April Partner Highlight: People for Community Recovery
Environmental Justice leaders like People for Community Recovery founder Hazel Johnson knew that racial justice was climate justice. This Earth Month, celebrate the EJ leaders in our communities with us in our April newsletter.
People for Community Recovery is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life of Chicago residents living in communities most impacted by environmental pollution. PCR was founded in 1979 by Hazel Johnson upon learning that residents of her home in Altgeld Gardens and neighboring Calumet city had some of the highest cancer rates in the city. After losing loved ones to cancer, she began a community health study on the industrial waste sites in her neighborhood. Known as the ‘Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement,’ Johnson was one of the first to draw the connection between climate change and pollution disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color, laying the foundations for the work of People for Community Recovery.
For over four decades they have mobilized to address community-identified environmental priorities. From direct actions and cleanup initiatives, to training programs and federal policy, their work has been a model for environmental movements built from the ground up.
Hazel Johnson and PCR were at the forefront of the earliest national environmental justice conversations. As the Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement, Johnson’s work at PCR informed Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” issued in 1994. Two years later, PCR was also recognized as one of the nation’s top environmental organizations by the president.
Since 1995, PCR has trained over 200 young people living in environmental justice communities in Chicago in lead and asbestos abatement and underground storage tank removal. They developed the first EPA-sponsored community lead education and intervention initiative in the country, hiring and training residents of Altgeld to implement the program and become environmental activists and advocates.
In recent years, PCR has continued to push for environmental cleanup, community-based projects to build solar infrastructure including a solar training curriculum for the Chicago Housing Authority, electrification and energy efficiency, and the health of their residents. PCR has distributed more community vaccines, mutual aid, water distribution, and utility assistance than any other region in the city. As economic development expands on the far South Side with the redline extension, PCR is working to ensure these projects benefit community members - and that residents are involved in each step of the process- from participating in planning and visioning sessions to securing jobs constructing and maintaining new infrastructure. They continue to assist residents of frontline communities in Chicago with utility bills, housing, health, and other community initiatives. At the city level, they have been involved in recent initiatives to move Chicago to a clean energy future that centers justice and equity for all.
“My mother, Hazel M. Johnson, is known as the Mother of Environmental Justice, for her work to improve her neighborhood and win the first federal action on environmental justice. Her legacy is just one demonstration that the most equitable and sustainable solutions come from the communities living on the frontlines of the problem. [On the MWEJN Advisory Circle] I am looking forward to continuing to lead the frontline and invest in local solutions.”