tributaries of the river of the Environmental Justice Movement. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 123

Categorization

• SEED: The river-of-tributaries framing is itself a teachable historiographic move for eco-justice pedagogy on how movements narrate their origins.
• XREF: connects to: Church-based civil rights leaders led early environmental justice protests — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 126; Waste facility siting defines the movement’s central arena and studies — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 117; Environmental justice emerged from fusing civil rights racial critique with anti-toxics economic analysis — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 141

Broader Connections

• Environmental justice emerged from fusing civil rights racial critique with anti-toxics economic analysis #expands (0.72) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 141