Week 9

Garbage has become a political, economic, social, and cultural problem affecting a large portion of urban populations. According to Sze, “garbage as a culturally and politically loaded symbol represent[s] larger trends of social or municipal neglect” (53). Julie Sze’s book, Noxious New York, focuses on community activism against environmental and health hazards that disproportionately affect poor, minority neighborhoods in New York. The creation of toxic waste disposal centers, in four distinct locations throughout the five boroughs, has primarily been sited in locations known for their overwhelming proportion of people of color and is clear indicator of a racialized municipal garbage system. Although the state of garbage in New York City specifically, but also nationwide, is a daunting task to address, Sze emphasizes the power and agency held by community action, where bottom up activism can have a legitimate role in dismantling state institutions that maintain disregard for the health of entire communities and perpetuate a cycle of poverty.

Sze argues that “oppressive physical surroundings perpetuate and reinforce their residents’ oppression” (84). Thus, by continuing to disregard poor or minority communities as filthy and therefore legitimate sites for toxic health hazards, the neoliberal city is able to expand the ever- greater disparity between the rich and poor in New York. The manifestations of garbage treatment in New York city can be seen with the increasing rates of asthma among African American and Latino populations, specifically among children, and the higher rate of disease throughout the populations affected. Asthma, in particular, has become a “politicized illness” and a representation of a “racialized and gendered disease” that has primarily been fought by women (mothers) and poor communities of color (94, 95).

In the face of privatization and deregulation, community groups and coalitions emerged as a valid force to affect decisions that affect the health and well being of their own communities. Thus, “environmental justice provided a crucial political and discursive framework for communities of color to negotiate redevelopment, urban change, and competition over resources broadly defined” (6). And in two cases, the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerator and the Sunset sludge treatment plant, disparate communities were able to form cross-racial coalitions, disregarding past tensions for the betterment of the entire community. These cases “represent the generally unrealized potential of multiracial and multiethnic community organizing on environmental justice and community health issues” (85). Thus, despite the historical lack of political power of communities of color and poor neighborhoods, community activism against environmental hazards has proven to elicit much more agency and governmental sway than would be expected.