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Over half of the neighborhoods in Santa Ana (shown in pink on the map below), California are designated disadvantaged communities (DACs) by CalEnviroScreen, the leading tool for assessing environmental injustice in California. GREEN-MPNA, a community-based organization in Santa Ana, is working to change this through its DAC-X campaign: an action-oriented movement to reduce disadvantage through pollution reduction, health equity, economic justice, and inclusive governance. Aware of the risks of gentrification, the goal is to x-out disadvantage in a way that empowers rather than displaces current communities. The University of California EcoGovLab has worked closely with GREEN-MPNA on the design and development of the DAC-X campaign. The four pillars of the campaign were chosen, in part, because they align with the State of California’s own criteria for designating communities as disadvantaged. DAC-X’s design also draws together a diverse array of advocacy organizations, government agencies and schools working against issues that contribute to disadvantage, knitting together threads of work that often run in parallel. The long term goal is to increase these organizations’ collective capacity to address disadvantage – in a way that recognizes the intersectionalities and cross-scale interactions that produce it. One tactic we have used to advance the DAC-X campaign is the staging of Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings that bring relevant governmental agencies together in one room to speak and respond to Santa Ana residents.Thus far, these meetings have focused on pollution reduction and inclusive governance. Going forward, we will continue to grow our network of alliances in Santa Ana by organizing Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings to address other pillars of the DAC-X campaign, bringing for example, health equity advocates to the table, or educational institutions that could support workforce development. The DAC-X campaign itself – and this poster – also results from an alliance – between EcoGovLab (Browne, Adams, Fortun) and GREEN-MPNA (Flores, Gutierrez & Rea).

Browne, Aiden, James Adam, Jose Rea and Kim Fortun. 2023. "GREEN-MPNA's DAC-X Campaign for Environmental Justice: Designing for Alliance." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

The data is made available through the works of thousands of global collaborators. From NGOs, to activist, to researchers and various community organizations. The platforms mission is to create a space to make these globalized mobilizations more visible and collaborative. The goal and purpose of the EJ Atlas based on the founder and site:, “The EJ Atlas collects these stories of communities struggling for environmental justice from around the world. It aims to make these mobilization more visible, highlight claims and testimonies and to make the case for true corporate and state accountability for the injustices inflicted through their activities. It also attempts to serve as a virtual space for those working on EJ issues to get information, find other groups working on related issues, and increase the visibility of environmental conflicts.”

The system was built to serve organizations and individuals with humanitarian goals. The system gathers data from report, reviews, and users and compiles it into comprehensible information to help inform decision-making for humanitarian concerns. Portions of the app also focus on education and technical support for field researchers looking to collect large quantities of data.