Agyeman, Chapter 5: Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE)

(Critique in blue. Comments and/or insights desired.)

In this chapter, Agyeman employs a case-study approach of an organization to determine whether it is aligned primarily with EJP or JSP, how the two paradigms overlap in actual practice, and why an organization may evolve over time to become more oriented towards JS. The subject is ACE, a non-profit founded in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood in 1993 with a mission of mobilizing the community (and identified Environmental Justice Population) to take charge of their own urban environment. ACE received a rating of 3 on Agyeman’s Just Sustainability Index.

Agyeman argues that in the 10 years between ACE’s founding and the time of the case study, ACE evolved from an EJP-identified organization to a JSP-identified one. The four criteria that signaled the shift are:

1) Widening the geographic area of focus from a local habitat (Roxbury) to a regional one (New England). ACE was originally formed to respond to issues affecting the residents of Roxbury, such as air-quality and bus-fare increases, but has expanded its scope and plans to become even more involved in regional action.

2) Growing from a reactive, “one crisis at a time” organization to a proactive, community-visioning and empowerment support system that uses participatory processes to identify problems that the community currently faces or is likely to face in the future.

3) Building coalitions that persist across unique campaigns and that create greater capacity in the entire system. ACE’s institutional and informal partnerships aren’t dissolved as issues are put to rest; instead, they nurture long-term relationships that are grounded in a sense of common purpose.

4) Employing increasingly sophisticated operational tactics (lobbying, legal, etc.) that help to distinguish ACE from more parochial organizations by emphasizing its ability to marshal resources and ensure its longevity.

ACE’s modus operandi is rooted in a platform of popular education and empowerment-practice. Popular education seeks to increase a community’s capacity for self-determination through education and outreach; empowerment-practice attempts to harness individuals’ competencies and skills to envision and implement a stronger community.

Without going into a full recap ACE’s history and campaigns, I will say that I was duly impressed by ACE’s ability to grow and stay true to its mission, as well as the clearly deliberate ways they have chosen to express their mission in everything that they do, from staff hiring to program selection. I was also interested in ACE’s timeline, which charted its “critical moments” since its inception and did a nice job of really showing how such an organization gains strength and momentum over time. Much like Ken Reardon’s explanation of the East St. Louis project, ACE’s timeline illustrates that even the most complex, best-organized grassroots movements are really a series of smaller moves that build-up and help to define and grow the organization.

Agyeman concludes that ACE began as an EJ organization and has since become a JS organization. I agree, and I agree with his reasons for making that assessment; I just kind of feel like, “so what?” I mean, ACE is what it is, and I don’t know how much value is added by definitively stating that it’s part of one paradigm or another: Whether it is identified with EJP or JSP doesn’t change its mission. I suppose it’s useful to make the distinction for outsiders who want to be able to point to a JS organization because they’re learning about JS (like we are), or to create a rubric for determining whether other orgs are JS, et cetera, but overall I feel like it’s a lot mental acrobatics, splitting of hairs, labored articulation—call it what you will—to arrive at the foregone conclusion that they are a great organization doing important work. Like so much of what we have read about thus far, I don’t question that the intentions are good or that the logic behind it isn’t solid, but I do feel that there is an incredibly prolific body of work out there that merely seeks to define, to categorize, and to theorize, without much overture toward real action. Does anybody else feel this way, as well? I’m actually quite torn about it, like maybe I’m only seeing half of the picture, and if I could see the other half then I would somehow feel more satisfied, or be able to at least connect the inputs with some outputs.