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Moderator’s Note: It has been twenty years since President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, establishing a federal environmental justice policy to address enduring inequalities in the distribution of environmental rights and wrongs. As part of a continuing series on the state of the environmental justice movement, I am presenting a reflective essay by one of the founders of the movement, Charles Lee. I briefly met Charles at the First EJ Summit in Washington, D.C. in October 1991, where the Principles of Environmental Justice were formulated and adopted. He is not just a visionary; he is also a lifelong activist – a true change agent engaged with social movements and political institutions. In this brief essay, Mr. Lee provides an overview of accomplishments made possible by Clinton’s executive order, not the least of which is the proliferation of EJ studies and research faculties at hundreds of universities and colleges across the country. I take a less than completely enth...

Maquiladoras. Monotype by Luis Gutierrez. Border walls as ecological disturbance and structural violence PART 1 | A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF DISASTER CAPITALISM? Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | December 5, 2013 Posse existere potentia est. The power is to be able to exist. - Baruch Spinoza It was 1992 and a mere two years to go before NAFTA activation and the opening of Zapatismo on the global stage. I was back on the border, field tripping – and I do mean ‘tripping’ in the sense of returning to a familiar but always transforming region ten years after completing my 2½ year dissertation residence in the Twin City of El Paso- Ciudad Juárez. I was in serendipity mode trying to convert my dissertation into The Terror of the Machine and gathering new stories of shop floor politics and community struggles from maquila workers, managers, and organizers. There were plenty of continuing signs of the upwelling of multitudes-in-resistance on the border and elsewhere. Environmental justice activism ...