Over the last 20 years, the environmental justice movement has grown tremendously throughout the U.S. as a multi-issue and multiracial effort, now including geographic- and constituency-based networks, grassroots organizations, collaborative efforts with labor, academics, scientists, and many others.

APEN believes that an organized mass-based multiracial movement, led by people of color, poor people, young people and women, is necessary to win systemic change. Systemic change refers to fundamentally changing worldviews, power relations and policies, prioritizing the public good over profit and seeking to eliminate problems of inequities and injustices. APEN organizes API communities in this context and as part of this struggle.

APEN works on a national level in the United States with other environmental justice networks to advance large-scale strategic collaborations. These networks include: the Farmworker Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Northeast Environmental Justice Network, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, and the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice.

Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit

Cal EPA EJ Victory leads to work with new administration

In a landmark victory for environmental justice (EJ), the EJ Advisory Committee of the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal EPA) met in Oakland this past fall to approve their recommendations for the state’s environmental policies that incorporate key EJ provisions. APEN’s Laotian leaders joined over 250 community residents and activists and testified before the Committee. Representing nearly every major geographic region in the state, people shared experiences from living next door to refineries to working in hazardous environments.

As part of the California Alliance EJ Working Group (EJWG), APEN met with Terry Tamminen, the newly appointed Cal EPA agency secretary, to discuss the implementation and enforcement of these policy priorities as they relate to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s environmental agenda. With Tamminen’s commitment to ongoingmeetings and local toxic tours with the EJWG, and the publication of the EJWG’s ground-breaking report, Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up: Environmental Justice in California, APEN looks forward to working with the new administration to fight for and protect and fight for environmental justice in our communities throughout the state.