Environmental Justice and Displacement in Chicago

Kim Wasserman Nieto, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in Chicago's South Lawndale neighborhood, traced two decades of community organizing: the twelve-year fight that closed two coal power plants in 2012, a youth-researched CTA bus line, a twenty-year campaign for a new neighborhood park, and the cleanup of a Superfund site affecting 177 homes. She then turned to gentrification, diesel trucking and warehouse expansion, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, food and composting cooperatives, and women of color on the front lines of climate change. An extended audience Q&A included her account of the organization's founding and her own path from door-to-door organizer to director.