Analyze

Love Canal, USA

Misria
In response to

Residents of Love Canal, in the Niagara Falls region of Western New York, were alerted to signs of a toxic waste crisis involving the lethal chemical byproduct dioxin in the late 1970s. Residents learned about the crisis through news media, community activism and research, and their own visceral experiences – they could smell noxious fumes, noticed black sludge seeping into their basements, and saw children falling ill. Activists and academics carried out community-based research to survey the area in an effort to understand the extent of the hazard and its effects – data that they saw as missing, at the time – in turn generating evidence of changes in health and pregnancy abnormalities. In doing so, members of the community aimed to hold corporate and government stakeholders accountable to evacuate residents, organize remediation, and strengthen scientific studies and interventions to care for residents. Regional health authorities, however, dismissed community-based studies as “useless housewife data”. Activists responded by scrutinizing government and scientific studies, critiquing a lack of ecological validity and trustworthiness. Residents and community groups’ advocacy contributed to their exercise of epistemic authority, the creation of archival records and initiatives tracking the crisis over the last five decades, and wider public attention to Love Canal and other sites like it.

Image Description and Source: "Map showing distribution of symptoms believed to be caused by Love Canal pollutants," Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries, May 1982.

Shankar, Saguna. 2023. "What's the Use of Data? Epistemic Authority and Environmental Injustice at Love Canal." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali. Kim Fortun, Phillio Baum and Prerna Srigyvan. Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawaiti, Nov 8-11.

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

nebeck
Annotation of
In response to
  1. How has CRPE adapted its strategies and approaches in response to changes in the political and social landscape, and what are the organization's priorities for the future?

  2. What advice would you give to individuals or organizations interested in working on environmental and social justice issues in low-income communities and communities of color, based on CRPE's experiences?

  3. How does CRPE measure the impact of its work, and what data or metrics does the organization use to track progress?

  4. Can you provide examples of some of CRPE's most significant successes in addressing environmental and social justice issues, and the strategies that were employed to achieve these successes?

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

nebeck
Annotation of
In response to

CRPE seems to be proud that they are working within the San Joaquin Valley in one of the most polluted areas in the nation, “West of the Mississippi.” It also claims that by empowering locals with the necessary resources, they can amplify the already “robust vision for change” as well as “the willpower [of the community] to make it happen.”

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

nebeck
Annotation of
In response to

They share the cases they are actively working on and provide further details and documentation of how those legal battles proceed. I feel as if the information itself is credible because of the validity of the organization's purpose and then the team of active lawyers working on each case.